<p>Online courses serve a useful purpose. But science labs should never be done online. Any employer or university worth its salt would never consider an applicant with online lab training over someone with REAL lab experience.</p>
<p>Going back to the OPs question, it’s only a matter of time before on-line replaces college for MOST people. 100 years ago, college was seen as a rich boys diversion while most people learned a trade of some sort. That’s the direction things will head back towards.</p>
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<p>I agree. The current “full” college experience is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the vast majority of students. Once online becomes a socially-acceptable substitute by employers, online enrollment will skyrocket, although college may become a hybrid 2+2 experience for the first decade or so.</p>
<p>Being among classmates is the best part. Together we learn, encourage, support, eat, entertain, walk, cry, laugh, root, protest, debate, work, volunteer, complain, party, have fun, counsel, travel, rescue, disagree, sing, climb, separate, join, grow…
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[canvas photo prients](<a href=“http://www.thecanvasprientstudio.co.uk”>http://www.thecanvasprientstudio.co.uk</a>)</p>
<p>Another article on MOOCs:</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> Turn to Crowd-Sourcing Courses - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/education/colleges-turn-to-crowd-sourcing-courses.html]Colleges”>Colleges Turn to Crowd-Sourcing Courses - The New York Times)</p>
<p>“100 years ago, college was seen as a rich boys diversion while most people learned a trade of some sort. That’s the direction things will head back towards.”</p>
<p>I suppose that is a possibility, but are you saying that the current efforts to ensure diversity and to level the playing field for URM’s will fall by the wayside? I think these concepts are strongly embedded and not sure I can see them disappearing.</p>
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I’d say that racial preferences tilt rather than level the playing field to ensure diversity, but AA has been amply debated in a recent thread.</p>
<p>Diversity becomes an issue when there are a limited number of high-value spots, but online courses can serve an unlimited number of people. If people study college-level material from home, they will not have the same opportunity to mix with people from different backgrounds as they would at a residential college. Some people will be troubled by this, and some will not be.</p>
<p>Agreed. But @ LakeClouds he submits that online will replace college for MOST people, and then the full college experience will be a “rich boys diversion”. How do you see the concept of diversity playing out in those circumstances? Meaning will the full college experience only be reserved for those who have the resources and time?</p>
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<p>With MOOCs, all you need is a computer and internet connection. What could be more diverse? Plus URMs will have full access and they will not have to deal with the possible-stigma that they are only there (in college) because they are a URM. Plus, I’m sure the very top schools will still reserve places for URMs - it will be more like Willey Wonka’s golden ticket as there will be few available compared to today.</p>
<p>I hope not- it is a big help for parents and older adults though. Kids need the experience though. All the roommate issues, scheduling, life lessons…all very valueable. Can’t get that from a computer…</p>
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<p>Quite a few of the CS courses are not introductory at Coursera. Probabilistic Graphical Models is not introductory. Neural Networks is so not introductory. I haven’t taken the Algorithms class, but I’m pretty sure it’s not introductory.</p>
<p>As an aside, I am currently finishing up Geoff Hinton’s Neural Networks class. Hinton is a giant in the field who has been doing seminal work for decades. He is giving his students a state-of-the-art tutorial that they could not have gotten at any residential college except, I suppose, Toronto. This is better than a college class.</p>
<p>A recent article discussion the work of Hinton and others is</p>
<p>[Scientists</a> See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-see-advances-in-deep-learning-a-part-of-artificial-intelligence.html]Scientists”>Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence - The New York Times) .</p>
<p>I do not think the online courses you speak of will replace college, nor should they, but I do think you mean colleges courses, like, from Devry, do you know what I mean? I, myself, have taken online courses, but from a community college, which are the same as on-campus courses. :-)</p>
<p>Regards,
Betty Liem</p>
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<p>The practical life lessons aspect of college and the knowledge acquisition aspect of college is currently a bundled offering. In the future, these will become more unbundled. If employers see that MOOCs or other remote-learning tools provide prospective employees with the information that want in a new-hire, then the economic value of residential programs will plummet. This is starting to happen.</p>
<p>On the practical life lessons side, there are MUCH cheaper ways to acheive this than attending a residential college for $40K+ a year. </p>
<p>Again, the issue isn’t whether college is nice or fun, etc. it’s that the cost of college has grown way faster than the value they offer students. Especially for those in the donut hole - too much parential income to get FA but not enough that spending a quarter million is a no brainer - the cost of college is out of control. Also, the needs-blind FA model will break at some point in the next 10 years as the endowments at schools can’t keep up with rising cost either.</p>
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<p>If by “full college experience” you mean “going away to a residential college”, then that is already something that probably only a minority of college students experience. For most college students, college is commuting to the local community college and/or local state university.</p>
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<p>Today, studying the liberal arts (humanities, social studies, science) in college is mostly done by students from wealthier backgrounds at more selective colleges. At less selective colleges which have more students from less wealthy backgrounds, pre-professional majors (business, nursing, communications, etc.) dominate.</p>
<p>[Cato</a> Unbound November 2012: The Online Education Revolution](<a href=“http://www.cato-unbound.org/archives/november-2012-the-online-education-revolution/]Cato”>Redirecting to https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/november-2012/online-education-revolution) and</p>
<p>[Big</a> Debate Over Online Education | The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy](<a href=“Big Debate Over Online Education — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal”>Big Debate Over Online Education — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal)</p>
<p>discuss whether online courses will replace college and if that would be a good thing.</p>
<p>I went to a brick and mortar community college to get my Associate degree prior to transferring to UNC and online classes were awesome for me. I am a single mom and being able to set my own schedule was perfect. For math, science and econ classes, I was required to take all exams on campus, which eliminates the cheating aspect most associate with online courses.</p>
<p>[Survey</a> finds online enrollments slow but continue to grow | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/08/survey-finds-online-enrollments-slow-continue-grow]Survey”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/08/survey-finds-online-enrollments-slow-continue-grow)</p>
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<p>The replacement of in-person with online courses will likely be gradual and partial.</p>
<p>[Revolution Hits the Universities
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times
January 26, 2013](<a href=“Opinion | Revolution Hits the Universities - The New York Times”>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits-the-universities.html</a>)
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<p>Most of the NYT commenters, many of them academics, are much less enthusiastic than Friedman.</p>
<p>Coursera is such a bad example.</p>
<p>I am taking an online English class right now, for credit, and love it. Today, it occurred to me that if you are a person who gets bored and frustrated listening to fruitless discussions and questions in a classroom, online classes will work really well for you. In fact, the independent work, depth and fast pace possible would appeal to gifted students.</p>