The term "virtual university'" characterizes an organization that provides higher education on the Internet. Some of these organizations are truly "virtual", existing only as loosely tied combines of universities, institutes or departments that provide together a number of courses over the Internet. Others are real organizations with a legal framework, yet named virtual because they appear only on the Internet. An example is the Virtual Global University (VGU) in Germany. VGU provides distance education over the Internet, carried by a network of partners that act and interact on the Internet, but on the other hand it exists as a civil law organization as well (http://www.vg-u.de).

The attribute "virtual" in virtual university has two dimensions. One is the organizational dimension, as expressed in terms like virtual organization and virtual enterprise. The other dimension refers to instructional media: "Virtual" is used for a type of higher education where courses are delivered via Internet. It should be noted that studying as such is far from being "virtual". Students taking so-called virtual courses are doing "real" work to get their degrees, and educators preparing and teaching those courses spend plenty of "real" time in doing so.