College students argue distance learning should cost less as schools charge more
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
The whole point of college is to figure out what you want to do, explore, network and learn how to learn. I fail to see how an online degree can provide that. The amount of learning that happened outside of classes, during labs with my peers, is on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus. No matter how great the instructors are, it's still a sub-par experience.
That and cheating of course.
How could they compress it so much?
A lot of lower div credits are gen-ed.
My conclusion? Universities are simply going to have to cut their administrative staff and construction projects to sustainable levels. (What these levels actually are is a debatable topic, but the people affected this will be shocked at the drop.) We are not able to go back to the way things used to be, even if that were a desirable goal, which it arguably is not.
TBH, I think that these construction projects are how colleges keep in competition to each other. I remember college dorm rooms being very, very, very utilitarian. "Fancy" meant that there was an actual closet in the room. Now, my wife and I joke to each other what we'll know we've made it in life when we have accommodations as nice as the average college upperclassman.
Without the fancy physical infrastructure to show-off, colleges will have to rely solely on quality of remote education.
AR/VR and other remote presence functions are going to rapidly improve in the wake of COVID. If current "online-only" colleges are smart, they'll see this as a place they can seriously compete with and probably surpass traditional brick and mortar colleges.
If we start with an (obviously) invalid assumption - "The university experience is just like BigCorp work" - it's not surprising that we would arrive at an even wackier conclusion - like "What's good for companies like Apple should be good for the university experience, too".
If I were to teach again, it would all be paper based assignments and office hours. 100% analog. I don't have the time to deal with extra admin.
My 2 cents.
Kinda looks like universities think they are too big to lay people off or close.
Also charging an 18yo 40k/yr for zoom classes when it’s available for free on Edx is nuts.
citation needed?
I don't disagree, though, that online education is not as good as in-person, regardless of how it's done.
https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...
Here are a bunch of other online bachelors in CS: https://thebestschools.org/rankings/best-online-bachelors-co...
Is $13,000 unreasonable? It would cost a whole lot more than that if you went for an on-site bachelors at say, UWaterloo.
Disagree based on my experience tutoring online. I had to prep and then spend my time with them on webcam.
The story is different for asynchronous online learning, for example with students watching prerecorded videos and completing assignments. However, not everyone learns well that way. We'll probably need a blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning going forward.
Half of the classes I took at Ryerson University were online. The instructors were only there for feedback, questions, and grading, and even then, only through email or a text chat. It was definitely an easy period for them.
Tutoring is a different beast since by definition it requires a lot of interaction.
If anything, I see less of her due to her workload and she works from home while I live in it.
It’s not easier than brick-n-mortar. It’s a whole new approach.