That's so retro. Take a look at the ads in this 1957 issue of Popular Electronics.[1] "You can train at home for good pay jobs Radio-Television - Get Practical Experience with Kits N.R.I. sends." (p.99) "You build AC-DC Superhet Receiver". "You build Vacuum Tube Voltmeter". A competing school offers a course that gets all the way up to building a TV kit. (p.7) And there's the DeVry Technical Institute, trying to sign up veterans back then and still at it today.

Distance learning goes back a long way.

[1] http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/50s/5...