Online learning has become a permanent fixture on college campuses. For the past decade, enrollment in online courses has grown faster than the overall student body throughout higher education. This phenomenon is not surprising and, in fact, is part of a history of people seeking more flexible alternatives to traditional, face-to-face instruction. Colleges are moving more toward the creation of cookie-cutter, ready-made courses that can be rolled over to anyone, anytime. With engaged learning, creative uses of technologies such as video, virtual chats, and discussion boards are viewed as vehicles of expression. College courses require work and college itself requires time management and discipline, but many undergraduate online courses may be serving up busy work to compensate for the time that students would have spent physically in the classroom. Instead, the depth of the learning should take precedent when evaluating rigor. Presently, online learning is the most viable alternative to face-to-face instruction on a college campus. Even hybrid and flipped models, which are gaining popularity, still require a consistent campus presence. As a faculty member in a community college who has taught online for 10 years and conducted extensive research on the topic, this author has witnessed both the potential and detriment to online learning. She has come to believe that it is not the renaissance of learning so frequently extolled, at least for most undergraduates.