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Introduction
In the last decade, the US has heavily invested in online education: it is projected that US online education will outgrow traditional education by 2015. Already today, renowned institutes like Stanford and MIT offer massive online courses for free – followed by up to 100,000 students worldwide. Europe now heads in the same direction. Within its upcoming ‘Erasmus For All’ programme the European Commission makes more funding available to support distance education in Europe.

Current Trends
Traditionally, in Europe online education has been associated with commercial institutes, sometimes of doubtful quality. As distance learning however makes higher education more accessible and affordable it “has become an important answer to the current educational challenges and will significantly impact our educational landscape”, states Piet Henderikx, Secretary General of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU). Today, about 500 European institutes provide short courses and entire degree programmes at a distance – with continuous success: last year student enrolment increased 15-20% while the offer grew with 40% as reported by universities across Europe. That makes online education an increasingly serious alternative to traditional education – and disproves many still widespread misconceptions.

Proliferation in Europe
To bring transparency to the quickly growing European study options on September 27th a new study choice platform has been launched by the European Commissioner for Education and Culture Androulla Vassiliou: www.DistanceLearningPortal.eu. This portal has been co-funded by the European Commission and has been developed by Studyportals, the European study choice platform, and EADTU, the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities. To date, already 220 institutes participate in this European initiative ranging from University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam to London School of Economics – listing a total of more than 1350 Bachelors, Masters, PhDs and Short Courses and thus supporting orienting learners worldwide to study abroad from home.