The purpose of the study was to empirically investigate the institutional approach to distance education, and examine whether the factors of concerns for program cost and faculty participation could statistically predict adoption of technology-mediated distance education (TMDE) among higher-education institutions. It is elusive to base the determination of institutional decisions merely on existing descriptive statistics. Therefore, the author used the logistic regression method to explore the hypotheses, with controls for extraneous explanatory variables, such as institution type, graduate program availability, and degree of urbanization. Specifically, a binary logistic regression was modeled to analyze a number of barriers that might keep institutions from starting or expanding distance offerings. Two categories of barrier factors were analyzed. The program cost factors include program development costs and equipment maintaining costs. The faculty participation factors encompass concerns about faculty workload, lack of faculty interest, and lack of faculty rewards or incentives. (Contains 2 tables.)