Andy Steele lives just a few blocks from the campus of Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D., so commuting  to class isn't the problem. But he doesn't like lectures much, isn't a morning person, and wants time during the day to restore motorcycles. So Steele, a full-time senior business major, has been taking as many classes as he can from the South Dakota State system's online offerings. He gets better grades and learns more, he says, and insists he isn't missing out on the college experience. "I still know a lot of people from my first two years living on campus, and I still meet a lot of people," he says. But now, he sets his own schedule. At least 2.3 million people took some kind of online courses, according to a recent survey by The Sloan Consortium, an online education group, and two-thirds of colleges offering "face-to-face" courses also offer online ones. But what were once two different types of classes are looking more and more alike and often falling into the same pool of students. At some schools, online courses originally intended for non-traditional students living far from campus have proved surprisingly popular with on-campus students. A recent study found 42 percent of the students enrolled  in its distance education courses were located on campus at the university that was hosting the online courses. Numbers vary depending on the policies of particular colleges, but other schools also have students mixing and matching online and "face-to-face" credits. Motives range from lifestyle to adapting a job schedule to getting into high--demand courses. Washington State had about 325 on-campus undergraduates taking one or more distance courses last year. As many as 9,000 students took both distance and in-person classes at Arizona State last year. "Business is really about providing choices to their customers, and that's really what we want to do," said Sheila Aaker, extended services coordinator   at Black Hills State. Many schools, such as Washington State and Arizona State, let departments and academic units decide who can take an online course. They say students with legitimate academic needs a conflict with another class, a course they need to graduate that isfull--oftenget permission, though they still must take some key classes in person. We can learn from the passage that Andy Steele   _  .
lives far from the campus knows none of his classmates wants to have his own lifestyle doesn't get good marks