Institutions of higher education sometimes - wrongly - are thought to be hotbeds of ultramodernist, academic vogue-of-the-moment thought and attitude. A college or university actually can be fairly hidebound and conscious of tradition.

One of the verities has been that students go to college. Go to - as in go to a place.

Increasingly, a reality of the 21st century is that while large numbers of students still present themselves on campus, colleges also go out to students.

Distance learning, as it's called, makes a lot of sense in some circumstances.

Electronic communication technology can do away with the walls of many higher ed classrooms. It may be only the academics glorying in their geezer status who insist that learning cannot take place without the odor of chalk dust in the air.

Mayville State University has been awarded a U.S. Department of Education grant to increase its enrollment through distance learning. It's a nice sum of money, $2 million spread out over five years, to upgrade an already successful program. Its distance education enrollment has increased 79 percent since 2004, with plans to better that. The school, having had about 270 students participating in cyberspace learning in the spring, wants to be educating 650 four years from now by way of the Internet and other tools.

It's not an ultramodern idea. Interactive audio-visual education has been going on for years in places where distance was the enemy of educating people.

It's a sea change for academic geezers to make the shift to thinking of, much less referring to learners as consumers rather than as having the status of student. But people seeking higher education now have an array of choices that gives them consumer power. One effect being seen by facilitators of accelerated and distance learning is that most of the learners participating in the programs are decidedly serious about their education.

Distance learning isn't perfect. Sometimes it suffers because of the lack of the magic spark of learning happening among a group of people togther in a classroom.

The University of Mary has made long strides into accelerated and distance education, attracting serious, capable learners to its undergraduate and graduate school level programs. Distance learning is not confined to its School of Accelerated and Distance Education and there are participants in its program who do the traditional thing, presenting themselves in the classroom in Bismarck and the numerous satellite locations. But distance education is an important component. September should see more than 850, perhaps as many as 950 participants in classes presented using various modes of technology.

Bismarck State College has been actively engaged in the new mode of learning for some years and already knows it will be engaged in distance learning in a big way in its energy industry training programs. The developing national reputation for leadership in the energy training field is expected to involve learners from all over.

Higher education in the 21st century should become more accessible to more people. Many institutions are trying hard to make it happen.