Hacker News Reader

Comment by sys_64738 | Hacker News Reader

People who take courses which are online will be entering the workforce with a devalued degree. Employers already frown when presented with online courses but now the whole period will be like so. This whole period of online education is troubling as kids educated during this period will be disadvantaged academically and socially.

View on HN

If everyone in a 2 year period is disadvantaged in the same way, that disadvantage becomes the new normal.

Only for those directly exposed to it. Others not so much.

It's worse than that. I believe that in many cases the social connections developed in college are one of the most important collateral of education, sometimes rivalling degrees themselves. A fully online education don't enable networking at the same level. People from privileged backgrounds might not notice much of a difference (they can socialise in other ways) but students that could really benefit from strong social connections will suffer the most.

Huh, this is your opinion but it’s not true in reality. In many cases, you won’t even know that a degree was online. Some schools use a different title while others don’t. And as someone who does a lot of phone interviewers, who cares? Can they do the job?

Will it still be that way though? B.C. (Before Covid) the thinking was you took online courses because you "couldn't get into a real college", but for a few years at least _everyone_ will be having online classes.

I got a graduate degree online from a well ranked uni because I didn’t want to commute or move.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com