This is a question that The Heritage Foundation’s The Foundry is positing lately–comparing it to the inefficacy of brick-and-mortar schools that do a major disservice to students by trying to standardize the educational experience. Essentially, there’s no way that any public school infrastructure can scale up and simultaneously generate superb results by employing a standardized approach.

The role of online education as it stands, according to The Foundry, is an accent to core classes. As teachers can’t be uniformly trained to educate sets of students to the exact same standard year after year, they can ensure that students are getting their diet of required courses–with online course work acting as auxiliary aids designed to help struggling students catch up. While this can’t guarantee uniform results either, it can at least help equalize the playing field without stretching teachers too thin.

And while we should all look into our hearts and wallets to kick loose a couple quarters, a dime, a nickel, and a couple pennies, perhaps some of affiliate marketing’s most illustrious can give Kelli Space a primer on how to become one among them? This is one of the few lines of work enjoying a big boost in these otherwise recession-addled times. It would also appear that parable about teaching someone how to fish–and how that feeds them for a lifetime, whereas handing them a few tins of tuna feeds them for a day.

So who among our ranks would make for great teachers for Space (and should definitely step forward if only for the publicity boost they’re likely to enjoy?) Click through to find out.

Finch Sells is someone whose tough love approach to sharing affiliate marketing advice might be a great way for Space to get her feet wet–this is a line of work that’s so fast-paced that there’s no room for mincing words–and anyone familiar with this blog can definitely agree that at his blog, it’s all business, sometimes embellished with colorful language to drive the point home.

Another great asset for Space could be Jonathan Volk. Volk regularly features a wide variety of voices from the affiliate community, which is critical to anyone starting out.

One way successful affiliates remain so is by having an eye on the bigger picture–the context of affiliate marketing in the broader internet world within which it exists–and quite possibly bloggers like Outspoken Media‘s Lisa Barone and Seth Godin, who has attracted a following because of his terse, poetic marketing advice could also help give Space the edge she needs to pay those loans back.

More broadly, given how increasingly ill-equipped students like Space are out-of-college to pay back their loans in a timely manner, maybe marketing is something that should become a mandatory course for all incoming undergrads in addition to their other coursework.

2010 has been about the widespread success of geotargeted marketing intiatives. Foursquare celebrated some critical milestones while Twitter and Facebook implemented geotracking features into their Status Update features. And while the ROI on this kind of technology is a bit fuzzy, many smart establishments found one way to capitalize on its appeal to consumers. But perhaps the most interesting use of geomarketing is this latest wrinkle: Its use to facilitate the transfer of charitable proceeds from consumers to the schools of their choice via a new iPhone app.

The best part of edRover, the new app, is that it doesn’t siphon money directly from consumers in order to fund the schools, but rather, allows the consumer to identify area businesses that have opted into edRover’s program–meaning when consumers patronize those establishments, a portion of what they spend there, will trickle back down to the respective school.

The process is not without its flaws, however. Businesses looking to offer promotions the same evening as special school events end up frustrating customers with long lines and poor service–as they end up short-staffed.

However, this is a great way for local businesses angling to affect positive change within their communities by making use of social media technology that many are still learning to use on a trial and error basis.

American Public Education Inc. is a company that operates the online-only institutions American Public University and American Military University. While their enrollment was slow to pick up in September, American Public Education cites increased marketing to civilians and military veterans central to their growth.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company expects significant growth next year after an expected lull around the holidays subsides. 2011 will bring the addition of three new degrees to the schools operating under American Public Education. Another major cornerstone of American Public Education’s approach includes a program that partners them with Wal-Mart stores in order to increase educational opportunities for the stores’ employees.

These developments are a couple ways American Public Education bucks the trend. While most online institutions find themselves at the center of heightened government scrutiny and reduced enrollment, American Public reported very rewarding Q3 profits.

At The Baltimore Sun, Gus G. Sentementes profiles a new start-up offering “college a la carte” online: StraighterLine. StraighterLine, like many similar models, aims to capitalize on the new recession-era marketer of would-be students who simply can’t afford degrees from four-year institutions. So how do they plan on making a dent in the online education space?

StraighterLine has actually come up with a unique model. While they’re unable to confer degrees upon students themselves, the company has created courses that have been evaluated and recommended by The American Council on Education and has partnered with 20+ universities and colleges who grant credits for the company’s courses.

The pricing structure is the most innovative part of the start-up’s plan. Students can elect for courses “a la carte”, at $138 a month, or an entire year of a 101-level class for $999. Subject areas covered include English and math, among others.

We previouslyexplored the benefits of online education, but should StraighterLine’s business model prove enduring and profitable, it may mean the further development and growth of a niche industry that, as cost of traditional education continues to increase at a rate disproportionate to the annual income of an average American household, could rise up to take a substantial chunk of business away from big for-profit institutions.

A pair of developments are causing major ripples within the American educational system today. First this: The sticker-price for many public four-year institutions shot up nearly 8% this fall. And this: A higher education rule package that restricts the growth of for-profit institutions. So how does one affect the other?

Well, by enacting such measures as capped compensation limits for college recruiters and requiring educational institutions to be more accurate about in presenting job expectations for students with the education they’re purchasing, the profit margin for universities shrinks considerably. Compensation limits for recruiters means their efforts will go towards netting fewer students–and a fixed number at that. While more accurate depictions of what students can hope to achieve in terms of gainful employment following their education might also serve to curb the number of incoming students, by making them re-evaluate their decision to enroll at a particular university.

This is lose-win. For-profit institutions stand to lose a lot of business–although we learned yesterday that there are other ways they can still stand to win big–with these regulations. But students stand to be the biggest winners. Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst for the College Board and a Skidmore College economics professor, says:

Despite the fact sticker prices have gone way up, there is so much grant aid out there that many students are really paying less than they did before.

Couple Baum’s assertion with regulations that could feasibly shrink the number of incoming students at some of the nation’s most expensive schools and that’s how students–who have been facing a struggle to pay for college in recent years–may finally get the closest shot to a fair education that they’ve had in years.

Over at CBS MoneyWatch, Lynn O’Shaughnessy takes sides on a new debate brewing amid new Federal Reserve reports that break down how universities encouraging students to apply for special student credit card accounts frequently enjoy substantial payouts for those sign-ups. O’Shaughnessy’s takeaway follows below.

Do university administrators feel guilty about encouraging their students to sign up for credit cards that Handful of cut-up credit cards.provided kickbacks to their schools?

Of course, these administrators should. Over the year, hundreds of colleges gave student credit card issuers amazing access in return for cold cash.

But she backs it up with hard fact: Last year, over 53,000 new credit card accounts were opened up largely due to these agreements between colleges and financial institutions. Credit card issuers paid out more than $83 million to unviersities and alumni associations because of deals like this. It is savvy marketing indeed: Identify a target demographic, most of who are enjoying independence away from home for the first time in their lives, lure them to open up a credit card–the “swipe now, pay later” mentality probably an eerily effective tagline to bait college students–and pay the university facilitating such a transaction a tidy fee for the long-term gain.

While the ethics here are sticky at best, the business practices of these universities are still legal–and in an age when education dollars continue to disappear, this practice of shilling out the very student population that keeps them in business is what will probably help towering universities persist beyond the recession.

You can browse the entirety of the Federal Reserve Board’s report here.

Mitchem’s most telling identification? Calling college “admissions counselors” out as salespeople. Although, there are others who share that opinion of admissions counselors, too. That in a shrinking economy, their job has no become to encourage otherwise financially unable students to take out enormous loans for programs that may or may not put them in a rewarding career path. Mitchem writes:

Rather students often believe the “salesperson”–individuals serving as an “admissions counselor” at for-profits–who encourage them to take on high-interest loans likely to be defaulted.

The sophisticated marketing and recruiting techniques of many for-profit institutions thereby take on a predatory nature, similar to what we have seen in the subprime mortgage crisis in the mortgage industry. These high-pressure transactions, in which institutions promise quick degrees and jobs in exchange for high tuition, are deeply dishonorable because there is an inherent inequity in the relationship between the low-income consumer and the industry.

And although Mitchem’s scope focuses on low-income students, it may be a sentiment well felt by any student looking to obtain a degree. The solution? According to Mitchem, far from simple:

Ensuring college opportunity for all requires that the nation make a substantial investment in pre-college counseling and advising for low-income, first-generation students and their families–a much larger effort than we have undertaken to date.

There’s already been much talk about how online education is replacing expensive four-year institutions for many adults seeking continuing education solutions, but this method of learning is also providing a great, if unconventional, solution for other segments of students as well.

- The Washington Post reports that as inclement weather hits and makes the commute to school difficult for many students, a rural Ohio town–currently allowed to issue only three snow days for the entire year–will become part of an experiment where they are expected to log on and complete assignments online, in lieu of having to make up snow days at the end of the school year.

- Meanwhile, in a Pittsburgh-area school district, online math classes are being used to ensure that students affected by a recent teachers’ strike don’t fall too far behind.

- And on the industry-side of online education, two online English instruction companies–one based in the U.S. and the other based out of China–have merged to form a new entity that can grow faster than either of the companies that comprise it could. It’s an excellent example of the internet globalizing the online education space and speeding up the process in which information and knowledge is disseminated.

In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Barbara Drimes, the dean of California Southern University, said:

“With many adults returning to school to complete their degree and further their career goals, there is an increasing need for quality online education that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.”

Drimes’ statement rings even more true when considering the number of working adults potentially taking out loans in order to retrain to become newly employable following the recession. But more than the costs of enrolling at a university, students who telecommute enjoy savings across the board, by cutting down peripheral costs like room and board and transportation.

Add to that the flexibility to complete assignments on their own time and around work schedules, and continuing education students may actually become one of the education industry’s unlikeliest goldmines.