Ask HN: Why aren't there many credible online bachelors programs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why aren't there many credible online bachelors programs?

147 pointsnon-entity157 comments

There are swaths of masters programs out there that can be completed online, and are backed by legitimate, well respected institutions.

bachelor degrees, on the other hand, seem to be pretty desolate. There are a handful of well known, decent schools that offer online bachelor degrees, but majority seem to require existing credit or offer non-sense sounding degrees in favor of normal ones (i.e. I've seen schools offer degrees in Professional Studies, Organization studies or Interdisciplinary Studies vs. Computer Science or Physics). Occasionally, you can find a legitimate looking CS degree from a legitimate school, but the programs still seem be below what you would get in-person.

I imagine there has to be a number of uneducated, working people who want to achieve more, or who's career progression many be held back because they don't have that credential, but the only schools advertising to them are the for profits, who charge exorbitant amounts for what seem like below average programs.

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I used to work in the higher-education field for a respected private university, and I think I know part of the answer to this: institutional momentum.

This university launched an online MBA program early on, and built it out with a bunch of other offerings as well. We were genuinely ahead of the curve on a bunch of things, but we were also pretty separated from the rest of the university, physically and culturally. We had our own building removed from campus, and we did things a little differently. Not quite Silicon Valley agile, but comparatively. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus was adamantly against online learning, for years.

I think a big part of this is that we had an older faculty and institutional culture that was pretty set in its ways: they didn't see or recognize the value that the internet afforded their classrooms, and weren't set up to implement them. That's begun to change a bit as we got younger faculty, but there's still a tendency towards in-person learning, because of the tradition and training behind it.

I don't think this is necessarily malevolent on their part: they just haven't thought deeply about it. Plus, there's a lot of infrastructure that you'd have to build out to provide online learning: there are a lot of logistical obstacles in the way. You need to select a CMS, hire course developers, train reluctant faculty and staff, figure out how to make it accessible and ADA-compliant, design courses that make sense for online learning, then market to students who are willing to go up online to take their classes.

Those are a lot of hurtles to overcome for an institution, and it requires a lot of willpower and political wrangling within the institution in order to make sure it gets done. As a result... it just doesn't. I think it'll change with time, but it's like turning an aircraft carrier: you can't do it overnight.

I wrote a long-winded, somewhat ill-tempered response, and then quickly deleted it. But in brief --

I have thought semi-deeply about teaching online. I do believe it can be done well, but only with a lot of effort, and (at least in my department) I don't think it would save the university money, if done well.

Personally, I'm not terribly eager to invest this effort. I've had a poor experience with our university's training, and also I just like interacting with people in person better. Maybe I'm just being selfish, but there are a lot of other things I can do to benefit my university and my students, which I'd enjoy more, and I'd rather invest my efforts there.

That said, I do think that universities who are willing to hire faculty for remote work could develop fantastic online programs. There are tons of dual-career academic couples that don't get jobs in the same city, and try and make some crazy commuter marriage work. Hire them.

> I don't think it would save the university money, if done well.

IMO universities these days are mainly in the real estate business. The maintenance on a building with multiple 1k person lecture halls isn't cheap. Faculty are underpaid. And yet it's more and more expensive.

Most universities don't pay property tax (maybe not most, but many are public and don't). They all have owned most of their land for over one hundred years. Buildings are expensive, but those are "one time capital expenses) and just plain don't add up.

What I'm saying is there is no obvious reason why a university costs more to run today than 1990,but tuition has gone up far more than inflation.

Guaranteed loans and other subsidies.

Those are enablers for sure, but not causes

What's the difference?

If students can't get the money prices cannot go up without a drop in enrollment thus students need a way to get money. That is why more money enables prices to go up, the alternative of going without becomes forced if students (other than the rich) cannot raise the money.

However the ability change more doesn't force it. Administration could presumably keep prices down instead of - here I have no idea what they are spending it on.

This lack of knowledge means that I cannot comment more. My opinion on using the money to pay more teachers thus reducing class size is very different from my opinion on private jets to some exotic vacation. (I don't think either of the above are the case but I could be wrong)

Yes, many folks comment on administrative growth and lavish student services to compete.

Those are commonly blamed, but I don't have enough information to know if they are right or any reason to believe they are experts who know what they are talking about. It isn't something that I reject, but I am careful not to believe it as well.

Aka, grain of salt. Well, at least there are only a few places they could be socking away the money.

> I don't think it would save the university money, if done well.

Why is that the targeted benefit? I would think the main thing to gain from online courses is the ability to disseminate knowledge and learning to a broader swath of students.

> I don't think it would save the university money, if done well

If universities have to be closed for the next 6 months, And is this could happen again next year, online learning will be their only source of revenue

Oh, that's true! And I fear that it won't be done all that well. Parents have long asked "Is this really worth $XX,XXX?" Those questions could get a lot louder.

It seems that some people are hoping that the COVID-19 outbreak will get a lot of universities, and individual professors, excited about the long-term potential of teaching online. I don't expect this to happen -- although I could of course be proven wrong.

Part of the issue is that BA programs are supposed to transition students from high school to the “adult world.”

The is very, very hard to do.

Look at how many BA students wash out at respectable institutions. At least 50%.

It required more than classes. It requires mentoring, encouraging, and shaping students to a degree that’s hard to do online.

Graduate degrees are different. They take in people who have already graduated, and who are more adapted.

Not many Ph. D students throw keggers five times a week.

Of all the answers here, this is the one I resonate with the most. There is a tremendous diversity in skill levels of students entering a Bachelor's program, from borderline illiterate to exceptionally equipped.

And say what you will about whether or not a college degree is "important", everyone I've ever met[1] who has one has some key skills that not everyone has; the ability to work on a project over time, some ability to research a question, and the ability to work on "uninteresting" things to get to the "interesting" things.

Getting a masters degree is about processing information, organizing it into something you can use, and then demonstrating your skill at that by applying to to a problem of your choosing. These programs can "assume" you've got the basic skills already and work from there.

[1] And being a nerd is biased toward BS degrees rather than BA degrees but the trend seems consistent to me.

I haven't seen much correlation between degree-ed-ness and capability. But, I have seen the belief you are talking about. It's very wide spread, especially in HR departments.

There is also a dark truth about degrees and online courses. A lot of people know how to make it through these things by learning things on a shallow level. That’s why the credibility gets shoddier and shoddier over time.

How much mentoring do you think goes on at your average school? My assumption is the motivated students seek it out, but the 5x/week kegger types probably get very little.

My experience is it’s struggling students who seek out mentoring. That may be because their holding down a job while in school, have kids, or dug them selves a hole by spending to much time playing video games / at parties etc.

Around 70% of students who graduate high school are going to collage. That’s a huge swath of people who are dealing with a huge range of issues.

> That may be because their holding down a job while in school, have kids, or dug them selves a hole by spending to much time playing video games / at parties etc.

Interesting. I saw the opposite; people who are struggling don't always have the time, energy, or skills to build relationships with potential mentors.

The people who are struggling and don't seek help, preferring to go to the kegger, are the ones who drop out. Sure, there are probably some who do really well and still find time to party, but they are a brilliant minority.

University is a filtering mechanism as much anything. Our culture no longer has any formalized rite of passage the way indigenous cultures have. Getting through university, especially in tough programs such as math, hard sciences, or engineering, is the only rite of passage we have left. Even the days when someone could graduate high school and immediately get a factory job that pays well enough to support a family are gone.

Getting through university, especially in tough programs such as math, hard sciences, or engineering, is the only rite of passage we have left.

Not really true. Anyone who wants a more traditional “rite of passage” to adulthood can join the military at 18 and go to boot camp.

Please. Signing up to be your government's lapdog is not a "rite of passage".

How silly would that be. Clearly, adulthood is marked by agreeing to become a financial milch-cow fattened on government loans, and milked by rapacious administrators in the service of insouicant and unaccountable "education" institutions. The most respectable of which are still Nozikian utility monsters devouring everything in their path.

Yeah, doing 4 in the Army is so inferior to that.

Neither is wearing a funny hat and picking up a certificate, but the physicality of boot camp is a lot closer to the traditional meaning of the phrase.

I was stunned to hear that. Service in whatever form is def a rite of passage. Signing over your life to something bigger than you is def a rite of passage. Especially when there is a chance you might lose your life as a result.

Government is us, it does great good and some bad, but ultimately it is civilization. If you want to change it go vote and get involved, but don't complain about the people trying to make the world better in their own way.

Not with my health conditions.

If you look at the average freshman class, well over 50% have some medical condition.

Sorry if that’s nitpicky, but a really large number of young people just don’t qualify.

Also, the military isn’t really in the right of passage business anymore.

It varies a lot from college to college. And even within colleges.

In person colleges have stronger social bonds - for better or worse.

For example, some colleges are reinventing fraternities and sororities to encourage people to develop healthy habits.

Of course some frats are carrying on as they were.

What’s a 5x legger?

What the an Associate’s Degree for then?

The Open University is pretty well respected: http://www.open.ac.uk/

For those interested in doing an online degree, I highly recommend the Open University. They accept international students, and their degrees are accredited in both the US and EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University

The price though..

In Germany, there is Fernuniversität Hagen. I guess it scales better than "regular" universities, so there isn't really a need for more of them to meet demand? https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/

The Fernuniversität has all the same hideous bureaucracy, form filling and hoop jumping of any other German university, with similar entrance requirements. It is cheaper so it has that advantage. The Open University has no entrance requirements whatsoever for its Bachelor’s and it’s not terribly difficult to get onto a Master’s with the v university of London without a Bachelor’s so if you’re not severely cash constrained at least look at those.

I've never heard about this. Can you say more about the University of London MA and their programmes?

There are a number of modules from Master’s programmes that can be studied as stand alone qualifications[1]. Apply to do one of these modules, do well, continue doing the modules as stand alone qualifications until you have done the maximum number you can without transferring to the Master’s student roll, transfer.

Only a small minority of degrees have modules that can be studied this way. You need to show some evidence that you’re capable of study at this level. For my Finance Master’s[2] a MicroMaster’s in International Law from UCLouvainX[3] sufficed. It’s also difficult to get the Master’s in the minimum two years this way because they won’t let you transfer from studying individual modules to doing the Master’s without your exam grades having been released and being satisfactory, though it is possible to do it in two years if you start with the first session of the year.

[1] https://london.ac.uk/courses/international_type_of_study/15/...

[2] https://www.cefims.ac.uk/programmes/economic-policy/masters/

[3] https://www.edx.org/micromasters/louvainx-international-law

OP is almost certainly referring to Birkbeck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkbeck,_University_of_London

It’s a well respected institution and it’s graduates are well regarded by employers.

Then why does it never make it to the top 120 university ranking of the guardian?, I never understood why.

They opted out http://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/league-tables

Would one recommend this for someone in the US who is already decades into a career and just needs the checkbox checked and their employer will pickup the tab?

Drexel is a pretty good school in Philadelphia and they have online bachelors degrees (https://online.drexel.edu/online-degrees/computing-informati...).

The Open University satisfies the requirements for US visas, so it can check some checkboxes. The cost may be higher for people outside the UK, but I haven't looked recently.

Also look into Excelsior College

Oregon state has an online BS in CS degree and also a postbac 2yr option. It’s $30k so not cheap at all though. https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate...

It’s legitimate, source: I know someone who did it and is working as a webdev in PDX.

I hear OU is surprisingly hard work and surprisingly expensive.

You think you'll do an online degree in your spare time and it turns out it's a decade of work and costs thousands of dollars.

Correct on both counts (current OU student).

120 credits = full time studies, 40 hours per week. So 30 is 10 hours, 60 credits is 20 hours.

This is of course an estimate. Some weeks you have assignments due as well as course material to study. There's a two week break for Christmas and usually one week around Easter and that's it.

If you work full time and you're doing 60 credits that'll take you 6 years working 60 hour weeks, maybe more, assuming your job is just 40.

I did an FOIA request. After 11 years of study (11 picked because I wanted to confirm a comment on the guardian), of those students who have ever indicated formally they want to obtain a bachelors, around 15% have actually done so.

If the student has self declared a mental health disability the figure drops to 9%.

Last academic year 55% of students passed their modules across all modules. This excludes students who opted to defer or refund within the grace period at the start of the module.

Cost wise these days on UK or EU fees it's about £3k for a 60 credit module.

Personally if I knew what I knew now, I'd go back to full time education.

Edit to say: the course is flexible in the sense study timed are not fixed and nobody cares if you turn up to tutorials, often done online, or not.

It is not at all flexible on deadlines of any kind. On a 60 credit module you could easily have one assignment per month, plus an exam at the end. The assignments, depending on your level, aren't necessarily that challenging but they do take time.

If something comes up at work or in life and knocks you back, you either accept the damage to your grade and complete the module or you defer. Definitely don't go via the OU if you have a demanding job with unpredictable requirements.

It's almost however long you want to put into it. I completed my undergraduate degree in around three and a half years, approaching it as a mix of part-time and full-time study, juggled with periods of employment.

At the time, I thought it wasn't particularly hard - I had it in my head that bricks and mortar universities were somehow more challenging and rigorous. Having recently completed a master's at a campus university, my feelings about the OU at the time were without basis. By comparison, the master's was easier, less challenging and less valuable.

Looking back on my OU experience, I can appreciate how enriching it was. The course materials and syllabi are fantastic and are often used by other universities. Associate lecturers can be hit and miss. Fellow students tend to be engaged - because they _want_ to do the courses - and often make for a supportive and thoughtful community; I actually found it to be far less isolating than the campus experience of my master's.

I was fortunate to have undertaken my degree prior to tuition fees increases, but I would still recommend them. Compared to other UK universities, the fees were still relatively low, last time I looked.

My wife is doing an OU degree, outside the UK, but in Ireland. (So, testing centers are available, but we’re paying the non uk/ni/Scotland rates). At current prices, an undergraduate degree from the OU is on the order of $20k. It’s nominally a 3 year degree, and at a full time class load, it’s supposed to be a full time experience, I.e. 40 hrs a week.

Of that, there are probably 4x 30 credit classes in first year, 2x60 in each of second and third year. For a degree in a specific subject, these are all going to be “in major”.

My read of it is that it’s a more focused, less all around degree than what I remember of an undergrad degree, where I had 4-5 classes 2x per year for 4 years. I can’t speak to the technical level, as she’s doing languages, which are all Greek to me.

That's how I felt it, although it was 15 years ago. I started the study of CS at postgraduate because I was 50 and felt I had to catch up with the young colleagues. After two years and being only at mid course (and having already spent several thousands pounds), I drop out of it. After all I had already a good job and I could learn much more interesting stuff at work.

If you are just checking boxes, WGU is probably the way to go. My understanding is that things go very quickly for people with real world experience.

Agreed. WGU has been a good fit for me.

Arizona State seems to have some good online bachelor degrees. They don't offer CS but they do have software engineering.

https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree-programs/undergradua...

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I finished my last year of AA (psych) with University of Phoenix after starting at my local community college. Side by side I wouldn’t hesitate to say that while the data transfer medium was different, the work and testing was on par with the community college curriculum. I would note that there was a lot more written work than lecture at UoP, but that could be a discrepancy between first and second year studies.

The stigma for attending one of these schools is terrible. Not undeserved, as they are predatory and for profit. But so are community colleges, in maybe different ways, but for the same reasons.

I keep it on my resume even though I work in IT. I’m personally proud of it as an accomplishment despite the crap I catch whenever it’s brought up.

I never knew community colleges were predatory and for profit. Aren't they public institutions? Do you have any good references you can share? Thanks

They aren't predatory or for profit. I teach at a community college. I will also say that many community colleges offer online courses that are much cheaper (and more respected) than University of Phoenix. (One of the classes I'm teaching was already online this semester so I didn't have to adjust it much to the current situation.)

You're dealing in absolutes without realizing that each state, county, et al, are operated differently. In addition, and as noted and another comment, I am talking about a localized experience 10+ years in the past.

Where I came from (NE Ohio) most of their students took longer than 4 years to graduate with a 2 year degree and many more never finished. The quality of curriculum and teaching was typically poor and the equipment was only adequate. It was and probably still is, for the average customer, a waste of money.

>most of their students took longer than 4 years to graduate with a 2 year degree and many more never finished

I think this is, perhaps, to be expected. 4-year universities practice selective admissions, whereas community colleges generally let anyone enroll. Community colleges make opportunities available to all, including some who find they aren't well prepared for them.

> the equipment was only adequate.

Tuition is much cheaper than at 4-year universities. This is inevitable.

This is the complete opposite of what my friends and family have experienced. Many of their favorite teachers worked at community colleges. Specifically at Austin and Houston community colleges. And many got their undergrad at more prestigious universities like University of Texas at Austin.

Nobody here is saying the teachers were bad.

That's how I read

> The quality of curriculum and teaching was typically poor

This is the complete opposite of what my friends and family have experienced. Many of their favorite teachers worked at community colleges. Specifically at Austin and Houston community colleges. And they got their undergrad at more prestigious universities like University of Texas at Austin.

In my experience with community colleges it was more physical fees that were an issue. Professor pay and work load issues, extreme parking fees, profit driven book deals (locking professors in to using books they would not choose), sales, exchanges and refunds. It was not uncommon to spend $200 on a book, and the next quarter have the book for the curriculum changed so that you could not sell your now outdated copy back. If the book wasn't changed, your now used book could be sold back to the school, but devalued by as much as 80%.

Mind you this was 10+ years ago. Maybe things have changed.

In my understanding, community colleges are usually public and nonprofit. Tuition tends to be much cheaper than at four-year public universities (which are in turn much cheaper than privates). They tend to run shoestring budgets -- certainly this contributes to the professor pay and work load issues you also mentioned, and probably also the parking fees.

As for the textbooks, I'm curious what you observed? I'm unaware of any university profiting in this manner. I am extremely aware of textbook publishers profiteering, as well as the occasional individual professor-author who shamelessly convinces the rest of their department to adopt whatever book they wrote.

But the most likely reason that the book changed, in my estimation, is that individual faculty members are often given leeway to choose their own textbooks. This has some negative consequences, but in my opinion it's a good system overall.

And, incidentally, if you want the best deals -- then I'd recommend that you neither buy your books from the school, nor sell them back to the school.

That was my experience at both community college and California state schools

I would have never described Tarrant County College as predatory.. Value.

I think _eht is describing the University of Phoenix as predatory and for profit. Not the CC.

I'm not from the USA, but UoP is notorious.

> The stigma for attending one of these schools is terrible. Not undeserved, as they are predatory and for profit. But so are community colleges, in maybe different ways, but for the same reasons.

Emphasis not in original.

I think this is a good one: https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees.html

My wife went to this school. I was initially skeptical, but it is probably one of the best things she ever did. She got her degree in teaching, and got hired almost immediately. This is her first year, and she unfortunately had to start halfway through last semester and now has to distance teaching -- but the important thing is that she has a job in the field she wanted to work in. Without WGU and the flexibility it afforded her she would not be where she is right now.

Could not recommend this school enough.

Disclaimer: I do not work for WGU or any of these affiliates. This comes across as a bit like an advertisement. I really do think it's been amazing for her.

Agree. I completed 2 years at 2 different "brick and mortar" Universities in the past, took a long hiatus to build a career in IT, then went back to school (WGU) to complete a BS in IT-Security last June and am now back again and enrolled in the Masters in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance program. I / we haven't missed a beat with the onset of this pandemic (unlike almost everything else in my life) and that's saying something.

Just like the "B&M" classes I took previously, some classes are great, some less so, some hard, some less so. Anyone who thinks a school like WGU is "less good" probably has not actually experienced it and / or has a reason to protect the status quo. A student does have to self direct more in online programs, for a fact. But with that comes much more flexibility and scheduling freedom. And the price, at least for WGU, can't be beat.

My biggest worry is the aggressive advertising ministry that of for-profit degree mills. Even just filling out an interest form leads to a mass of spam email, phone calls and even snail mail.

WGU is non-profit.

> wgu

I second and can vouch for this one. I completed my B.S in 3.5 yrs with WGU, and it was one of the best decisions I made. Competency based (don't need to waste 3 months doing a course I already know about), and flat-fee (2.8k a 6mo term). It is very affordable and if you're self-sufficient, WGU is a great option. Really flexible and good curriculum if you're self-motivated.

As a former academic, I've been quite impressed with what I've seen of Western Governors University. I haven't enrolled there since I already have more degrees than I have any use for.

I can also recommend WGU. I only wish I’d found them sooner. I took a break from school 14 years ago because I ran out of money, and had no problems finding a job without finishing my degree. Then life got in the way and I never found a good reason to go back to school.

Then after a while I started contemplating going to grad school, more of a nice to have for personal development reasons.

But I couldn’t without a completed undergrad. So a little over 2 years ago I enrolled in WGU and now I have 3 classes to go.

> Then after a while I started contemplating going to grad school, more of a nice to have for personal development reasons.

Out of curiosity are what is your major? WGU undergrad degrees dknt seem like they would qualify you. Many CS Masters I've seen require 2 or 3 courses of calculus where the WGU C.S. bachelors looks like it only has 1 course.

It might be as simple as there as tens of thousands of 18 year olds ready to fill existing Bachelor’s programs straight out of High School. The financing for that is low hanging fruit, they can use their federal aid or loans to pay for several semesters (whether they pass or fail). This stream of cash is easy money, new adults and their parents are expected to spend their time and money on this from a cultural standpoint. There’s nothing to switch up in this business model.

Now take a Master’s program. Most people are done with college and are working full time. If you seriously want their business, you better offer them every flexibility in the world. It’s a whole different game.

One group is literally groomed to hand you money, often not even their own. The latter is a group that is no longer part of that setup and will make an independent decision based on a variety of factors.

Self study is never going to be as good as immersion in an academic environment. The impact that ad hoc conversations and events with peers and professors have is profound. You just don't get this with online or remote learning.

My undergrad is very focused on self-study. Prof's have gone the the extent of saying, "I won't waste time showing you this, you could just go on youtube". Flipped classroom models are increasing and the focus is again, on self study.

I'd say online doesn't work for all programs or courses. But do you need to sit in a room with 1k people in order to learn calc 1? It's just the prof going through some examples on the powerpoint/overhead nothing more. Asking questions isn't easy either.

Upload some lecture videos and then hold office hours instead of lecture hours. It's not like what you taught in psyc 100 last semester is much different than this.

> My undergrad is very focused on self-study. Prof's have gone the the extent of saying, "I won't waste time showing you this, you could just go on youtube". Flipped classroom models are increasing and the focus is again, on self study.

What university is that? It sounds awful.

> But do you need to sit in a room with 1k people in order to learn calc 1? It's just the prof going through some examples on the powerpoint/overhead nothing more. Asking questions isn't easy either.

> Upload some lecture videos and then hold office hours instead of lecture hours. It's not like what you taught in psyc 100 last semester is much different than this.

That's only kinda true of 100-level courses and massively popular generals, and quickly becomes false the farther you advance.

And even if it is a 100-level general, you can still ask questions if you're motivated and curious. When I was considering a career change, I retook general chemistry and a few other lower-level science courses as an adult. I asked a lot of questions, though many were picking at things that were too advanced for the course. You can't do that with a recording.

> What university is that? It sounds awful.

Rather not say, but a few do that. Plus in something like CS there's an hour long wait for office hours which are 2 hours twice a week with maybe 3 profs - so 6 hours for 500+ students - not much opportunity to ask questions.

> That's only kinda true of 100-level courses and massively popular generals, and quickly becomes false the farther you advance.

Absolutely. Get rid of the 1k lecture theatres for the undergrad courses and build some labs. Get some 3D printers/CNC machines for the Engineering students. A mock court room for the Law department? Some chemistry labs? Move the "I don't need to be here to learn" courses online and expand office hours, TA availability and provide more hands on experience.

Ya, I wouldn't want to see a doctor who learned online. But one how took some calc or basic med courses online but has more hands on/practical experience? Sure!

> "You just don't get this with online or remote learning."

I have learned literally more than 99% of my knowledgefrom strangers on the internet and ad hoc conversations on irc and reddit.

> I have learned literally more than 99% of my knowledge[ ]from strangers on the internet and ad hoc conversations on irc and reddit.

So? What's your "knowledge" and who were the strangers that taught it to you? It could be anywhere from Alexander Graham Bell to Alex Jones, but knowing IRC and Reddit, my money is that it's closer to the latter than the former.

I am a programmer by profession and I have a degree in computer science. My college taught me probably 1% of what i know, 99% of my knowledge is by suggestions from strangers on internet. You asked who those those strangers are. I don't know, that why they are called strangers. When i came across "How to be a Hacker" by eric raymond. It taught me how to learn on internet(asking questions). Then book suggestions from strangers on internet(examle: stackoverflow recommended books for programming) helped a lot to widen the knowledge. And for inspiration watching live 10+hr straight coding by George Hotz, direct replies from my heros John Carmack, Jonathon Blow on twitter and youtube comments is doing a pretty good job. I have done a few courses over coursera, and currently learning category theory. Internet education wins big easily over college education. May be college is required to inspire people but not educate them. That is obsoleted, because internet does that much better job.

> The impact that ad hoc conversations and events with peers and professors have is profound

Not everyone indulges in "ad hoc conversations and events with professors". Some maybe, but most people just get by with minimal work.

All depends on the course of study and the people you're in it with and your own motivations.

I've done both for a very long time. There used to be value in going to the computer lab and spending hours and hours working through problems with peers and seniors.

But that doesn't happen anymore. I've learned just as much in slack chatrooms with fellow students at Georgia Tech, if not more.

If you want to learn, you'll learn. If you don't, you won't -- no matter what the environment is.

Depends on your field. If you're studying mathematics or computer science, learning happens mostly through deep work in isolation and there's enough material out there (books, papers, etc.) to support more than a lifetime of problem-solving.

Events and conversations might offer superficial exposure to new ideas or areas of interest but actual understanding requires extended, focused thought that nobody else can do for you.

In mathematics it's pretty easy to get stuck and I imagine having a regular 1-on-1s with a tutor could be of great help. (However, Internet forums could to some degree perform similar function).

But we are talking about a bachelor here; for a master or phd I see that point... For a bachelor... not so much. Besides parties with my peers and catching up with sleep in lectures during the bachelor, it got interesting after the bachelor exactly because of what you mention.

Not everyone parties all the time and sleeps through lectures of course. Some undergraduate programs are very academic.

This was academic, but it was rather boring and no one was very serious until I discovered I could get points doing graduate courses, so when getting in to small groups with the professor instead of 100+ people lecture halls (with materials I can just read 1 to 1 from the book or syllabus was not very different than studying online), it got interesting.

But yeah, I guess it depends on a lot of factors; I just can see more benefit from msc/phd physically with peers and profs while bsc is more imaginable as online course. For my feeling at least.

The main reason I feel this way is more about environment and wide learning and cross pollination.

I self studied for a long time, topical, learned online mostly. You can do this, and can be very successful.

The point of academic environments is much like that of an office over remote work. One of the pros is the cross pollination of ideas across expertise barriers. This is where innovation happens, faster and more frequently.

Why would you not be able to have ad hoc conversations or events in an online environment?

For example video chats or text chats or audio chats or VR chats.

Honestly when people make statements like the one you made, it makes me suspect they actually don't understand the internet.

Communication over the internet just isn't the same as in person. It's harder to pick up on subtle social and emotional cues, and generally communication has to be a lot more intentional and explicit.

Plus there's no replacement for the ancient human social tradition of eating a meal with someone after a long day of work.

It depends on if it's a live chat, audio chat, video chat, or VR chat. Not all modes require the same level of explicitness.

It's true that effective text communication in async forms is a skill, but that is a competency that is very important even when not on lockdown.

Any sources to back up this claim?

"The establishment is bullshit and full of wrongness and waste" is just obviously true, but "here are some features of the status quo that might explain its fitness for purpose" is unsubstantiated nonsense requiring documentation.

I don't know why this pattern makes my blood boil, but it does.

I speculate this is because specialized higher education is less valuable, in all senses, than well-rounded general education at the bachelor’s level.

A bachelor’s degree is valuable to the student and to society as a transformative period of time when someone can study a wide range of topics, especially topics that focus on large-scale world ethics, and integrate the moral and social maturity imparted by it via social networking within and across universities.

The particular domain knowledge or training in eg math or computer science, pre-med, sociology or psychology, music, education, etc., are not very valuable. Employers don’t really care about any of that, apart from virtue signaling to weed out mass candidate pipelines. The actual knowledge itself is just table stakes and pretty worthless; companies will have to train you to do jobs that have effectively zero to do with acquired skills like programming. But general well-rounded cultural appreciation of a base foundation puts everyone into a level playing field to be fit for plugging in as an employee: basic understanding of how to work in groups on projects, managing interpersonal relationships even when you don’t like them, having a common standard of collegiality and “how things are done,” common understanding of academic/liberal social norms.

While possible, there has not been created an online bachelor’s program that successfully replicates anything like this yet. They all focus on skill building and curriculum, as if that was any part of the purpose of college.

Master’s degrees are quite different. They are a pure credential kind of thing, a certificate of advanced training. It’s assumed you already have the social norm education and that’s not the goal. The hard skills of the training still don’t actually matter to anyone in master’s degrees (nor even PhDs), but they can be used for clout or authority or stack ranking in terms of how decision-making ranks are established. This is much more amenable to online courses because all that matters is the certificate at the end, nobody cares how you got it. With bachelor’s degrees they actually do care that you physically attended “intellectual workforce finishing school” at a physical campus, because the social norm / behavioral training is the only part anyone cares about.

That's a great question that I've wondered myself - a part of it (in the U.S.) I think is the belief that a huge part of the value of a bachelors degree is growth you get living alone, in dorms, learning how to be an adult, etc. that aren't really part of a curriculum and would be hard or impossible to do online. In addition, I know that a massive number of people who take online courses (just the individual ones from Coursera and the like) tend to drop out, so maybe they colleges think that if they had an entire 4yr degree online almost no one would actually graduate (which may hurt their rankings or they dislike for some other reason that doesn't bother for profit colleges).

> I think is the belief that a huge part of the value of a bachelors degree is growth you get living alone, in dorms, learning how to be an adult, etc. that aren't really part of a curriculum and would be hard or impossible to do online.

a counterexample would be the existence of respected schools with a large amount of commuter students, many of whom continue to live with their parents while going to school. I graduated from such a place. if you really wanted (in cs at least), you could only show up in class for exams and still get an A if you did all the homeworks and projects. this school is one of the most heavily targeted in the state for tech recruiting.

> In addition, I know that a massive number of people who take online courses (just the individual ones from Coursera and the like) tend to drop out, so maybe they colleges think that if they had an entire 4yr degree online almost no one would actually graduate (which may hurt their rankings or they dislike for some other reason that doesn't bother for profit colleges).

this is a bit more convincing. online schools already have a stigma since the originals were almost (or actually) scams. probably no one want to take the risk of offering the first online degree.

> know that a massive number of people who take online courses (just the individual ones from Coursera and the like) tend to drop out

This is one of those statistics that (I think) misses the context. In college, you complete courses for credit which generally requires sitting through the whole thing.

On Coursera and the like, you typically take the course because there's something in there you want to learn. A particular learner may only be interested in a piece of the overall course and so ignore the parts they're not interested in while focusing on those they are. The engagement paradigm is different on every level from traditional courses, so I don't think it's meaningful to talk about "drop out" rates in that context.

Where it may be more meaningful is to look at drop out rates of students who have paid to take the course for a certificate. In that case, they have signaled intent to complete the course, so talking about a drop out rate becomes meaningful.

My partner works for an Australian university, she had this to say when I shared this article with her:

"From my understanding Bachelor degrees are much more regulated (in Australia anyway). Private Colleges can offer Grad Cert and Grad Dip and Master degrees but not Bachelor degrees, which make me think the government has highly regulated Bachelor degrees. I think that there must be a certain percentage of face to face, practical subjects, mentoring and industry placements, but I imagine in the current environment that this will be all up for discussion."

Got my Bachelors from Charles Sturt University. 100% online (not counting the 1 networking elective i took that had a 2day school playing with network gear, and international study tour i took in China for a couple weeks).

https://study.csu.edu.au/courses/technology-computing-maths/...

You have to sit exams in person at the end of each semester. There are exam centres all around the world https://exams.csu.edu.au/dist_students/centrelist.php?intern...

This course is offered by a reputable university and is supposed to be equivalent to it's on campus course.

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

Recently, I've had the strange privilege to teach for two very different education groups at the same time. One, a traditional university that includes online interaction but definitely not adept at it. The other offers intensive bootcamps that offered online or in-person.

I began this year teaching both as in-person classes. When restrictions from COVID-19 the bootcamp quickly responded and converted all of it's classes online with relative ease. It already offers these classes online with great success and the content has converted into the virtual world _very_ well. Students are completing their work just fine.

The university on the other hand was somewhat slow to respond. The faculty I work for reacted much faster and jumped into virtual classes asap. Even then, the content just isn't designed for online classes. I don't have the tools to properly communicate or provide help. The students don't have the etiquette for it or the motivation.

The cohorts are quite different too - mature students vs. high school graduates - so I guess the compared experiences are muddled by that also.

Overall, I've found the university just hasn't invested in its content. Not to say the program content isn't valuable - I completed it myself years ago. The educators there don't have the drive/need/want to create content that works virtually. They're comfortable where they are, and to be fair, I honestly think in-person teaching can be more effective. However, you can get damn close - virtually - if you can write good content.

I think this echoes other comments here. It's hard and they don't have the resources to get everyone on-board with making online-capable content.

Traditional Universities were going to be slower because they need permission from the accreditation agency before going fully online. We got word last week that they would expedite requests because of the COVID-19.

Excellent! Let's hope there is at least some lasting good that comes from the current terrible situation.

Currently, its a temporary waiver, so I wouldn't be too hopeful. Plus, I can see it at the state schools, but if we are talking the "prestige" schools then I would be damn mad because their biggest value is the contacts you make (or so I am told and observed).

Apparently Coursera manages online degrees that are "real" degrees for some schools. Like U of Illinois: if you get your degree online you get a regular diploma, not one marked that you pursued your studies online (and you qualify for the alumni assoc etc).

The implication I read from this is that online degrees are not taken as seriously. And the fact is there's a lot you get from school beyond the lectures; the interactions with other students and with faculty and just being out of your usual zone all make a big difference.

It's also a lot of work I imagine to get on a platform like Coursera's, and while it's the only one I've really found useful (I've tried a few for a class here or there) I still didn't like it much.

Note: my gf used to work there which is why I tried one course on their platform and why I even know about this at all. Which is another sign that online degrees are still considered marginal.

Teaching classes effectively is very hard and very few people can do it. It also doesn’t pay that well and is draining and often times not that rewarding. Universities try to get people that are good at it as professors by bribing them with the respect and autonomy that the title “professor” confers. Outside of the classroom, the professor does whatever they want to advance their own agenda.

I would think online only programs would have a hard time competing with universities for people that can design and execute effective courses. There are so few that most universities don’t even employ many of them. Why would someone like that work for an online school when they could work for one that would give them tenure, funding, lab space, grad students, etc?

>Universities try to get people that are good at it as professors by bribing them with the respect and autonomy that the title “professor” confers.

Generally speaking, universities don't care much about teaching ability. Hiring decisions are based almost entirely on research profiles (except where the institution itself has a clear focus on teaching over research, as at e.g. some liberal arts colleges). There are two main reasons for this. First, research brings more money and prestige. Second, student satisfaction has little to do with teaching quality. You can make students happy just by giving them a light workload and good grades.

So in fact, there are lots of people who are good at teaching who universities have no interest in hiring.

> Why would someone like that work for an online school when they could work for one that would give them tenure, funding, lab space, grad students, etc?

Well, someone like that would love to not have to waste time lecturing. By not being on campus they could go to more conferences and spend more time in the field. They could recruit ideal grad students from anywhere on earth without worrying about immigration restrictions or family ties.

Online Universities at least some of them do offer those things, within the limits of their funding. And that is really the issue - funding.

That's quite a cynical take.

I think universities are protecting their turf, and people who spent quite a lot of money and effort for in-person college are also to some degree. There are a significant number of people who do not want online bachelor degrees to become credible.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Just like other industries, there are people who benefit from the status quo.

What does a reputable university have to lose by offering equivalent degrees online? Quite a bit actually

It's because the purpose of college is more about signalling than about career training. The things that keep people out are what make it valuable. If you make it more accessible then it loses it's value.

I see this trope oft-repeated on HN and I just don't think it's true. I certainly hope that that wasn't your college experience. My experience was incredible, both academically and socially, and it truly changed the way I think. The level of abstraction with which I approach the world now is way higher than when I entered college, and I credit that to the math classes I took.This abstract thinking makes me a better problem solver in every part of my life. I also walked away with a handful of friends that will be my best friends until the day I die. College was the crucible that forged those friendships, and I haven't found a substitute for that since.

To you point about "career training", I don't see college as a vocational school. The best point of college in my opinion is to learn not only a lot of facts and specialize in an area of study, but more importantly, to learn how to think and solve problems.

If you learn a lot of facts and rely solely on the facts that you've learned, then obviously you won't adapt well to the real world where most of the problems you encounter are situations with imperfect information and no clear best solutions. However, if you choose your college degree wisely and learn how to learn, then you'll be able to tackle most challenges that come your way later on in life, both in your job and outside.

This conflates the signaling value of certification and training, or to put it another way, selection effect and treatment effect. A qualification can be valuable for what it says about those who got in (Harvard, Yale, every other élite institution with low to non-existent drop out/failure rates) or it can be valuable for what it tells you about those who attained the qualification. Getting an A.S. in Computer Science from a California Community College tells you a lot about the recipient but knowing someone was admitted to a CC tells you nothing. Some qualifications are Harvard, some are that you passed a hard exam. One is much cheaper in time and money than the other.

This could be said of masters degrees as well though.

What we need is a credible credentialing system where you can demonstrate you've acquired knowledge comparable to a bachelors degree. Instead of just adding more walled gardens of degree granting institutions.

Where can I sign up to help build this?

How would that be different than a "learn at your own pace" school?

It would be a separate entity, whose sole job is verification, not education.

This is an interesting question and one I hadn't thought of before. In the market for talent, degrees are just a signaling device. They help employers identify "the good ones." So schools build their signal by making it hard to get in, doing the prework of identifying the good ones. MOOCs, on the other hand, do the opposite - they let anyone in, so there is no signaling. It does seem like you should be able to create an online degree that mirrors this signal by marketing the hell out of how hard it is to get in and complete.

I would say that it is because a bachelor program is a system that needs to be born at scale to be useful. With most online education, it's a single course. With a bachelors program, it's many curriculums, which is many courses in many areas of study. I don't see how you get to that and preserve quality. The only thing you may not have to scale is having all four years worth of courses on day one. You do however need all courses for the first year of study on day one and a commitment to provide subsequent years of study as students advance. But then it's chicken and egg. What student will pay for a bachelors program that has no guanrantees of the remaining 3 years of the degree.

The only way I see a credible one existing is if people focus on just coursework for one area of study, each of these being a startup, and then later on down the line, consolidation through mergers and acquisitions starts to produce a multidisciplinary program.

The only other path I see is a credible meatspace bachelor program moving entirely online.

I suspect the idea of a bachelors program will die before any of this happens. The increasing focus on indoctrination in higher education is destroying the credibility of the humanities departments. I'd personally be more interested in hiring someone that spent two years doing a focused engineering degree than someone that spent 4 years pursuing a bachelor degree that contains 2 years of engineering and 2 years of indoctrination and brainwashing.

Comparing my engineering BSc and MSc experiences, there were significant numbers of “labs” during the BSc years that would be difficult to replace in an online course (and I think I would have regretted not having those experiences). Conversely, MSc courses didn’t have labs; even the big projects were things that could be done at home (e.g. programming, hardware kits) and while the classes usually had TAs, the TAs were rarely present for any in-class components.

Somebody else has already mentioned The Open University (https://open.ac.uk) and I happily recommend them, as one of their alumni.

Another established and well-regarded institution is the University of London International Programme (https://london.ac.uk). The courses are relatively low cost, but rely a lot on self-discipline.

I’m doing a Master’s with the University of London. I can recommend it though as with anything else you get out what you put in. I’ve found my course, Finance (Economic Policy[1]) interesting and reasonably rigorous.

[1] https://www.cefims.ac.uk/programmes/economic-policy/masters/

Someone eligible for a Master's has already demonstrated the ability to complete a time-intensive course of study that requires a decent level of self-efficacy and advocacy.

In contrast, a typical middle of the road University might only see 60% to 75% of its original freshmen class students graduate in 6 to 8 years. 40% in 4 years is common. So, a majority of undergrads do not, for one reason or another, stay on the recommended track for graduation.

A big part of this is supper resources: many\most schos are under staffed in academic support services. Now consider, in that context, an online course: it is even more the case that such students are further removed from the support structure provided by the college.

Finally, there simply isn't strong demand: most students are looking for the traditional undergrad experience, which is at least as much a social environment as a learning one. You don't get that online. Contrast that to post grads looking for a Masters, which tend to be a group much more focused on the nuts and bolts of completing their program.

Source: I work in Higher ed analytics, focussing quite a bit on success factors in persistence and completion rates.

I would guess that the difficulty of preventing cheating in an online setting discourages institutions from going fully online.

For masters work and above I suspect this concern is less prominent because it’s likely to be a smaller student pool (easier to police per student), doing higher level work (harder to cheat successfully), and to be less accessible to would-be cheaters (due to filtering at the bachelors level).

This. Preventing cheating in an online-only course requires meatspace infrastructure: testing facilities where students can be monitored. That infrastructure is still patchy.

Not really. They mostly use proctortrack these days, along with algorithmic analysis of the answers.

Part of the problem may be the accreditation process. For federal student aid, and also professional licensure for certain occupations (psychology for example), you need to attend an accredited program. But the accreditation process is controlled by existing institutions and people who work at existing institutions.

One way to open up this market to innovation would be to try to get the laws changed about accreditation. Make it so it's much easier to objectively prove that the institution is providing ongoing value to its students, and receive accredited status without significant involvement by people who are not incentivized to encourage innovation.

People might be involved in the process, but rather than making subjective judgements about whether the program is good enough, make the measures objective. Then the person involved is really just checking boxes. If they refuse to check the boxes despite evidence, there should be an appeal process with civil damages for any clearly unnecessary delays caused.

wgu.edu pushed accreditation laws to change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University

By the time they reach the Masters, students should know how to learn independently. Masters students often have some work experience as well.

The Bachelors is the period where students go from being taught in High School to learning on their own. It probably is harder to implement effectively online than the Masters.

I have been enrolled in classes at The Pennsylvania State University's (PSU) World Campus[1] since the spring semester of 2014. This is PSU's fully online offering. I first earned an AS in Information Systems Technology (IST) en route to continuing for my BS in IST. I will graduate this fall.

I took my sweet time because, alongside my studies, I've maintained full time employment in industry (first as an SE and recently moving into cloud architecture). I share this to highlight that, although I've been in it for the long haul, the quality of the education (e. g., course design, instructor engagement, CMS quality, etc.) has kept me thoroughly rapt along the journey.

[1] https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/

One excellent option is BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think) or the same standards for on-campus BYU attendance. I think tuition is lower, bachelors programs (like business) are available, and the programs are excellent, and can be done entirely on-line, and is also suitable for those who need to become qualified for entering a university, then provides that university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news article that explains it well I think, here: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html .

Looks like there are ~40 bachelors degree programs including in tech, business, family something, and professional something.

The WGU (wgu.edu) mentioned elsewhere here is also probably very good.

To follow up with this: is there a good online community college anyone can recommend?

I didn’t see it mentioned yet, but Oregon State has been running an online Post-Bacc in Computer Science for the past several years. They also just started doing a standard bachelor’s program 100% online for CS.

I've been teaching at a community college for a few years and online classes - at least in my field - tend not to be great. There isn't a lot of "teaching" that goes on in them. While students may learn it is largely up to them. I have made up the assignments and I have recorded some mini-lectures but I feel like I'm a grader not a teacher of online classes.

(Of course right now with the virus we are trying to do as many regular meetings online at the scheduled class times as possible and I feel it is more similar to face to face teaching.)

The same reason why it's very hard to find high school programs online. Academically, many degrees you can study online and be as successful as the non-online students, as far as passing tests goes. But bachelor studies unlike masters is not viewed as a professional degree. Like high school it's an important phase in one's development - in all aspects, not just socially. And in the US at least it's also a pretty important money maker for many schools. You cannot charge $30K/year for an online degree.

There are quite a few at Penn State's world campus: https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/

Have you ever said screw it with your online mates and skipped classes and gone to the pub and ended up being chased down by the police after stealing traffic signs?

For young people universities decide their cohort for life. This determines success.

Like you say, masters online is more common, cohort's by a masters are often already decided.

Well all credible universities are going to have to enable online bachelors programs if we are going to properly deal with infectious diseases moving forward. If most companies become remote first, it’s not much of a stretch to make college remote first.

It's way too early to assume that the current pandemic will cause such drastic changes to society. Even if it turns out to be close to the damage as the 1918 flu, that was still more than 100 years ago. My guess is that the rise in remote work will be due to people being forced to all try it now more so than because they'll be preemptively trying to prevent this from happening again.

I think Minerva has a big online component: https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/

Fully accredited by the KGI so also has some legitimacy.

Thomas Edison State University has been online for over 20 years: https://www.tesu.edu/

Just wait after this year. Spring quarter at UC Davis is purely online because of the COVID-19 outbreak, for example.

The real answer isn’t as logical or rational as most of us would like to believe. It’s a combination of inertia and fear of cannibalization.

Most Universities want the high price/high value programs to remain on campus and don’t want to undercut themselves by putting them online.

That fact is because the bachelor degree no longer has any particular value. It’s the new GED. It’s required for jobs that do not need that level of education. It rarely is enough to qualify for a job that needs a university education.

This article mentions one possible factor: https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeove...

Probably worth reading Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education for some insight on why.

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