Online Education

Education establishments (including some pretty prestigious universities) seem to be falling over themselves to offer free online eduction, for example:

edX (MIT, Harvard and Berkeley)
Coursera (33 Partnered Universities)
Udacity

there are even sites that attempt to collate online education courses, for example:

Class Central

This is an exciting development, particularly for the IT industry.  IT evolves at a fantastic rate, you cannot take a university course in your late teens and expect it to carry you through your career.  You will need to learn new skills, concepts and paradigms throughout your career.  You may also need to become re-acquainted with previously learnt, but subsequently forgotten knowledge.  Unfortunately not many will have the oppourtunity to go back to university full time mid-career, so a piecemeal approach is required.  The phrase "Continuing Professional Development" has been coined, but everyone should be doing it regardless of whether it's formalised or not, if you don't you may find yourself trapped in a legacy role.  Perhaps these online courses offer a solution.  They cost nothing (as opposed to extortionate professional training) other than your own time.

Another approach is a paid-for part-time university MSc course, these are becoming more flexible with universities offering block mode tuition (course modules are taught intensively over a week) and online options, rather than the more traditional, but less flexible 2 or 3 days a week on-site.  The major advantage of this is (hopefully!) a recognisable award at the end of the course.

In summary, things seem to be converging towards a more flexible, fair and accesible approach to further education which can only be good thing.