NEWSLANC EDITOR: We have often opined that the college and university systems have not evolved much since the Middle Ages when students had to travel to major center of learning for an educate.
There is nothing more saintly about the academic industry than others: They seek to protect their vested interests, which means plentiful jobs and high earnings for tenured faculty and administrators.
We have contended that most undergraduate courses could be available with only a fifth of the amount of time on campus and the rest through Internet and access to local labs. This is especially true for Pennsylvania’s state system spread across the Commonwealth.
The below article supports our contention. There needs to be a reform in higher education. But the impetus will have to come from elsewhere than academics who feed from the trough of high tuitions and state subsidies.
NEW YORK TIMES: …[O]ne highly ranked program, at Georgia Tech, has taken a very different approach. Its master’s in computer science costs less than one-eighth as much as its most expensive rival — if you learn online. And a new study by Harvard economists found that in creating the program, Georgia Tech may have discovered a whole new market for higher education, one that could change the way we think about the problem of college costs…
With one of the top 10 computer science departments in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report, Georgia Tech had a reputation to uphold. So it made the online program as much like the residential program as possible…
Many of the thousands of online students, by contrast, are constantly interacting on a website set up for that purpose, where [Professor Charles] Isbell can log on and help. “I can jump in and say: ‘No, you should be thinking about this,’ ” he said. “I spend more time helping them with assignments online than I ever do on campus. The experience for the students and for me is much richer online.” … (more)
