I Could've Stayed Home, or, Will the virtual replace the face-to-face?

A little over a year ago, I was faced with the really tough decision of whether to enroll in an online Ed.D. program or uproot my whole life to pursue a face-to-face Ph.D. program. While it takes me forever to order a sandwich, I, somewhat rashly, made the decision to move across the state to a university and a town that I literally knew nothing about other than its approximate location. While my experience academically has been a positive one for the most part, I wonder at the fact that so many resources have been poured into the online Ed.D. program that the majority of my major-field courses have been online with those very online program students. In talking with the *extremely* few students in my program who are actually in the on-campus program, I've been prompted to wonder what will happen to the F2F program as the online counterpart continues to grow and what impact that will have on the remaining F2F students. I mean, why do what I did and uproot one's life when one could simply stay home and continue their career while earning their degree online at the same time? True, there are benefits to a F2F program such as opportunities to teach and get in on research projects and there is much to be learned in incidental discussions with fellow students and the faculty; that informal learning that takes place standing around in hallways or passing by open office doors. That said, the F2F community is shrinking as fewer candidates are applying for the F2F program and more are enrolling in the online program. What community will we have left? Will people continue to apply for F2F programs given the convenience and availability of online ones? There could be any number of additional factors to consider such as the struggling economy, rising tuition, and reduced number of available faculty jobs for Ph.D. grads for the decrease in applicants overall as well as a perceived difference in purpose between the Ed.D. and the Ph.D. degrees. However, of the remaining F2F candidates (all 3 of us), we would be equally served by either degree program given our stated individual goals for the future which are not generally focused on careers in academia. I don't want it to sound like I'm dissatisfied with the quality of my current program of study, because I'm not, but I do wonder (with a possible research topic in the back of my mind) what the impact is on those of us in the F2F program and on the F2F program itself long term.

Now, universities have always led the way in distance and online education ahead of K-12 schools. The number of K-12 courses offered online is increasing, and it is my presumption that based on sheer numbers that F2F K-12 students will never suffer at the expense of online K-12 programs, but is it possible that one day DE enrollments will outnumber F2F students?

With all of this in mind, it is insufferably hot in this inland university town and the people next door are rather loud given the paper-thin walls of my apartment and I start to miss the cool breezes of my seaside hometown, the solitude of living in my very own house with a yard big enough to buffer even the rowdiest of neighbors, the steady income of my well-established former career, and the ready wi-fi access from beachfront hotels so that one can surf and surf the web from the same sun lounge and I think to myself, "I could've stayed home."