Govt Accredited Online Colleges in Virginia

Virginia is home to some of the nation's most-recognized college brands, including behemoth Virginia Technical University, whose growing online programs are attracting and enrolling students at a higher rate than Virginia's other public colleges like Virginia Commonwealth University and George Mason.

The University of Virginia, one of the nation's most prestigious public research universities, designed as it was by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, was one of the first schools in 2012 to experiment with Massive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs. It brokered a 2012 deal with Coursera to offer six MOOCs, which are free and tend to enroll thousands of students, that offer absorbing coursework from prestigious professors. The only catch is that MOOCs in this instance do not count toward college credit. Other challenges that MOOC providers face has to do with offering quality assignment assessment to so many students as well as getting busy students to complete the courses they sign up for.

On the private side of things, Virginia's Liberty University is one of the largest non-profit schools in America, enrolling more than 80,000 students in 2015. Most of these students are signed up for online classes as part of a variety of accredited degree programs the school offers completely online.

Liberty's huge enrollment has inspired many other universities to begin offering programs that are completely online, without any residential requirements. Virginia's community college system is especially expanding its online course offerings as demand increases for more flexible education options, though it, too, faces challenges with student completion and retention in online courses.

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