The COVID-19 pandemic has turbocharged an already rapid trend of more and more higher education students foregoing physical attendance at brick and mortar campuses to opt instead for a growing number of excellent virtual online undergraduate and advanced courses and full-degree programs that are accessible from anywhere.
As a currently active university professor with more than a half-century of combined teaching experience at the University of Illinois and University of Houston, I fully recognize that there is no perfect substitute for direct face-to-face proximity. Nevertheless, "distance learning" — just as the case with an exploding remote business telework trend — is definitely here for good (and as some may argue, also for bad.)
Should pursuit of an online degree be in-line for your future or that of your daughter or son?
Each situation is unique, depending upon how clearly the individual's goals are established in advance, how mature and disciplined they are to pursue them, their particular financial and living circumstances, and the relative social and career value they attach to onsite versus online campus options.
Clarity of Life Goals and Values:
Is the individual searching for direction, or rather, are they driven by existing interests and passions?
A major benefit of attending active traditional campus life, especially for young people who are leaving familiar home communities for the first time, is the opportunity the experience affords exposure to new and broader life interests and career possibilities.
Other young entry-level students may already have a good idea of what field of interest and/or career path they want to pursue, and are seeking opportunities to enroll in programs that will offer the best preparatory foundations.
Similarly, university and college admission selections typically take an applicant's previous activity and achievement background into account. Whether pursuing acceptance to a top-rate physical or virtual institution, identifying life priorities you value most should guide where to begin looking.
Maturity and Self-Reliance:
Remote online teaching programs inherently require more independent self-discipline than those with direct interpersonal interaction.
Although various virtual offerings and methods differ, there are three general models.
In "synchronous distance learning" all students participate in regularly scheduled video platform classes much as if they were attending traditional lectures and discussions.
"Asynchronous distance learning" is the traditional model used by most online colleges to provide more flexible and convenient opportunities to access course materials whenever they want, without fixed-schedule limitations.
"Blended" or "flipped" programs enable students to digest content at their own pace before classes. This frees class time to participate in peer discussion groups and perform small-team tasks before receiving personalized face-to-face video collaboration with the instructor and other classmates.
Economic Circumstances and Strategies:
COVID-19 campus closures and reopening uncertainties, in combination with increased online options, are causing students and their families to recalibrate whether traditional onsite attendance offerings are sufficiently valuable to warrant correspondingly higher tuition and residence costs.
On the good news side, online programs will enable working and married students to pursue independent educational goals involving different institutions without relocating to distant or separate residences.
While remote options deny students access to sophisticated research laboratories, project fabrication workshops, and other common-use facilities, there are countless instances where electronic communications are perfectly adequate. Distance learning has been broadly adopted, for example, as the education and training method of choice among busy working professionals.
Campus Culture and Prestige Expectations:
Countless students and their parents are logically reassessing tradeoffs between the relative importance of social interaction advantages afforded by traditional fraternal, sports and other campus life activities and personal bonding contacts versus more diversified access to high-quality national and even worldwide academic degree-granting online alternatives.
Universities and colleges nationwide recognize this change, and are competitively responding with new and better Internet-connected offerings. Harvard and Stanford, for example, offer graduate level degree-granting programs that are accessible entirely online.
Although for-profit universities have been the quickest to adopt and exploit Internet technology to offer online degrees, the majority of public colleges now offer some academic programs completely online as well. Popular fields of remote study include business, criminal justice, health sciences, engineering and computer science.
Rethinking Higher Education Potentials:
As noted by Harvard Physics Professor Eric Mazur and former Nebraska governor and U.S. Senator Bob Kerry in a May 5 Wall Street Journal piece, "Higher Ed's Coronavirus Opportunity," the entire purpose of a college education has come into question in recent years.
Mazur and Kerry observe:
Almost all universities are treating the sudden forced movement online as a temporary problem. The question is not how they could adapt and innovate, but how to return to normal as quickly as possible.
The authors add that the pandemic lays bare the shortcomings of contemporary higher education:
Although there is ample evidence that online learning can lead to better outcomes for graduates, many students are reconsidering their plans for the fall, not sure if school is worth the money without the campus environment, social connections and athletics.
Those institutions, along with their students, parents and vital donors, must now look beyond this temporary COVID-19 pandemic crisis to improve learning. Their efficacy will determine which ones will lead us through this period of uncertainty to realize unlimited future opportunities.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 600 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.