Why Haven't Universities Made Online Education the Standard for Bachelor's Degrees and Beyond?
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
Online is only really better for lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. As you work your way up from default memorization, in person learning starts to shine.
Also, a bachelor's degree isn't supposed to just teach you hard skills, but also soft skills to make you a leader. It is a lot harder to teach leadership when students don't have to deal with people.
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
I think there's an element of prestige people are missing. At least in my country there were online options prior to the pandemic even, they however lacked the prestige / name recognition that other institutions had. Keeping mandatory in-person classes is another way to maintain this prestige, a differentiating factor, from the other institutions.
I also have to agree with most of the comments here. From an instructional point of view online classes are lacking, they can be less engaging, and pedagogically neutered. And in fields with lots of laboratory work, it's frankly impossible to get rid of at least part of the in-person educational component. Even for the humanities, having access to a large on-campus library of scholarly resources is integral to research.
In my personal experience I've been quite grateful to have access to a large archival collection, items that could not be shipped to remote students because they are too old to leave a temperature & humidity controlled environment. An online experience would prevent someone like me from doing some manuscript / original publication related research.
Now, I do think online options are helpful. ESPECIALLY for summer classes, where students may wish to retake a class while also moving away for summer work. But I do not think they should become the default, they should be an option where possible, but not the new normal.
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More profitable if you’re onsite.
Yeah, who is going to shell out $60k/year once the fig leaf of "world class facilities" is removed?
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
People ask the strangest things of pseudonymous internet randos instead of subject-matter experts.
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
Doing it well requires a different approach and skill set than in person learning, which can be difficult to retrofit into an existing institution, especially when budgets are tight. Plus established institutions tend to be a bit conservative about things. Even if the administration is on board, getting faculty to adjust their curricula and adopt the new technology can be near impossible.
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
Probably because being efficient and effective are not profitable. One requirement for my studies was being present. All those boring hours spent looking out of the window can be counted to study hours. That won't work when you can work in your own pace at home.
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Take it from someone who was at university during the pandemic, noooo it is not
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A lot of people here are saying it's cheaper to run in person...
For purely theoretical degrees, that's not true: having to maintain a campus is way more expensive than just doing things remotely, but for more vocational degrees it definitely is: imagine having to send a fume hood or injection moulder or oscilloscope out to every student as well as chase up getting it returned, along with shipping any hazardous materials like batteries, acid, biological samples etc. out, and verifying that people are actually handling those correctly?...
For science, medical and engineering degrees, online tuition is just going to produce people vastly underprepared for work in anything that requires the skills & knowledge the degree is meant to provide you, and as they're the most expensive programs to run you can subsidise them with the other degrees, but only if they're treated as comparable, ie being on the same campus.
For science, medical and engineering degrees, online tuition is just going to produce people vastly underprepared for work in anything that requires the skills & knowledge the degree is meant to provide
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learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Take it from someone who was at university during the pandemic, noooo it is not
Yup, it was a miserable time for me
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True, but it still surprises me that a lot of universities have enrollment caps. If you want to be present for a live lecture, in-person or telecast, then you should pay a premium. Otherwise you should be able to take online courses in the style of Udemy and sit in for proctored exams.
So basically grant yet again more privileges to rich people
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In my experience learning online is way more effective and efficient.
Why it is not the default option for universities?
Because it sucks
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