Online degrees blossom in Asia, attracting students around the world

Thousands of kilometres from Kuala Lumpur in Cameroon, doctoral student Michael Nkwenti Ndongfack attends his Open University Malaysia classes online and hopes to defend his final thesis by Skype.

A government worker, Ndongfack could not find the design and technology course he wanted in his own country, so is paying a foreign institution about US$10,000 for the degree instead.

Online university education is expanding quickly in Asia, where growth in technology and internet use is matched by a deep reverence for education.

"I chose e-learning because it is so flexible," Ndongfack, 42, said via Skype from his home in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde.

Web-based courses dramatically boost opportunities for students and are often cheaper than those offered by traditional bricks-and-mortar institutions.

But online learning has also caught the eye of some of the world's most prestigious universities, with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently teaming up to offer free courses over the internet.

"With the improvement in technology, the number of institutions offering online education has increased, both in terms of numbers and the kind of classes offered," said Lee Hock Guan, senior fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.