The future of college is online, and it’s cheaper
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People who think college is just about, or honestly even primarily about, learning various subjects show a deep misunderstanding of what college is in my opinion. Online learning will of course have a place, but in a world where there are both in-person and exclusively online options it's not hard to imagine which experience top students (not to mention the rich and connected) will prefer, and this will only lead to more inequality in higher education.
It won't surprise me if NYT changes it's tone some years from now and reflects back on "what could have been". Not the first time, not the last time.
I didn't find them inferior to in-person classes in terms of teaching the material. In some ways, they can be better (though they are also gameable -- on the other hand, kids have been gaming the system since time immemorial).
From what I have read, elite colleges are a place where personal connections are made. Co-founders are often people you met at college and bonded with at college.
This never did anything for me, personally. Maybe I went to the wrong schools. Maybe I'm the wrong gender. Maybe there's some other factor I'm missing.
From what I have read, the strongest argument for attending college in person at an elite school is because of the personal connections that can result. Off the top of my head, I don't know of data explicitly stating this mostly applies to male students, but I would not be shocked if that was the conclusion of some study.
There is, after all, the old tradition of saying a woman is going to college to "get her MRS." In other words, to get married and then to supposedly "do nothing" with her degree while she raises kids and supports her husband's career.
I took a business law class (intellectual property law) during my (nearly complete) engineering PhD. I found the culture in business school to be really odd. The class was a mixture of law students, MBA students, and STEM students. You were required to bring a name plate, which I found really weird as a STEM person. To me a class is about learning the subject, not the specific personalities of each student.
Later it all clicked to me: A MBA is partly about making personal connections and the name plates help with that.
I had a similar experience in the business school startup class I took until the drop date. The basic lesson of the class seemed to be to not spend a lot of money until you're confident your product will be profitable. (Or at least that's the main thing I remember.) The class had name plates, and was fairly heavy on social gatherings to talk with others. Learning seemed secondary to me. The class had a few days where people pitched different business ideas they had, and I realized that I had little in common with everyone there from the pitches, so the chance of making a genuine connection seemed low. I had no problem dropping the class.
Personally, I think I'd network better in other contexts.
Most of what I found important:
- Perspective. In high school you're the best by a longshot, but then once you get to college you end up just average or below average. Then, you get to constantly interact with all these people all the time, learn from them, and expand how you view and approach things. This also means this is the easiest time to meet the smartest and most capable people, right at the ground level, before they become founders and VPs. Maintain the relationships through the years, and they'll be the people that you tap or that tap you.
- Hyper-social interaction. Never again will you be surrounded by so many people in close proximity in the same phase of life trying to achieve the same goals. You can try to recreate this by living in a city, but you'll never have everyone within walking distance, just spending 110% of your time with everyone. Just walk to class and have 3 meaningful interactions along the way. This is also why so many people marry someone they metin college. It's just way easier when you meet 100 new people to date every day.
- Independence. You don't need college for it, but it is a key part of the college experience. You learn how to live on your own, how to live with roommates, how to do all your own chores, how to feed yourself. You set your own schedule for how you want to use your time, how much time you want to spend on classes (or not), how to juggle all your responsibilities, any clubs you want, and of course all your social time.
- Career prep. This is a bit more college specific, because the culture on campus will differ, but you learn by talking with people in your class and years above what is needed for each phase. So, find out what other people needed to do to get their choice of job offers before graduating, and start prepping on those things. See what internships your peers are getting and what it takes to get the name brand ones. The college itself is also a powerful brand name and can make your future job searches easier, if people recognize the college and form a favorable first impression because of it.
- Classes. Probably the two main things I learned are 1) how to modulate the amount of work i put in to get the grades i wanted. You don't always need perfect grades, and you don't always need to study every single night to get them, so figure out how to put in exactly the amout of effort you need to get the exact GPA that you want. 2) what things are there in the world. So, I basically don't remember anything that i learned in college, but I remember all the princicples and the ideas and the fact that such things exist. I still have my textbooks that I can look things up in, but now with google, it's even easier. I just need to know that there is some principle or idea or some way to solve this problem, and i just look it up. Without taking the classes, I wouldn't even know where to begin. But now i just need to keep all the pointers to the knowledge, not the actual knowledge itself.
There is still the rigor of getting accepted into a program, proctoring exams, quality of teaching staff, guiding projects, grading, feedback, and curriculum progression.
If we get hung up over the fact that physical lectures are not happening, and is now being delivered via digital tools, then that says a lot about the value of that program, that it loses it’s power soon as we modify one simple parameter.
We can adjust that one parameter for probably over half of all degree programs, and keep the requirements for necessary physical things like lab work.
> We can adjust that one parameter for probably over half of all degree programs, and keep the requirements for necessary physical things like lab work.
That's not the only parameter you're cutting out, though. You're also removing the "hallway track" to use conference parlance. It's definitely possible to make friends online, but it's much easier to make friends with people you spend a lot of time in person with.
This is true of a lot of college alternatives, from online classes to state schools to vocational training. Everyone insists that we should view these as viable, even superior options. But it's hard not to think that when push comes to shove most parents still want their own kids to go to Harvard (and are willing to go to some lengths to make that happen).
But aside from all of that — it’s also where many (not all) young adults go after high school to figure out who they are, who they want their friends to be, and what they want to do, as for most of them it’s their first taste of living as their own fully independent person. Something has to fill that vacuum.
There’s always the military or a peacetime national service program.
And I think there would be many types of classes that would suffer from being delivered online. I think most of us here are thinking in STEM terms, but what about others? The article mentions remote acting classes. Seriously? It's one thing to 'get by' with workarounds, but I'd imagine being in the same place as other people is an important part of acting. There's no way you can replace in-person teaching for instruments. And discussion heavy classes, would be a drag. Even a 10 person meeting at work is awkward with all the network glitches and delays etc.
Sure it might and does work for some, but I think a totally online experience would be a definite downgrade for most.
Besides, after two months of running virtually all communication over Zoom, does anyone still think video for everything is good enough?
Granted, college is not just about gaining certification by authorities. But that's only your claim if I am very charitable. Your claim instead is about learning. Even spending money, meeting new people, and drinking irresponsibly can be learning experiences so I also have no idea what your claim actually is. Or why people seem to agree with you.
Perhaps a degree is a proxy for measuring parental investment
Higher education just has this weird power, they are held in such reverence that they are actually able to say ‘no, this magical monologue can only be heard in person’.
Make it mostly remote, bring the kids in for proctored exams, enable insane flexibility with respect to people’s time. Enable all types of schedules and accommodations, which believe it or not is also a barrier, not just money.
My college simply did not offer any of it’s science classes after work hours, definitely no chance to catch one on a weekend. We had to be there for the magical in person monologue.
Not saying college shouldn't die - it's a racket. However, I can't imagine performing any of my magnetism or optics labs remotely.
There’s a way to do this, but it starts with first destroying some of our gods - the almighty lecture.
There was a time a kid could get a summer job and put himself through medical or law school.
It seems to work well apart from people losing motivation, but there could be unexploited network effects in large numbers of people supporting each other more informally if it became the norm.
There were forums where you could get peer support and I think some people even got together for regular in-person sessions.
Over the years I'd say student self-motivation has gone down not up for a variety of reasons, requiring a lot more hand-holding. More people go to college than before, plus in STEM most of our students come from countries where school consists of watching lectures passively then cramming the night before exams.
I don't know anybody who has brought themselves up to a useful level of competence in math or physics, through self-study.
Education is just one part of attending a college. Credentialling is another really big one, and beyond that theres a ton of various social components that add to the value of attending a school. With online schools, you either lose out or get a degraded version of those.
I've seen a lot of arguments from people in non-software fields doubt online degrees, including engineers say they'd be wary of an online degree regardless of its accreditation and physics graduates raise question about not having access to extremely expensive equipment for labs.
And yes, a legitimate online degree wont indicate its online (although it can be deduced in some circumstances), so ideally the credentialling remains valid at least.
CTLT is no more; I'm sure WSU is still working[2] on distance learning.
[0]: https://blog.ryjones.org/2003/09/18/For-want-of-a-nail
That being said, in my experience regarding the computer science perspective, having mandatory in person lectures added little to no value in terms of actual knowledge gained. In fact, I would argue that not being able to participate online was a detriment to my personal college experience. In order to avoid taking on massive amounts of debt, I had to work full-time while doing my undergrad. I was lucky enough to land a full time development gig my sophomore year, but it required being in the office 80% of the week. Between work, commuting, and sitting in a lecture hall, I had very few hours left in the day to actually work on my assignments and this caused me to make sacrifices in order to manage my time.
There was nothing communicated in our lectures that could not have been communicated in a pre-recorded video or via a class forum. The option to participate online will open up doors for many individuals who might not have been able to pursue higher education before, such as those who have to work or take care of their families.
The article mentions the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech [1], and I can't recommend this program enough. I'm currently about half way through the curriculum, and the format of the program alone addresses almost every issue I've had with my undergrad. I am able to watch lectures and do projects at my own pace which makes managing my time significantly easier. It also comes at 10% of the cost of my undergrad and that's a price that's hard to beat.
I live in a European country where things are different of course. With university being basically free, this piece is a non-issue. Also people trust public institutions much more - for a reason. The university where I studied had no problem kicking out 70% of the students. I teach at a private institution and every year I have to dumb down things because they pay and controlling and management and blah. We're now sooo far away from the material taught at the comparable university course. And with this remote semester even much worse.
Furthermore, traditionally out university studies were already organized in a very "free" way - no specifically enforced order or lots of mandatory presence. Do your exams and in the end show all your certificates. Most lab courses were a meeting once and then everyone working on their own at home anyway. It was mostly the first 2 years with the math whiteboard sessions with mandatory presence. The rest I did mostly from home anyway and skipped most lectures.
Lastly, many companies are still reluctant to hire graduates with "only a bachelor" as it's still often seen as a dropout degree (we made the switch from out classic 5 years diploma studies just a decade ago or so). So go figure what the opinion on some MOOC certificate.
So to to sum up I don't see much chance here because: - many can:t handle it - university cheaper than udacity nanodegrees - good job compatibility anyway (at least for studies like CS anyway but if not you can't do a MOOC either) - no trust by companies in private edu providers
Western Governors University: https://www.wgu.edu/ (also mentioned in wikipedia): state aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp).
BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I think there is good personal support, interaction, tuition is much lower, bachelors programs (like IT, business, others) are available, programs excellent, and is also suitable for those who need to first become qualified for entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used in curriculum, and other basic skills), 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 .
In all 50+ such degrees have been announced [1]. ~30 of these were announced in 2018, but there was a slow down in 2019 with only 11 announced [2].
A majority of degrees tend to be Master's, but there are few bachelors. Most recently Coursera announced that their Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of London had 2,000+ students enrolled. It was announced last year and costs 10,088 – 15,132 GBP.
Disclaimer: I am the founder of Class Central, a Tripadvisor for Online Education. But we also write about the MOOC industry in depth.
[1] https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-based-masters-degre...
[2] https://www.classcentral.com/report/moocs-stats-and-trends-2...
On one hand, I'm all for democratizing education, and have taken some courses from said programs individually (typically the offer a "preview") and from what I've seenb hey aren't something anyone without prior subjects knowledge can just fake themselves through.
On the other hand, a lot of the advertising from the schools themselves read like something from a for-profit and I wonder whether programs like these will weaken the reputation of the degrees or even that of the schools themselves. Paraphrasing something I've read on here before, sometimes, the degree is more about signalling than education.
If students don't have to live on campus to get the credits and the degree, it opens a world of possibilities. They can work part-time/intern in a real company and network while completing their online courses. Receive salary at 18, network with other interns and older employees at the company, participate in industrial grade lab experiments if that happens at the company.
Say Google would open "3y part time internships" allowing students to enroll in a credentialing University and complete courses and get a degree online while working at the company. The in-campus experience doesn't sound very compelling now.
I’m not sure how this experience can be replicated by an online lecture. Even group video chat is a poor replacement for a small in-person discussion group. I can see online videos replacing the lecture format for larger or general education classes, but to me personally, the real value was in the small discussion groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy#Analytic_m...
It's about doing, not just learning.
There are other way that can make education cheaper, ways that do not involve the commoditization of classes and the destruction of the student experience.
Why there exists nothing other than higher education institute charging arm and leg for people to network?
Can't we have simple institute where people simply go to brainstorm on random stuff and with no focus on grades or anything at all.
A lot of the "higher education", and the "college", are just "people who get to keep that kind of money" as we see in the article (I know there is a lot of money in universities around the world). I wish I'd see the financial returns for such programs as the ones with the most money, but it doesn't make sense to me to go to one without being very rich. Sure we have a good business model and we can afford a college degree, but there's no guarantee that the people with the least money are the ones spending the most money.
According to my friend, her daughter's biggest challenge was the boredom: Sitting all day long in front of a computer in a small rural town.
She graduated with a major in some meaty subject like biology, and has made a decent life for herself. But I can see how there's a lot of attrition.
When you get to uni you've spent 13 years in the education system, but you're probably only just starting to be responsible for yourself. Learning that in a slightly more forgiving environment is useful and missed by online classes.
Otherwise, you can just pick up a book and start reading.
Also, I just finished "Educated", and can't imagine the story working online.
Neither a one size fits all online lecture nor a physical lecture with a lot of students, is tailored to the individual student very much, or interactive. I'd prefer to see education that is personalised.
Harvard has no limit on how many students it accepts in its online program. Once they realize that and offer it, why would I go to the local state school if I can go to Harvard instead?
The opinion columnist misses crucially what college is. It's not really about lectures. Rather, it's an incubator for young people to intellectually grow. Online courses don't give you the ability to drop in on a hundred different clubs, go to the library, party, date, drop in the office of some very smart people.
A college campus drops some thousands of young people in the same proximity, and gives them a collective experience. It situates them amongst a litany of highly intellectual adults and gives them a way to try news things. I just graduated from university, and I was leaving the core curriculum had become under conflict. I attended a Jesuit university, so there was a large philosophical/religious portion of curriculum. Opponents say this leads to no meaning job skills, and it's hard to disagree.
College isn't just about getting a job, at least it shouldn't be. We have culturally deemed the degree necessary for employment, and that's the bigger issue. I grew philosophically and theoretically in the classroom, but it was everything outside of the classroom that made me readily employable. Frankly, it was a privilege that I had four years to figure out who I was and what I enjoyed.
I recognize that not everyone is this fortunate. Some go to college just because they need to find jobs. That is where I think online learning has potential. We must acknowledge it will lead to a bifurcation in higher education. Online degrees are already less respected than degrees from high-ranking private universities or good public systems (UC/UT/UM). This bifurcation is not necessarily a bad thing. Those who want job skill training should be able to opt for online programs and be able to land jobs (Think like what Lambda aims to achieve).
The wealthy and high-achieving will still go to expensive private universities in person. For everyone else, there should be an accessible means for gainful employment at a fraction of the cost.
I see the fundamental issue in higher education being that colleges have become more expensive as they become more comprehensive experiences, but the market forces bachelors degree attainment for even basic employment. The result is that those who don't need, or don't want, all the luxuries have to subsidize the cost.
[0] http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/53/110
Still, the great unbundling of education has begun. We at learnawesome.org are contributing to that as we recently launched a project-based learning program with a peer group and practitioners as mentors. The mentors will curate a "syllabus" using online resources, but the goal is for you to learn by accomplishing meaning projects: https://learnawesome.org/project-based-learning.html