I attended a community college from 1993 to 1995 and received my Associate's. Then I went to a university and since my university degree was different enough from my college degree (Electrical Engineering in Uni, Computer Info Systems and IT in college) I had to essentially start over. So, I attended university from 1995 to 2001.
The interesting part of the whole experience is that I drove to the community college to attend courses at the university even though the university is over 200 miles away. We were part of a project for taking university courses, getting university credits, and a university degree through satellite. We'd go to a small room with a handful of other students and watch the professor give his lecture from a remote classroom on campus. This was especially good for the navy since in some cases navy ships would simply drop anchor at some port and the students could attend these courses via satellite right on the ship.
I also took online courses at the 200, 300, and 400 levels either at this university or at another college. Two of my 200 level courses were taken online from another community college since the community college in my area was not offering them at the time. I just needed the credits to transfer to my university degree program. It was an experience as I had a mix of courses in the classroom at the community college, in the satellite rooms for the university, and online from either the university or other community colleges that were not in my area. I had to take three university lab classes throughout the course of my degree program, two of them were taken at an approved community college in a neighboring city and the third was taken online from the university.
I agree that college is way too expensive and most people either do not have the time or the inclination to go full time on a college campus. I tried going for a Master's degree back in 2009 at a nearby university and found the whole experience unpallatable. I dropped out after the first course, too expensive to park there, class itself was too expensive, and they even try to charge for things like printing documents on their printers. Perhaps I have been out of college too long but I could not help but to wonder what would be the value in obtaining this degree. The whole college thing needs to change because it has gotten too expensive for what little return you will get on the investment.
I applaud these technological advances, we need more choices and more ways to obtain our degrees because not everyone can afford to go to the traditional route at a university.