Cardean offers complete courses, mostly in business subjects, aimed at people working full-time who want to learn in the evenings, at weekends or whenever.

ECONOMIST: Lessons of a virtual timetable

The business schools of Columbia, in New York, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics, Stanford in California and Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, for example, have teamed up behind Cardean University, an early effort at an online institution for tertiary education.

ECONOMIST: Lessons of a virtual timetable