Online College Classes On the Rise

Online education is on the rise throughout the U.S. Does this make higher education more accessible, and if so, to what degree?

Online college classes are becoming more poular every year. To a large degree, many of the students in these classes are nontraditional, older students who would not be able to attend college without this relatively new option. Here's an interesting article about the growth of online college courses among nontraditional students in the Seattle area:

Seattle Students Flocking to Online Study

To what degree is this a positive thing? Overall, I think the positive benefits of online classes definitely outweigh the negatives. Access to education is paramount to the quality of a democracy. Not everyone has the money or life circumstances that allow them to spend four years of their lives on a college campus in their teens and early twenties. For people with young children, online education can suddenly open up a world of new options.

However, I worry that as online classes expand, it may create educational class disparities in new ways. Will we reach a point where the "haves" get a college education in a traditional classroom, and the "have nots" only have access to online learning? If this becomes the case, it seems likely that the quality of online education will suffer, and that employers won't take online education nealry as seriously as they should.

The thing is, online learning works fabulously for many students-- both nontradition and traditional. And for some students, it's not an optimal way of learning at all. (Here's some thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages to online education). A truly accessible educational system would make both traditional classroom learning and online distance learning affordable and available to everyone, regardless of their learning styles.

In other words, the growth of online higher education seems quite promising, but it' shouldn't be seen as a panacea to our educational problems.