The New York Times’ lead editorial on February 19 was a slashing critique of online colleges.
The editorial ripped apart the hype and spin about these colleges.
Their attrition rates are 90%. And, “courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.”
Furthermore, research shows the high failure rates at these cyber-institutions:
“The research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online courses.”
If the online colleges are such a bad deal for adults, think how awful cyber-charters are for children. Children need human contact, not just bells and whistles or a disembodied voice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ve taken a few online classes for recertification. Some have been great and others poor. The one thing they lack is human interaction. It is difficult to get motivated when there is minimal stimulation and practically no human interaction. They only thing that kept me going was the fact that I paid for the course and I needed it to renew my license. So my question to the choir is: What makes adults think that children as young as six will thrive in front of a computer?
And here’s an article from today’s Oregonian (the main daily newspaper in my state) detailing how Oregon’s largest charter school graduated a visually impaired student who could not read and write. http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/02/oregons_largest_charter_school.html
My son benefited from the flexibility in scheduling that an online course offered, and in rural areas online instruction may be the only practice way to offer a rich curriculum to motivated students.
Diane, Do you realize that there are key words in your blog posts now which are pop up ads? For this post, when clicked, they lead directly to promotions for people to enroll in online courses. I don’t see them on this page but they are on the main page of your blog –which is something I don’t recall seeing there before today.
That is news to me. I don’t permit any advertising on this site. Thanks for the warning. I will ask my tech friends to fix it ASAP.
My tech advisor checked the site and could find no pop-ups. He thinks you may have pop-ups embedded in your software, by the usual nefarious means. Some world we live in.
Correction. I’m seeing them on this page now, too, in posts that include the words “online course.”
It’s probably your browser — you may have downloaded a plugin or other software that’s doing this. It happens to me once every few months.
I have pop-up blockers and I’m seeing this anyway in both IE9 and Google Chrome, but not in Foxfire.
Other Stuff,
I’ve had nefarious internet stuff make it through under my reallyreallynice virus software. I ended up having to wipe my entire computer and reinstall EVERYTHING. Per my tech husband’s suggestion, I now have 2 user accounts on my computer. One is my every day log-in with (and this is the important part) no administrator privileges. If I want to download something, all I need to do is enter the password for my Admin user account. This makes it a lot harder for bad internetz to sneak onto my computer.
If you don’t want to go through all that rigamarole, try running the Kaspersky anti-virus stuff…it’s written by an ex-KGB hacker and it’s pretty good.
My tech advisor says there are no pop ups on this site. He says anyone seeing them has a problem with their software.
Thanks, All. After running virus and malware scans that showed no problems on my computer, I did a lot of investingating and finally figured out that the problem was Coupon Companion: http://www.im-infected.com/adware/coupon-companion.html
I just want to warn people about using CNET for downloading software, because that’s where the Coupon Companion adware came from and they’ve had a lot of complaints about that. It is attached to a variety of different software programs and even when you indicate that you don’t want it, it installs on your computer anyways: http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7598_102-568380/coupon-companion-adware/
Thanks for the heads up re: CNET! I’m weary of downloading anything nowadays.
Four points:
First, on-line is not an either-or proposition. WIth Google Hangouts and Skype it is possible for students to have conversations with each other or with a tutor after watching a lecture or completing a series of on-line exercises. Small rural schools could share staff who could convene seminar sessions with on-line learners to keep them focussed and help support them if they have questions. And webinars (see below) are increasingly a way of life in the workplace.
Second: I believe the purpose of education is to develop independent self-actualized learners… and inasmuch as on-line learning requires the ability to work independently without extrinsic motivation I believe it has a place in schooling.
Third: Recertification courses for lawyers, medical professionals, and— as one commenter notes— teachers are migrating to the internet… in some cases as on-line courses and in others as webinars. The world of work is increasingly expecting employees to learn on line.
Fourth: If schools continue to teach-to-tests it is not difficult to envision a future where the parents of the 10% who can learn independently withdraw their children from school and provide them with homeschooling using resources like Khan Academy to supplement their own teaching. The unschooling and opt-out movements are making use of on-line resources as schools focus on test scores.
The NY Times editorial is clear about what constitutes online colleges. They refer to full-time online colleges, not blended learning or an occasional online course (most of which are boring and useless). The attrition rate is 90%. Read the editorial.
Anyone like to guess which school at my university will be the first to offer a completely on line masters program? It will be a cash cow.
The Ed school. It will probably take less credits than the other programs also. That is the plan here in Denver. The MA only requires 30 instead of 36 hours and can be done completely online. I’ve gotten some good things out of it–I could have, and do, get the same things just reading on my own. It is a silly hoop to jump through, but one that needs to be jumped through just the same.
Wilbert is correct. Wilbert might have gotten the same things just reading on your own, but you can not get an increase in salary without giving a piece of it to an Ed school.
I can’t disagree with that. Do they get that personal contact in big public schools? Not in my, albeit limited, experience. That close personal contact is what private schools sell, and which charters attempt to provide.
YES, online courses are indeed a sham. I wouldn’t take one unless pushed to the wall, and then, I’d be hard pressed to enroll. Btw, I don’t teach online courses…never have. Would rather drive and stay overnight at a site than do online teaching.
A little off topic, but some might be interested in this TED talk about PISA. International testing was once a hot topic here.
This is the link:http://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_schleicher_use_data_to_build_better_schools.html
I was very distracted yesterday by having to figure out why underlined key words that became popups suddenly appeared for me on this site, which took a full day of scanning, researching and attempting a wide variety of fixes until I was finally able to determine the cause and resolution. It turned out to be a stealth adware program called Coupon Companion that had come along with software that I needed to download the day before, in order to do some work for my job as a subject matter expert doing course design in higher education. So, I didn’t have time to respond to this thread, but now I have a little time to weigh in on the matter.
I am a veteran career educator, with multiple degrees and decades of experience in my field. I have been teaching in higher education for nearly twenty years. Due to health issues, I’ve had to work from home for the past five years and, in both of my jobs, I teach courses at online universities, both of which are for-profits, though one of them recently changed from being a non-profit after a buyout. Before this, I had taught some hybrid distance learning courses. For years, I resisted teaching in fully online programs and I turned down several jobs doing so, because I had many of the same concerns expressed by Diane and other people on this blog. However, I could not make a living working from home in other capacities (I’ve sold my stuff, at a loss, on ebay and websites for years). So, when another opportunity to design programs and teach online came up for me, I decided to take it,
I had seen how more and more traditional colleges were adding online programs and, because I was initially asked to design programs as as a subject matter expert, I thought that I could try to use my expertise to create and implement high quality online courses. This is what I continue to strive for on a daily basis. At one school, most of my students are unprepared people with no college training who are already working in the field as teachers, due to low state requirements, and many are in rural areas. At the other school, many of my students are in the military (or their spouses are) and they are deployed overseas. Online learning is what is most convenient for these populations.
I don’t work at any of the well-known big universities that charge high tuition and have very high rates of attrition. We have faculty governance where I teach, which affords us laterality in creating and implementing programs and courses, so we are similar in many ways to non-profit colleges. These schools shall remain anonymous, because I work with many diligent, dedicated professionals who also strive to deliver high quality programs and I don’t think they deserve to be criticized for trying to make online learning work for students who prefer that option. Yes, there are shortcomings that can be challenging to overcome, and online classes are not for everyone, but many schools provide assistance to help students find success, as bricks and mortar colleges do, and I think there is a place for online programs for adults. (I don’t, however, think this kind of learning environment is optimal for young children.)
I’m not even going to go into the abysmal pay that most faculty receive for this work, but suffice it to say that I’m currently involved in completing my second non-paid 4 week training course in the past year required by one of my colleges. Professional development is a high priority there. None of the half dozen bricks and mortar colleges where I taught before ever required faculty to engage in a month long training course, let alone twice in a year and for no remuneration.
I know there will always be detractors, but I hope that some people here come to realize that, as with the charter schools established and run by veteran career teachers who are committed to providing high quality programs for students, not every online college is just comprised of money grabbing corporate monsters.
Sorry, have to go do homework for my training course now…