Online Learning Displacing Bricks and Mortar

Online learning...“has been growing very fast,” Dr. Poley says. Students appreciate the flexibility to be able to take courses whenever they want, allowing them to keep their jobs or avoid paying baby sitters or commuting to campus as often.

What’s holding back more online courses, she says, is the lack of good broadband Internet options in some places, especially rural areas.

What may be evolving, Poley says, is a “home institution model,” in which students take introductory courses online but come on campus for work in their major field and for graduate study.

....A study of 12 years of online teaching by SRI International on behalf of the US Department of Education [ATTN: PDF]concluded earlier this year that “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

What’s more, this wasn’t true only of lower-level courses. “Online learning appeared to be an effective option for both undergraduates … and for graduate students and professionals … in a wide range of academic and professional studies,” the study said. __ CSM

The cost of higher education is skyrocketing much faster than inflation. Universities increasingly view their mission as one of indoctrination rather than education. Diversity training, speech codes, groupthink cult indoctrination etc. have become a central part of a modern university experience. This leaves less time to expose students to the broad range of great ideas of human science, art, history, and thought. Rather than helping students learn to navigate the turbulent thoughtways for themselves, universities attempt to stamp the mindset of professors and staff onto the plastic minds of young students. [see FIRE]

Parents and students can easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bricks and mortar education that leaves the student less prepared to deal with the real challenges of the future than when he began -- and financially in debt. For most of these, a better investment would be to skip the expensive indoctrination and plot their own course to competence, often using online educational resources.