are there any online Visual effect schools/courses?
It depends on whether you just want to learn animation or actually need a diploma. Many online sources won't issue one, so you will 'just' learn how to do it, but not have any trustworthy certificate.

If you just want to learn, there are so many good sites that offer courses and trainings (most of them commercially), it depends on what kind of animation you want to learn. In general, lynda.com is a great source for high-quality tutorials for software. A particularly useful branch of lynda is video2brain (if you speak German, French or Spanish, visit video2brain.com, there you will find localised tutorials in these languages). 

The thing is, those trainings - even the good ones - will usually only teach you how to use a specific piece of software, but not include the aesthetical/artistic side of the craft. Of course, this stuff can be learned online, but it's harder to find good resources, and they are potentially much more expensive. The two sites you found seem to do exactly that, but it would appear they have similar entrance barriers (i.e. require application and are very expensive) as traditional university courses.

That said, you can learn so much online these days, even for free, but it will take much time and effort (even to find the right resources). There isn't one correct answer as to what you should do, it all depends on where you live (some countries have student fees, others don't), what branch of animation you want to learn, what industry you want to end up in et c. Since you seem to be willing to invest some time and money into learning animation, I suggest you put an respective amount of effort into finding a university/online course that will actually be right for your specific interests and needs.