It's a trend that shows no sign of slowing: more and more students, off all ages and educational levels, are signing up for online college courses. Many continue on to earn a completely online degree. The number of online students increased 35% in the last year, which is a huge number...far more than, say, the number of students enrolling in traditional colleges.

The outlook for the future isn't completely rosy, however, thanks to the negative light still cast on this 'new' method:

At the same time, fewer of the administrators at both public and private colleges said their faculty "accept the value and legitimacy of online education," raising a critical obstacle for a method of making college more affordable and more accessible to nontraditional students, the report said.

College administrators "see significant barriers to widespread adoption, and those barriers tend to be things like, 'My faculty doesn't believe in it,' " said Jeff Seaman, a co-author of the report. "That's going to be the tension in the coming years."

Tension or not, it looks like your online educational options are here to stay.