In the past couple weeks, two high-profile technology companies, Yahoo! and Best Buy, have moved towards less telecommuting and a return to more traditional work hours and situations. They claim to have needed more face time, more accountability, and more productivity. Certainly at least those last two are laudable goals for all organizations. However, I wonder if the first, more face time, necessarily leads to the others.

Sure, maybe Facebook is more addicting than the water cooler or even the solitaire games built into Windows, but is more face time the answer? Here at CVA, we believe that the online days provide students with the opportunity to learn more independence, become more self motivated, and better develop responsibility for their own learning. If Yahoo! and Best Buy were populated by graduates of CVA or even fully online schools, would the decision to eliminate telecommuting still have been made? In another decade or two when more people have attended such schools, will telecommuting return to high favor?

Great things to ponder on a beautiful Friday afternoon!