<p>
</p>
<p>Is it really surprising, though? People think that because they have a 4.0 GPA, that instantly ensures that they’ll be a great doctor/lawyer/software mogul. In your dreams, naive college students.</p>
<p>I think there is a lot of value to this online model. Our community college is very expensive - sure, the reported tuition is not that high. But the fees total another several hundred dollars per course. It’s not all that affordable, or convenient. Also, a lot of the focus is on intro classes - the higher level classes are usually cancelled, b/c of lack of interest.</p>
<p>My d took several online classes this summer - to consolidate and review skills in Java, and another class in C++. A typical CS degree does not teach different languages, just concepts. Which is great, until interview time, when the student needs to be able to list languages.</p>
<p>Also, In my previous job I spent a lot of time looking at HUNDREDS of resumes from health professionals and those in allied health fields. There were a whole lot of people who were listing degrees - undergrad or masters, or certifications from places like University of Phoenix, or online divisions of public universities. As far as I can tell, their careers are going just fine (better than mine!)</p>
<p>Via [url=<a href="http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/09/05/WJE/A/22878/Kevin+Carey+Washington+Monthly+Guest+Editor.aspx]C-SPAN’s">http://www.cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/09/05/WJE/A/22878/Kevin+Carey+Washington+Monthly+Guest+Editor.aspx]C-SPAN’s</a> Washington Journal, September 5, 2009<a href=“with%20video”>/url</a>:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am true believer of “you get what you pay for”.<br>
so no thanks.</p>
<p>Another article on a related theme: </p>
<p>[I</a>, Cringely Blog Archive Burn Baby Burn - Cringely on technology](<a href=“http://www.cringely.com/2009/09/burn-baby-burn/]I”>Burn Baby Burn | I, Cringely)</p>
<p>The obvious answer is a hybrid approach. Even the snootiest of colleges would do well to place some core courses online and reserve their more expensive faculty for things that don’t justify the expense of or lend themselves to online courses. This is the only way to go to get the cost of a college education under control. In many ways online courses can be superior to the traditional approach. In some cases this is not the case. I could also see an advantage in asking students to take the online courses from home for a year before arriving on campus. It would be a wonderful way to inject more objectivity into the admissions process if students were required to perform at a certain level in the on line courses in order to be admitted to say the flagship state university versus one of the lesser colleges in the system. I can easily see online courses as substitutes for most massive 200 student lectures.</p>
<p>“I can easily see online courses as substitutes for most massive 200 student lectures.”</p>
<p>So can I. But the point of the story is that large lower division classes are enormously profitable, and the loss of this revenue may force a drastic change in the higher education business model.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The only funny thing is that Bill Gates would have probably excelled in college. He got an A- in Math 55 at Harvard back when it was more rigorous and demandingthan it is right now. I think that some ideas can’t wait for a formal education, even today. Careers can wait for a degree or two (or three) but the profitable implentation and credit for cutting edge ideas really can’t.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I completely agree. However, knowledge and a physical degree mean a lot more these days than actually learning. There are plenty of people who don’t care to learn but just want the bump in their careers. In that case, I’m happy they have cheaper options. I’ll stick to the traditional experience.</p>
<p>I go to high school online. I go to Keystone National High School. I can’t comment on the rigor because none of my education thus far has given me any trouble and high school has yet to teach me anything (well, I did learn a lot in trig and precalc, but I can’t think of anything else). I can tell you this, though. There’s something missing. And if you don’t have the motivation to actually learn, as with any school, you’re just going through the process until you get the diploma. The same is true of any online program and many on-campus program. Without the motivation, you’re not learning anything. You might memorize something or remember something from a text book when you need it, but actual learning has gone by the wayside.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Back when Math 55 was more demanding, or back when Harvard was more demanding? The two issues are distinct. </p>
<p>I know one of Bill Gates’s classmates from his Harvard days, and it’s told that his main focus while at Harvard was gaining computer time and preparing to build his business. He seems to have learned how to distinguish the issue of getting a college degree (which has not done) from establishing a career (which he has done with considerable success).</p>
<p>There are also so many learning styles out there. One person may self study and gain and much richer knowledge of a subject if they have time and means to do so. </p>
<p>Having worked with a multitude of students, as well as being the parent of three teenagers who went through (or are) doing the traditional classroom experience in high school and college, they have all used the same refrain of “not feeling like they are learning” like they should, or that teachers are so rushed to fit it all in, that they tend to go too quickly over chapters, or don’t understand what they are learning when they are in the midst of the process.</p>
<p>The debate about AP classes is case in point. Teachers need to cover so much material in a limited amount of time, and although this is at a faster pace and allegedly to show college level work, it often becomes a frantic pace just to pass the test so that it “counts”.</p>
<p>Some schools are abandoning the AP model, as it ties their hands in what a teacher can present to a class. There can be true creativity in teaching these classes, but it isn’t always the case. The key is to pass the class with good grades and achieve the points required to gain waiver of college credit. </p>
<p>One of the issues that I have with AP is that the tests are done in our area in the first week of May - yet students don’t even finish classes till mid June. They have to really jam it all in to learn for the test, yet still have another 6 weeks till the semester is over. </p>
<p>If the idea of learning for the sake of learning is critical to a student, they may take the knowledge in an online, or a classroom, or advanced class like an AP and run with it, continuing to learn about a subject until their curiousity is appeased, no matter where they learned the material to begin with. But some kids, regardless of the format will finish a class and forget what they learned.</p>
<p>College is:</p>
<p>a: a credential
b: an opportunity to learn and
c: a right of passage</p>
<p>Online courses can easily be fit into the existing model allowing costs and hopefully prices to decline and still preserving all aspects of the college experience. It is uneconomic to develop effective online materials for small upper division classes, so these will continue to be taught in the traditional way. Like most businesses colleges should find that they can educate the same number of students for less money per student and less faculty. This may or may not be bad news for current and future faculty. Lower prices should stimulate demand from US and International students. It may be that in the end we will need more faculty, but my guess is that we will need less. We get by with less auto and steelworkers too. Newspapers are changing over to online formats, and we don’t need as many printers anymore. Times change. Technology changes.</p>
<p>I think this online model could work if only it’s done not totally online. There should be a meeting every week or so to discuss the materials and provide some of that “traditional” setting. I’ve done online stuff before and one thing that it’s very demanding is self-discipline. Without the social component, classmate interaction, there’s less motivation and makes the course not as worthwhile. So I think both online and traditional could be mutually beneficial.</p>
<p>The in-class model may not work for every student. Some of the reasons why students choose online is because they don’t work traditional hours, or may have a child, or have a problem with transportation. If you could set up meetings for all your online classes on one day out of the week, it might be more tenable. But we all know how college schedules work, don’t we? If you take 5 classes, they can be scattered all over the week, and not necessarily consecutively, either. You could meet on Monday at 10 am for online class A, and Tuesday at 2 pm for online class B, and Wednesday for online class C…you see where I am going with this?</p>
<p>Have you ever taken an online class using Blackboard, which is collaborative?</p>
<p>Yes, online work means you have to be a self-starter. But really, in the scheme of things, traditional college students also have to be pretty motivated. Not every prof or instructor even notices if you are absent from class, unless you attend a very small college.</p>
<p>An opinion piece on the same issue: </p>
<p>[Welcome</a> to Yahoo! U | The Big Money](<a href=“http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/diploma-mill/2009/09/08/welcome-yahoo-u]Welcome”>http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/diploma-mill/2009/09/08/welcome-yahoo-u)</p>
<p>My son’s college professor believes that online education is the wave of the future so every student is required to take one online class per year. </p>
<p>I was just discussing this with my son recently and he said that many of the freshman have a hard time with their online class. They fail it or struggle to pass it. Why? Because they are not accustomed to such an open schedule. Rather, they are accustomed to having a laid out schedule that is done for them and they just show up when they have to. With an online class, you have to proactively plan your time and many students are not good at this. Time management is one of the keys to success as an adult so if they learn that by a few online classes, then I say it’s a good thing.</p>
<p>As an aside, my son was homeschooled and so had already taken a few online classes in high school so this was not new to him at all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know what term you use for the current boundaries of knowledge, but in quite a few fields, online archives are the primary publication medium, with journals as an afterthought, and with some of the very best work never sent to a journal at all. This is all available for the cost of Internet access.</p>