Invisible Adjunct hosts an excellent debate in the comments section on a post by Laura of Apartment 11D, who predicts that mid-level universities will become obsolete.
I’m going to make a Jules Verne prediction for the future. In the next 10 to 15 years, many of the mid-level colleges are going close and reopen as cyber schools. The University of Phoenix has been very successful at it. The technical colleges have already started shifted their courses from the classroom to the monitor. It’s much more profitable. No campus upkeep. Less faculty. Large classes. Students also like it, because they can fit their courses into their work schedule.In twenty years, a traditional college education with dorm rooms and intramural sports will only be for the very rich. Harvard will always be Harvard. Yale will always be Yale. But Fairleigh Dickinson University in Paramus, New Jersey is going to shut their doors and put in some high speed internet cables. The rich will have their schools, but everyone else will telecommute.
A cybercollege isn’t going to have much of a football team. Many 18-year-olds looking for a place to grow up will want to go to a brick-mortar-and-ivy college; they probably lack the self-discipline for an all-cyber set-up. However, many older students will prefer the convenience and affordability of telecommuting for credit.
On the flip side, the Wall Street Journal has a story about universities bringing back Friday classes to make better use of classroom space. Professors are told to schedule quizzes on Fridays, so students have to show up. Students complain it’s cutting into their party time.
I suspect that a large number of cyber-colleges will also close not too long thereafter. The problem comes down to what I feel is a fundamental law of education
“If there isn’t someone visibly putting effort into teaching the subject, then the students won’t put the effort into learning the subject.”
In other words, for the vast majority of students, if there isn’t a human being actually teaching the stuff in real-time, then there isn’t likely to be much learned. If it was otherwise, a university education could consists of a good library and access to experts. Sadly, only the very few self-motivated students will learn significantly under those conditions.
My father (a university prof) remembers the huge expenses that universities made to record the best lecturers in ideal studios. They spent millions to equip classes with with bunches of TV monitors.
In the end, they abandoned the whole thing before the end of the first semester.
No live human being = no effort to learn.
Somehow I think that we are about to see history repeat itself.
(Of course, if you are talking about older students, this may change, but I’m fairly sure that mature students are a pretty small piece of the pie.)
Re Friday classes: You haven’t known Hell until you’ve tried to get a discussion going among a bunch of undergraduates during a 3 p.m. Friday discussion section. It was a semester’s worth of teaching to Stonehenge.
The University of Phoenix has a very motivated student body - the typical student is currently employed and needs a new piece of paper to move head, in some cases the keep the job. I’ve also seen some of the call center an others in largely dead end jobs look to Phoenix as a ticket out of the basement.
Besides, how can the student who needs a state school in New Jersey for remedial Ed participate in online classes?
I have a problem with the “only for the very rich” line - what always gets ignored in any discussion of the costs of college is the fact that all of the expensive, top-tier schools offer need-based financial aid. That’s how I managed to attend the University of Chicago for just under 10k per year - roughly the same as if I had gone to one of the SUNYs. The fact of the matter is that the student body of the elite schools are more economically than they have ever been.
The SATs, I might also add, were a major factor in this shift. By creating an objective standard to measure applicants, talented kids were able to distinguish themselves regardless of their financial background or family connections. That’s something that critics forget - the SAT is the best friend for a working-class overachiever attending a public school.
What I meant to say above was “elite schools are more diverseeconomically than they have ever been. Ack.