Online
education continues to be a growing trend in higher education.Changes in
student demographics, rising tuition costs, and a national recession are just a
few of the factors that have createdthe need for greater ease and access
toacademia. The move to offer online programscreates new problems
for institutions of higher education including increased faculty salaries
and/or incentives for faculty and the potential to create additional fees and higher
tuition fordistance education. The current study first
examinedprevious researchconcerning potential problems related to
offering online programs and the rationale for doing so. Research questions
were developedrelated to differences that existed in faculty salaries,
total tuition costs, and gender distributions between Texas institutions of
higher education offering online graduate degrees in education and those who do
not. Online graduate degrees are defined as those offering 51% or more of the
course work online.Extractions from the Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS)database included only Texas public
institutions for the 2006 academic year and provided the number of graduate
degrees conferred in the field of education by gender, average 9 month faculty
salary, in-state tuition, and in-state fees. Findings
indicate no statistical differences in faculty salaries, total tuition costs,
and gender distributions. Implications for policy and practice are discussed
