What about students in developing nations? Good luck taking a Coursera course in, say, Myanmar or Cuba. In much of the world, Internet access is too expensive for the average person and, even if they can get online, too slow to effectively use a modern Web site.
As online courses increase in sophistication, bandwidth will become an even greater impediment to participation.
The Guinean students shown here are studying under street lights (click to enlarge). Will they have access to global online education?
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Update 3/6/2013
A followup article talks about the impact of data caps for online students in the US. Again, the situation is much worse in developing nations.
My name is Larry Press. I am an information systems professor and have been learning and teaching about information technology since the days of unit record equipment.
