Traditional students rebelling against online education

[natshar]

I bet there are no millionaires in this forum, 

You would lose that bet.

I'm almost a millionaire. Just subtract $999,999

I'm surprised no one argued about my comment where I essentially said having $1 is almost a millionaire. I mean if we are going to argue about something...

[Life Long Learning]

I bet there are no millionaires in this forum, 

You would lose that bet.

I'm almost a millionaire. Just subtract $999,999

I'm surprised no one argued about my comment where I essentially said having $1 is almost a millionaire. I mean if we going to argue about something...

I just thought you were a "public school" trained math student.

[dfrecore]

About 20 years ago, I attended a graduation at a small, an extremely expensive college. One of the student speakers told of how, when she was very young, her father, a farmer, told her that if she wanted to go to college, she'd have to pay for it. The family simply couldn't afford it. She spoke of how she had to work as part of the financial aid, and all of the things she missed because of it. Further, she said that students SHOULDN'T have to work as part of the financial aid because of the school experiences that they missed, and the connections that couldn't be formed.  I rolled my eyes.

Now? I think she had a point. There was a study done about the post-Civil War South. Within a very short period of time (a generation?) the same folks who were rich before the war had regained their financial footing. They had a history of wealth. They knew folks who had been rich. They knew how to be rich. (Hey, we can get folks to work at slave wages and NOT have to buy them!) The connections they had - in today's parlance, their network - brought them back to where they had been.

The folks you meet in college are often the folks that become your initial network. It's  not the same on-line. While I think on-line courses, "testing out" etc. have their place in education, I do not think that they should replace the brick and mortar experience.

My husband has zero contacts from college, yet he has a very large network of people to who he connects with regularly in the business world.  He's in IT, and 100% of his jobs over the last 20 years have been gotten through work contacts.  NONE were from college.

You do NOT have to go to college to get a network going.  I'll bet that's not even the norm - you get your contacts from working.

[camjenks]

I think there are 2 points to consider here. 1) the added value of who you know when you go to a prestigious school, and 2) whether or not online is actually inferior for learning.

They may be right that they're getting more out of B&M. When you go to Yale or Harvard, you brush shoulders with the children of powerful, influential, and rich people. In my mind, that's the biggest advantage of these prestigious universities. I'm not saying the education is bad, but you get out of it what you put into it. Someone going to Purdue or Georgia Tech may come out with engineering skills to match someone at MIT, Stanford, or Cal Tech. It all depends on the student. There's nothing magical about any of those places. But if you're going to become a lawyer or politician or executive, the Ivy Leagues let you play lacrosse with the President's son, or row with an Oil Exec's heir. You don't get that from a Wesleyan MBA, and arguably that's the most valuable part of those prestigious schools.

When it comes to education though, online CAN be equal to or better than in person classes. Khan academy has been teaching high schoolers the math that their school failed to explain coherently for a decade, and Georgia Tech has concluded that students taking the online/mooc version of their courses get the same or better understanding of the material. I 100% learn better online at my own pace than in a classroom. So I'm sure it's possible, but I also understand it may not be the case for everyone.

[rachel83az]

Agreed, if you're going to a big-name school, you're mostly paying for the schmoozing you get to do. The classwork itself is (mostly) standardized; that's what accreditation is for.

Going back to (one of) the original articles, they say that the schools "often charge less" for online learning and that makes the online classes less valuable on the whole. I'm guessing that these people have never looked closely and seen the ones that actually charge you more to learn online than in person. The per-credit-hour cost may be the same, but the college has some sort of additional technology fee (sometimes multiple fees and/or fees per class) tacked on that they don't charge to people who come to campus. It's not as common now, but it is definitely a thing.

[bluebooger]

what they're rebelling against is all the forum posts they have to make now LOL            
1) make a 250 word post relating to this week's material -- use APA format 
2) make a substantial response to 2 classmates forum posts (at least 250 words each), provide sources and APA format 

LOL, they never had to do that kind of nonsense in brick & mortar classrooms