How much does Distance Education really cost?

A reaction to Joseph Pelton's article pointed out some things I had not considered about the cost of creating any kind of education. I was most interested in the concept that as new technologies develop, they also develop a need for maintenance that needs to be considered in the cost. It takes money to build a classroom, pay a teacher, and buy textbooks for students. Once you invest that in the educational experience, however, there is usually very little that must be done to ensure that the textbooks keep opening up every day and that the classroom doesn't fall down. Maintaining a classroom management system or my close to 4 years old Dell Latitude, however, could be so much more expensive that distance education is not a cost-effective solution at all.

This reminds me of another interesting issue we talked about in this course although I can't remember which class period it was. Essentially, we were discussing the same issue mentioned here about how if the students are still going to have a high level of teacher interaction, you have to put a teacher and their invested time in as part of your cost analysis for an independent study course. It becomes very time-consuming for university professors to design and then teach an online version of a class that they already offer in person. Teachers lacking the resources to instruct through online methods may be the biggest answer to the question of why universities are not currently offering more distance education options.