The obvious advantage of distance learning at ASU is that lectures and course materials can be accessed at any time from anywhere. This means that if you have family, a job or other commitments which make it difficult for you to attend higher education courses on the ASU campus you can still take the course you want, fitting study into a time which suits you.
Whilst it may not seem like an advantage, being able to continue living with your parents whilst studying at college can save you from a large amount of debt, and with Arizona producing highest rate of students defaulting on their loans in 2010, saving yourself from some of the debt associated with being a student might not be a bad idea.
ASU claims that its distance learning courses offer an even stronger link to industry than its conventional courses. ASU online courses give students access to a whole bank of recorded lectures from people in industry. This bank of lectures gets bigger each year as new speakers are invited to lecture. This gives online students access to a great range of speakers from industry, not just the speakers invited that year, which conventional students will have to be satisfied with.
ASU ranks amongst the top 100 universities in the world and through distance learning you will graduate with exactly the same qualification as a student taking conventional study. What's more, with the growing recognition of USDLA, United States Distance Learning Association, accreditation of distance learning courses, most employers now make no distinction between qualifications gained online and those gained conventionally.
ASU online has over 50 courses on offer, both graduate and undergraduate, ranging from liberal arts to engineering. Further, ASU offers some of the highest-rated online courses availiable. For example, U.S. News & World Report rated ASU's online Master in Business Administration as the highest-ranking online program.
ASU online is unique in the range of electronic resources it offers students. From Facebook and Gmail applications allowing students to easily communicate between each other, to round-the-clock online technical and research assistance.
ASU offers plentiful funding opportunities, with 70 percent of students in the 2006/2007 school year receiving financial aid of some kind.