Joining the military doesn't mean you have to give up school. Among other colleges, the University of Colorado offers several distance learning degree programs to military personnel. Unlike old-fashioned distance learning programs, many of today's courses are interactive and can be viewed in real-time. Campus Technology reports:

"At the University of Colorado in Boulder, Senior Instructor Emeritus Gerald Mitchell has been using classroom capture technology to provide his remote military students with access to classes and content wherever and whenever they have the time. The program has allowed those students to keep up with classes by tailoring their course time, and thus their education, to the rigorous military schedules they face while deployed overseas.

Mitchell, who is the university's military liaison, has been recording all of his lectures for several years using Tegrity's class capture and playback program, now known as Tegrity Campus 2.0. The software arrangement allows any student in the masters-level interdisciplinary telecommunications program to view and listen to a class lecture later via the Internet. That's especially valuable to military graduate students-generally either captains or majors in the Army Signals Corps, Mitchell said-who may be deployed in locations anywhere in the world. The program, which requires that every student take an assortment of both technical and non-technical courses, results in either a master's of engineering or a master's of science in engineering degree."

If you're in the military and are interested in earning an online degree, be sure to ask about financing. Some soldiers qualify for reduced tuition fees.