The small company I'm with is looking to do the same thing, as a way of leveraging its small pool of talent in order to execute larger projects.
We're already using foreign talent, bringing them here; we've found that, through the magic of broadband, some of them are able to be productive while they are back home, which leads us to ask the question, why bring them here in the first place? Why not instead send our project leads there?
I've seen the same thing with my previous company, doing the high-end work in the states and doing the detailed work in the host country, and it worked well, again you just send a couple of specialists to lead the effort, and broadband allows you to keep it all together.
So we're going after work a hundred times the size of our normal projects. Not sure how its all going to play out, though. We're covered up with work right now, but they are looking ahead to the day that work slows down again; we want to have made the leap to the bigger playing field.
I hope this process spills over into the world of education (how can it not).