Online classes bring universities to living room.

The last thing Daniel Linde wanted to do after a 10-hour work day was jump in the car and fight evening traffic just to make it to night school.

Desperate to continue his education, the Hollywood resident figured there had to be an easier way to get his MBA. He found the answer in his living room.

"I turn on the computer and it's right there in front of me. whatever time I want to do it," said Linde, who is in a management training program at HIRE Car Rental, a division of Hertz Corp. "My hours are horrendous. There was no way I could take classes at UCLA, drive down there, find parking ... let alone study."

People like the 23-year-old Linde are signing up for online classes in such droves that schools can't keep up with demand. It not only marks a new era emerging on California's college campuses, but a niche for businesses that provide online education.

Institutions from Harvard Business School to Cal State Northridge to the University of Phoenix are already in the mix.

"There's a need for both lifelong learning and increased education - very real issues to the business marketplace," said Michael Rolnick, an analyst with San Francisco investment firm Montgomery Securities, which tracks educational trends. "In our estimation, the decline of the colleges will be replaced by visionary. for-profit providers who are building decentralized learning centers and the virtual campuses of the future."

The technologies required to build a first-class virtual classroom have been proliferating - and decreasing in cost. Once the virtual campus is created, it is a model with enormous operating leverage that can be delivered to thousands of students, as opposed to the regular classroom of tens or hundreds of students.

A local example is the Westwood-based Home Education Network, which has partnered with UCLA to place extension courses online. Since the network's launch September 1996, it has enrolled more than 1,000 students from 29 states and seven foreign countries via computer.

Home Education Network offers about 100 courses out of UCLA's list of 4,300. Students pay between $300 and $600, and receive college credit.

"Our ultimate goal is to truly be a leading provider in online education," said John Kobara, the network's chief executive. "People that live outside of Los Angeles don't have access to UCLA, so the courses offered here can be exported all over the world."

Though the company doesn't release financial figures, Kobara said revenues have so far been about $200,000.

"We're not on the cutting edge, we're on the bleeding edge," said Kobara, whose company collects a portion of the fees for each class. "This is all uncharted territory, and we're expecting this to be a very powerful industry one day."

At the University of Phoenix. whose online program is run out of San Francisco, enrollment continues to double each year. Currently an estimated 3,000 students are taking classes toward degrees. Tuition is $335 per unit for undergraduates and $415 per unit for graduate classes. the same tuition fees the university charges for classroom instruction.

More than just classes are offered online. Many universities offer virtual student unions. There are also online alumni groups that conduct regular meetings, online university art collections and libraries, and guest speakers who appear at real campus events and then jump online to answer questions from cyberspace.

The styles of the virtual class vary. In some, professors post class assignments and academic lectures on computer bulletin boards and require students to check in regularly with questions or their completed assignments. Other classes emphasize online computer chat rooms that allow a teacher and a class, or a group of students teaming up on an academic project, to work together simultaneously on projects.

The Home Education Network's system is surprisingly easy to use, said Linde, who is pursuing business and finance classes. Other post-graduate courses offered by the network include business & management, business economics, developing a business plan, and strategic marketing.

"The system is very user-friendly, you just sign on the first time ... and you're off," said Linde, who graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in economics. "I took a course in business and finance with the hopes of getting into investment banking."

A report last month by the California Post-secondary Education Commission recognized computerized learning as a possible way to help meet the enrollment increases forthcoming at the state's public universities. without building expensive new campuses.

It noted that the Cal State and University of California systems. both of which offer extension courses over the Internet, are studying ways to expand the technology so that regular classes might be offered, too.

"Online education is one of the most important tools higher education will have in the next decade to help solve its problems." said David McArthur, an analyst at Rand Corp., referring to a predicted enrollment surge at California institutions. "Schools will need to be able to educate many more people than they now can, and less expensively."