
The Trouble With Online College - daviddaviddavid
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/opinion/the-trouble-with-online-college.html
======
liber8
The second point of this editorial highlights what is wrong with higher
education in the U.S.:

>> _Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled,
highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students
who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close
contact with instructors to succeed._ <<

A college education, at the very least, once signified that a graduate had the
wherewithal to actually stick with something for four years and finish it.
This included figuring out how to pay for those four years, figuring out how
to live on your own and provide for yourself, and actually putting in the work
to pass the required classes. A degree was a signifier of at least basic
competence and dependability. At the very least, any college graduate you
hired in 1980 was likely to be a decent employee.

But then we, as a society, decided that a college degree was an end in itself.
We looked around and saw that most middle class people had college degrees, so
obviously if we wanted to grow the middle class, we just needed more college
graduates. And so we turned college into high school, part deux.

Now, a B.A. signifies little more than a willingness to borrow silly amounts
of money and have instructors and administrators hold your hand through the
entire process.

If those signing up for online classes are “struggling” or failing to even
participate in those online classes, is that person really going to be a
productive, high-skilled employee? I think the answer is pretty clearly no. So
why do we continue to pretend that person _needs_ a college degree?

~~~
obviouslygreen
The section you quoted suggests to me that, in addition to the "end in itself"
issue, we're also starting to treat college the same way we treat primary and
secondary education: No child left behind. If the lowest common denominator
can't handle it, then we shouldn't be spending money on it.

This actually makes more sense from a for-profit institution's point of view
than it does for state-sponsored schools, but for whatever reason it started
at the latter. I suppose seeing that attitude shift to the former as well
shouldn't be too surprising.

~~~
yakiv
I'm going to make an utterly irrelevant comment here, but I think that in
general it's better to not use "former" and "latter" like this---it often
forces the reader to look back earlier in the text if they want to figure out
what you're saying.

------
qeorge
This article feels intellectually lazy. This passage particularly bothered me:

"A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in
Washington State community and technical colleges. It found that those who
took higher proportions of online courses were less likely to earn degrees or
transfer to four-year colleges. _The reasons for such failures are well known.
Many students, for example, show up at college (or junior college) unprepared
to learn, unable to manage time and having failed to master basics like math
and English._ " (emphasis added)

How is that conclusion supported by the facts in the article? Its also
possible that those taking online courses are also the ones with the least
time for school in general. But who knows!

Similarly, if I found that students attending class at night performed worse
than those attending during the day, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that
learning is harder at night.

correlation != causation and all that.

~~~
dfxm12
This begs the question. IS there trouble with online _learning_ or online
_students_? Certainly there are factors that would cause someone to enroll in
an online class outside of the fact that "it is online".

Anecdotally, when I think back to my learning experience, I found that I had
to be very self-motivated to learn in online classes and also take professors
to task being available. This actually mirrored my experience with huge (100+
students) lecture hall style classes.

~~~
philwelch
"This begs the question."

No, it doesn't. <http://begthequestion.info/>

~~~
gojomo
The peculiar meaning of that euphemism in logic and philosophy is going to
lose out to the way laypeople understand those words. The fuddy-duddies should
pick a new less-confusing phrase to mean "assumes the conclusion". Might I
suggest, "assumes the conclusion"?

~~~
chc
I prefer "is circular thinking." Most people have no difficulty understanding
the idea of circular reasoning even if they have no idea what it means to beg
the question.

------
jimhefferon
I see a number of comments already in the direction of "if I am a highly-
motiviated individual then I ought to be able to ..", with which I completely
agree.

However, in my experience teaching at a respected but not top-ranked college,
the percentage of people right now who are charged self-starters is not high.
Unless the nature of students changes then I don't believe that education will
undergo a phase shift to online-driven. I'm not knocking the students -- it is
a characteristic of any population of people that the percentage who will do a
very hard thing on their own is small.

It is more likely that mainstream college education will absorb online models,
giving credit to the typically advanced students who do well in such courses
but still running a large number of traditional classes or perhaps a set of
classes that span a range of blended-ness (as most schools are moving toward
now). A good change, but not really a revolution.

~~~
rwallace
I agree that many people are not self-starters, and that this is a problem (in
general, not just in college). I don't think it's because of an inherent
defect in the people in question - much more likely it's because they spent
too many years being herded like sheep - but it is still a problem.

I put it to you, however, that the solution is not to spend even more years
herding people like sheep.

------
kirinan
I attended online college to get my degree in Computer science, for at least
half of my undergrad, and I can say that it is just as challenging as
attending the reals classes at a brick and mortar university. The challenges
were different, such as not having the professor breathing down your neck to
get assignments in, and having to self motivate to get things done. However,
that doesn't make the knowledge I acquired any less real or any less valuable,
I simply had to read the book do the assignments myself, with a professor
helping me from across the country. My exams were proctored (impossible to
cheat on(well not impossible but difficult), and I learned a ton. I think
there will come a time where people will realize that doing a mixture is a
great thing. Part of college is the social aspect, meeting peers getting to
know other people in the field, which can't replaced online (although this is
a great business opportunity if you can) and the other part is learning. This
part is easily and affordably done online, and possibly more effective for
some people.

~~~
mediagearbox
"This part is easily and affordably done online, and possibly more effective
for some people."

That sums it up for me. I work full-time along with my side projects and I
still chug along at getting a degree, running all over the city is not in my
favor for taking classes. Online classes have not only saved me money but
created more time to take on other projects that pay for more classes.

In regards to cheating, honestly it is just as easy to cheat in class as it is
online. BUT this is not factoring the personalities. Some people cheat because
they do not really care, others do NOT cheat because by cheating (in my mind)
you are cheating yourself.

Lastly, online classes have taught me something far more valuable than a brick
and mortar class - RESPONSIBILITY. For me (key phrase) going to class was not
only troublesome in my day to day but horrifically boring. On top of which
with campus classes you get more of the professors personal opinions on
matters rather than actual material that you can base your studies off of to
generate your own opinion or hypothesis. With online classes I plan my weeks
in advance from quizzes and tests, to writing papers and doing research and of
course incorporating my needed day to day duties.

As a student who has taken both campus classes and online classes, I would
have to say that online classes are more challenging.

------
DennisP
I'm not convinced that dropout rate is meaningful at all for free online
courses. Personally I've signed up for way more Coursera courses than I could
possibly complete, just so I could dip into the most interesting lectures,
come back to them later, etc. Seems to me that's a good thing.

I did come close to completing a couple courses. When the certs start to mean
something I might work harder on the last bit of effort to get them.

Paid online courses with college credit are another matter of course.

------
swalsh
Let's be honest here. The fact is college is more necessary then ever, its
also desirable. The political conversation today is focused around jobs, and
job creation. But its kind of deceiving. Our problem isn't that we can't find
enough work for people, its that we can't find enough unskilled, or low
skilled work for people. If you've ever spent months looking for a person, in
this "high unemployment" era. It'll be obvious to you too, and it's not simply
a matter of having unrealistic expectations.

We've entered a new era of employment. It used to be that you could just take
a high school student, assume he'll have what you need, then spend a few years
mentoring him to fill in the rest. Today, that generic mold doesn't work. A
lot of companies are carving value out of doing things more efficiently, and
often that means finding people with very specific sets of skills.

Online education is EXTREMELY useful for this. I personally was able to get my
current job by watching online lectures. I certainly wasn't an expert on the
subject, but at the very least I was capable of demonstrating how capable i
was to learn it on my own. Formalizing this process would only help this
process!

If online education isn't working for some students, I don't think we should
be questioning whether online education is the right path. Clearly it's
necessary, and the small successes its had now has proven that it has
potential. Instead of going backwards, we should be asking how we can go
forwards.

------
dorkrawk
One of the things about physical vs online higher education that I see as
under-discussed is the ambient learning that takes place when you are in
physical location with a bunch of curious people learning similar things to
you.

I know that I learned so many things in college just because I happened to be
sitting around, talking with interesting people before or after class or while
working on assignments together. Just living in a dorm with people in that
sort of "adult life with training wheels" setting and being able to hang out
with totally new people who I might not have sought out on my own was REALLY
valuable. There is so much to be learned outside of the classroom at college
and online education is going to struggle to emulate those things.

Yes there are all sorts of social places online that can augment this, but
there really is something valuable about learning and interacting with people
in person. Yes, there are local clubs and hackerspaces and meetups, but there
really is something to be said for having all of these things right at your
fingertips (almost) all with in close proximity and (almost) all populated and
run by your peers. A good college just lowers the barrier of entry for all
these things.

Online education is awesome. It gets information to people in a way that was
never before possible and that's a great thing. But I think that formal
education is only one benefit of a good college experience.

------
furyg3
The online courses I took at Jr. college were mostly horrible, which is why I
took as many of them as I could.

A class with "discussion credit", multiple choice quizzes, and one-size-fits
all writing assignments, is pretty much junk. At my Jr. college, these classes
were the most likely to be made into online courses. As such, a student was
insane if they were required to take a course like this and didn't elect for
the online version, because a physical class only wasted even more of your
time.

A physical course had extra value for students who lived on the pass/fail
line. They get a chance to display their problems to the teacher, who may feel
bad and give them extensions on their busy work. Sympathy was harder to garner
online, which is probably why online courses saw higher failure rates.

~~~
VLM
"discussion credit"

Discussion credit was the bane of online classes, in that most classes of this
type were "regurgitate the text back to me" so there is an inherent hierarchy
of "correct" answers ranging from best to worst, so the first poster gets the
best comment and so on down until the folks later in the day have a terrible
struggle trying to find something to repeat back to the instructor. So rather
than having to be in a lecture hall at precisely 2pm or 6pm on Wednesdays, you
had to be online at precisely 9am on Monday so as to be in on the discussion
credit feeding frenzy at the instant the unit opened, and I hated that
component of online classes. This completely eliminates the 24x7 advantage of
at least some online classes. Discuss one of the three defining
characteristics of object oriented programming as per the text... well the
fourth guy who waited to post at 9:01 am is pretty much outta luck until next
week... if he's lucky.

One interesting observation of the article is it equates all online courses as
being the same. The state-U MBA program, the regional hybrid private-U CS
degree, the 250K person MOOC classes, all the same. If they tried that with
brick and mortar they'd be laughed at.

Also I feel based on experience the sympathy card was harder to garner
because, after all, its theoretically a 24x7 online class. You'd think
superficially that not having to be at a lecture hall at 2pm would eliminate
"flat tire" as an excuse, however, fundamentally, a flat tire eliminates a
couple hours outta your life, the specific time doesn't actually matter. If I
was going to do my classwork online at 3pm and instead spent my time at the
tire repair shop, it has to be realized that missing time at home is just as
damaging to productivity as missing time in class, if you're doing classwork
in both locations.

------
columbo
Of course it wont work when the idea is to simply take a not-so-great physical
concept (a course syllabus and weekly test structure) and just digitize it. It
doesn't matter what industry, this will always fail.

Online shopping, for example, isn't just a easy access to the products found
at a brick and mortar store; it is an entirely different way to shop. Amazon
realizes this and knows that sometimes people want cheap (hdmi cables) and
other times good quality (chef knives).

Khan Academy gets it. You don't take a 'math course' but you answer questions
and watch videos and you know how well you are doing in a general area. You
know when you should study something more and you know when you are solid.

I would love to see all online courses abandoned and instead follow a khan
academy approach. Drop the course idea and instead have thousands of goals
where each goal can be tracked by how well you handle problems.

I used to teach in colleges and the number one reason a student became
confused wasn't because they weren't as smart as the other students but
something small that they missed. It could be as simple as not knowing how ftp
works, or not being used to a *nix environment, or not knowing where
environment variables are set in a windows environment. This same person might
have decades of ide-based-java experience but struggle when asked to compile
on the command line. The khan academy approach would distill all of these
concepts into goals and would determine what should be your next area to study
(looks like you got lost on using ftp, let's cover a few videos of that before
we move into the next section).

~~~
VLM
"have thousands of goals where each goal can be tracked by how well you handle
problems."

My children are experiencing this in K12 math via xtramath as part of their
school curriculum. Reforms like this bubble up from the lower levels, so my
children will have decades of this method of teaching before I'll get to
finally experience it with advanced cryptological number theory or whatever.
You may be surprised at how heavily your new idea has long been implemented at
the lower grade school levels.

Three closely related, yet somewhat different examples are the * koan projects
where * is pretty much every trendy language, project euler, and traditional
paper and pencil Kumon math and reading classes.

------
mjt0229
The article fails to deal with selection bias. It never establishes that the
populations that enroll in online courses are sufficiently similar to the
populations that enroll in traditional courses that such things as attrition
rates, etc., can be directly compared.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Bingo.

------
tokenadult
It looks like every comment here is picking apart the reasoning of the New
York Times editorial kindly submitted here. The editorial includes a paragraph
relating a rather troubling factual assertion: "A five-year study, issued in
2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washington State community and
technical colleges. It found that those who took higher proportions of online
courses were less likely to earn degrees or transfer to four-year colleges.
The reasons for such failures are well known. Many students, for example, show
up at college (or junior college) unprepared to learn, unable to manage time
and having failed to master basics like math and English."

Taking the statement "Many students, for example, show up at college (or
junior college) unprepared to learn" (college-level subjects) at face value,
which I will because I have seen multiple sources that report the same
phenomenon, let's see if the editorial makes sense. The editorial does NOT say
that anyone has done a treatment/control study of taking beginning college
students of matched preparation and then having some take online courses by
random assignment while others take brick-and-mortar courses by random
assignment. It is that kind of study design

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

that would be necessary to blame the online nature of the courses for lack of
"success" (completing the course and going on to another course) by the
students in the course.

If bad preparation of students before they attend college drags down the
success rate in college courses (as seems plausible to me), then the policy
response is to research better preparation for K-12 students. Fortunately,
many researchers are working on that important issue.

[http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-
states/Pages/measures-...](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-
states/Pages/measures-of-effective-teaching-fact-sheet.aspx)

But if an online college course makes the difference between a college-age
student attempting to take a course versus not attempting the course at all,
and is meanwhile less expensive for the taxpayers who subsidize higher
education, let's give the online courses some more tries and attempt to refine
and improve those. This doesn't have to be an either-or choice. Students who
are adults attempt to find college courses while fulfilling their other adult
responsibilities, such as earning a living. Sure, let's improve courses for
learners at all ages. But let's not reject an entire learning model if it is
chosen willingly by some students who may not be able to choose any other.

------
jupiterjaz
This assumes that everything is just fine and dandy in the brick and mortar
college world. It isn't.

------
henrik_w
Also, in a lot of cases the choice isn't between taking a class online or
taking it face-to-face at a college. It is a choice between taking it online
or not taking it at all (for all sorts of reasons: money, geography, timing
etc).

Btw, I just finished one of the algorithm courses from Coursera (taken at
night, from Sweden, for free). The course was excellent, I've reviewed it
here: [http://henrikwarne.com/2013/02/18/coursera-algorithms-
course...](http://henrikwarne.com/2013/02/18/coursera-algorithms-course-
part2/)

------
pseut
Many of the comments here seem to be variations of, "I don't like editorials."
I don't either, but their main point and recommendation seems pretty
uncontroversial:

> _Colleges need to improve online courses before they deploy them widely.
> Moreover, schools with high numbers of students needing remedial education
> should consider requiring at least some students to demonstrate success in
> traditional classes before allowing them to take online courses._

They mention some studies (that I haven't read because I'm at work; I'm sure
they're not bulletproof) that are broadly consistent with that recommendation.
It would be great to have a truly randomized experiment, but that's unlikely
to happen (although one could approximate a randomized experiment w/out too
many ethical implications. For all I know the studies do that, but I don't
know).

But, as someone who almost never attended lectures as an undergrad, all of the
same arguments about online lectures can be made (and I have made) about
learning directly from the textbooks. Most people seem to find that difficult,
so I wouldn't be totally shocked to learn that there is a tangible benefit to
actually being in the same room as the instructor and asking for clarification
at the moment of confusion.

Disclaimer: I teach at a university. For the 250 student intro lecture I
teach, I would be unsurprised if it could be taught just as well online, but I
would want decent data on it before making up my mind. For the small classes I
teach, I'd be surprised.

------
DataWorker
A silly article by someone with an obvious bias.

Those who opt for online courses at community colleges are:

    
    
       Those with childcare barriers (poor Moms)
    
       Those with 1 or more full time jobs
       
       Those who are intimidated by the college atmosphere
    
       ELL students
    
       Disabled students
    
       Those who want easy education with little effort put
       
       Those living in rural areas
    

These are the groups least likely to succeed. The selection bias in this case
is impossible to get around without a legitimate RCT.

It's eye opening to see the backlash against an emerging trend that does
nothing more than offer educational opportunities to more people at a
substantially lower cost. Who loses? The guy writing the editorial most
likely.

------
marknutter
So the crux of this argument is that students who are struggling in
traditional brick and mortar colleges struggle even more when taking online
courses, and this is supposed to be damnation of online courses? Yes, of
course there are students who need the extra hand-holding and support that
personal, face-to-face attention and tutoring provides. If they have the money
to pay for that very expensive service, then I say go for it. If, however, a
student is a self-starter and doesn't require one-on-one attention to
effectively learn, they should be able to get accredited for far cheaper than
they can today.

------
tshile
Sounds to me like the bigger issue is with the people taking the classes. I've
taken a few online classes, and it was hard because it requires that you be on
top of the work; otherwise the whole class can quickly slip away to a point
where you can't catch up and have any expectation of decent results in
knowledge gained or grades earned.

Not every class should be taught online, not every professor should teach
online, and not every student should take online classes. That doesn't mean
online classes are inherently bad; they're just different and require
different people/circumstances to provide a successful experience.

------
meej
I obtained my MSLIS via UIUC-GSLIS's online program, known as "LEEP".
<http://www.lis.illinois.edu/academics/leep>

It is somewhat unique among online education programs in that lectures are
streamed live on a schedule, instead of consisting of a set of recorded
videos. They are recorded, but students are expected to attend the live
lectures, which involves signing into a chat server much like IRC. Relying on
the recorded lecture archives often means missing out on live group activities
conducted on the chat server during class.

It was an excellent program, superior to my on-campus undergraduate
engineering school experience in some aspects. In particular, I appreciated
how the chat-based lecture attendance allowed students to ask and answer
questions without interrupting the professor, which allowed us to learn from
each other. In cases where students might not have an answer, the chat
transcript allowed the professor to answer questions during breaks. There were
also a set of web-based forums for each course, where students could hold
discussions and ask questions between lectures.

The only downside is that the live online lecture model has sort of ruined me
for the recorded video model of online education. I keep signing up for
Coursera classes and then not having the motivation to watch the lectures.

------
stinky613
Does an editorial titled "The Trouble With Online College" make no mention of
colleges that only operate online? That seems... odd, I guess.

Ignoring that bit of my personal pedantry, this editorial was disappointingly
shallow. I get this is a newspaper editorial and not an essay, research paper,
or some sort of manifesto but still...

The author's position seems to pivot entirely on class-time (or, more broadly,
face-time) with teachers. I posit that there are many more equally-pressing
issues.

For instance (anecdotally speaking), first-year students either know what
formats and incarnations to expect from traditional classes, or they are able
to quickly learn what to expect; online courses often have very little in
common with one another.

Online courses differ in interface, necessary/compatible software and
hardware, and how and what course information is available. Online courses are
still young and improving.

I'm still not sure how online course developers will ultimately tackle the
most fundamental issue with online courses: trust. How can you as a teacher or
course administrator be confident that the person on the other end is who
he/she says he is and that the person isn't using contraband resources?

I was hoping for more depth in this article because determining and
implementing the appropriate mix of technology in education is objectively
necessary.

------
samsolomon
Is it possible online classes are difficult to make it through for the same
reason that traditional classes are difficult to make it through - because the
classes are boring?

I've tried several online classes, ranging from Sustainability to JavaScript,
and I've found them all incredibly boring. Perhaps, we need to rethink the
value of having someone lecture for an hour several days a week.

The best way I've learned to do things is to go out and try it, and figure out
why it did or didn't work.

------
Kaivo
I'm currently doing a CS degree entirely over the web at my local university.
I already completed 4 classes and I have an easier to time to focus and learn
than when I was in class with other students, in which case I was constantly
distracted by social interaction.

>> _The research has shown over and over again that community college students
who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw
than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned
tuition dollars and get nothing in return._

I'd be interested in seeing the full statistics here. In my case, the course
material is the same online than for the in-class students, and the exams are
the same, given at the same date, same place. I've seen the exam's average
result for both online and in-class groups on my math course last session, and
the average was higher on the online group.

Maybe it depends on the type of online course. I'm doing synchronous courses,
but can watch the replays at any time. We have a web site dedicated for each
course, with forums and can always easily talk with the teachers and get quick
answers for anything. I believe asynchronous courses would be much harder to
follow.

------
toddnessa
I am taking two classes at the moment and the only option the college offers
for them is to take them online. (One is supposed to be a hybrid but only in
theory.) What I have found is that the workload in one of these online classes
actually compares to one of my MBA grad school classes. Many times the
assignments do not have adequate instruction provided from the text in order
to complete them. For these reasons, I have been left me really desiring that
this was a traditional class with a real instructor and instruction provided
in the classroom. There is something to be said for classroom interaction for
sure. It would at least have been nice to have been given an option to take
the class in an actual classroom setting. This way I could actually be taught
the content rather than left trying to figure it out by with a learning lab
instructor or by myself.

------
Atropos
In my 5 years of University in Germany, probably 95% of my courses had at
least 300 students and there are exactly 2 professors who know me as more than
"the random person who just raised his hand". Simply recording the lecture
with a camera and putting the content online would have already been a huge
improvement. Obviously closer supervision/contact with professors is a
superior model, but sentences like "these students need engagement with their
teachers to feel comfortable and to succeed" sound almost laughable from a
German perspective. Would I have enjoyed the personal experience of a good US
school? Probably yes. Would paying $20,000 per year in tuition for the
privilege instead of no tuition at all have been worth it? In my case,
definately not!

~~~
droithomme
Yes, it's actually exactly the same in the US, despite the strange propaganda
claims in these daily anti-online-education articles that suggest US college
is like kindergarten, with the professor holding every student's hand at each
step of their mutual journey of self-discovery and personal fulfillment.

In real life, undergraduate classes at well reputed universities may have 100,
200, or even 800 students for some freshman courses. You may go the entire
semester and never once see the well known professor appear in class. Often
the entire class is taught by a TA who speaks English with an incomprehensible
accent due to his recent arrival in the US as a grad student being his first
exposure to the language.

The notion that american professors closely and personally interact with and
tutor each student, with special focus on those from underprivileged
backgrounds so that every student has the same chance at success, an idea
being pushed in these articles, is complete nonsense and simply does not
happen in large US institutions.

------
the_watcher
The article seems to unfairly groups multiple types of online courses
together. Many of community college online courses that students withdraw from
or fail are very different than the Stanford courses one could take on
Coursera. Also, the article mentions students wasting money on these courses,
but doesn't mention the possibility that some of the students who failed the
online courses would have enrolled and failed in offline courses and wasted
substantially more money. Perhaps the reason the completion numbers are lower
online is that it offers students who are unsure of their ability to commit a
low cost trial run? These are all questions I'd like an article like this to
investigate.

------
maloofma
I think it is important to realize that most students take online courses in
college for classes they don't like. Most my classmates take classes they find
interesting in person and classes they just want to get done with because it
is a required class online. This may explain why students do poorly in online
classes, because in general they are classes they don't want to take in the
first place and are therefore unmotivated to do well in the class. I have
plenty of friends who failed their online English class but use Khan Academy
to learn something for fun and do well in it. The difference is that the
latter is a subject they care about.

------
yannis
There is a possible flaw in the statistics. In many cases it is simply ...the
customer walking away. (not the student failing)

For example not everyone is after "credits". I have enrolled for some online
courses and have found the quality of instruction low, or the pace wrong for
me. As my purpose was to increase my knowledge, I just bought a couple of
books on the topic (much quicker and more in depth). On a current course with
coursera, I am enjoying the course and the lecturer Michael S. Roth,
especially as the course is diametrically opposite to my day to day working
life. Not too sure if I can afford the time to write the essays for the
assignments.

------
ChuckMcM
At first I thought the writing had taken another hit at NYT and then realized
it was an editorial. I don't doubt that for students who show up at college
unable to learn, having those students attempt to learn via online teaching
would be similarly hard if not impossible for them.

The editorial is worried that 'online college' will disenfranchise those
students, but there isn't any evidence to suggest it would. Nor is there any
evidence to suggest that online course would suddenly replace teach student
interaction in all colleges.

So basically I am left wondering what was the point.

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droithomme
The supposed 90% attrition rate for free classes always cited in these
articles is irrelevant. (It's also odd to cite the MOOC rate and then
instantly change tact mid-article to analyze instead paid classes with an
online component that are offered by colleges: it likely gives readers the
idea that the paid classes for credit offered to enrolled college students
also have a 90% attrition, which is not established.)

Significant numbers of people who enroll in MOOCs do not intend to complete
every class they enroll in. And that is perfectly fine. There are various
reasons. Some are curious about the material. Some are only interested in
watching some of the lectures. Some are teachers checking out the MOOC scene
but not wanting to spend the time to do assignments. Some are 10 year olds
doing it on a lark. Some are people who realize they don't have all the
requirements after trying a few problem sets. Some sign up weeks in advance
but by the time the class starts they have forgotten about the class, become
too busy, or lost interest. Even among the serious students many will sign up
for 10 classes at a time, then end up sticking with the ones they find the
most fun or interesting. None of these cases are where the class has failed.

The real numbers to look at are the number of people who successfully complete
the programs. These numbers are astounding and encouraging. Often 6000
students each time will pass with flying colors. There are no tuition based
programs that come any where near that level of amazing success. In many cases
the classes have provided to thousands of people throughout the world, at
nominal cost, Ivy League quality classes from colleges such as Princeton,
Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Yale. Most of these are people who would never be
able to attend these universities or have access to this teaching.

As far as the unmotivated students, they also fail at a high rate in brick and
mortar classes as well. Excepting the top colleges that pre-filter out
unmotivated applicants, college attrition for freshmen is very high
nationally. 37 million americans have started college but left without
completing a degree. Nationally half of people starting college drop out. This
is for people who are at least motivated enough to be willing to pay for the
experience and arrange their lives so they can physically attend classes in
person.

What percentage of MOOC enrollees that start with the needed prerequisites and
have a serious intention and time to complete the class completes it? Probably
about the same, but we don't know since no one is keeping track of this number
yet.

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michaelochurch
It seems that the NYT article misunderstands what online courses are for. The
purpose isn't to _replace_ four-year undergraduate college, but to serve the
vast majority of people for whom that model is impractical. There are a lot of
people who want to learn things who can't afford this American institution of
playing aristocrat for the 4 years in which society judges them to be
economically marginal.

The 90% attrition rate of MOOCs, by the way, is the result of a course model
that's still being fleshed out and the fact that, absent a high degree of
previous investment, social expectations and abundant free time, very few
people are going to stick with a long-term program. Ten percent yield for a
free MOOC is great! For my part, I think the question of whether these courses
should be served synchronously (with schedules and deadlines) or
asynchronously is unclear, and I'm not sure how the trade-offs of each will be
balanced. It's an exciting space, though.

I don't think online education will replace the university, but it might
replace the institution of four-year college. Academia brought this on itself.
The majority of the leading professors have long held the attitude that
teaching is commodity grunt work and research is what they really do.
Technology is responding, by bringing teaching to the masses. If the result of
this is that middle-class families stop dedicating 850 millihouses per student
to tuition, then I can't see how that's a bad thing. I'd like to see
undergraduate college live through this, but I wouldn't mind seeing it shrink
back to something for people who are genuinely interested in learning the
material, and something _affordable_ for people of average means.

