Industry News: Online Students Increasing in Numbers

CNN.com has an interesting article titled Report: Number of students taking online courses rises

The article indicates that one in six students enrolled in higher education took at least one online course this fall. In fact, 850,000 more students were enrolled in online courses this fall than last fall–an increase of 40%

Also, the same article reports, 62 percent of chief academic officers surveyed said they felt students learned as well or better from online courses as they did in face-to-face courses.

Yet, right outside of my window on the Bloomsburg campus, they are building a new building for more and larger classrooms. It seems to me that colleges and universities are out of touch with the reality of the educational shift occurring in this country. The current cost structure of the physical plant of colleges and universities is too high. Therefore, tuition is too high and many parents can’t afford to send their kids to college…yet colleges keep building more physical spaces while students keep taking more and more online classes. (can you say…disconnect?)

It kinda reminds you of Ford. Who, in spite of the obvious signs of impending increases in gas prices, kept building bigger and bigger SUVs believing that consumers would buy them forever.

Many industries like manufacturing, healthcare, stock trading have had to retool because of the disruptive force of technology–Academic institutions are next!

Colleges and universities are going to have to retool to deal with the impact of technology, the current situation is untenable in the long term. The same crisis that besieged manufacturing, healthcare and retail is going to take a bite out of academic institutions…sooner rather than later.

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Something else on the Web some people find useful are online dating websites, such as those who want to start dating after they just moved to a new area and don’t want to have to go buy some personals in a newspaper. Going online and searching for things like NY personals streamlines the process a lot.
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