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Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

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Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#81

Post by kube-system »

Swizec wrote: post #23
siculars wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You adjust for that by increasing number of enrolled students. Not by pretending you are delivering the same product.

Many universities’ core product is exclusivity and hard-to-get-into status signaling. Increasing enrollment disrupts that value.

It's more than just signaling -- the primary value of limited admission is providing greater networking opportunities and directing social and academic culture. Although, this is mostly lost by going online to begin with.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#82

Post by HarryHirsch »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #45
game_the0ry wrote: post #29

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class ro…

Higher education so far as I can tell now is indistinguishable from a cult. You have to pay homage to various absurd beliefs, contribute money to them, and worship the value of it no matter what the apparent merit of it is, and more than anything it has its heresies which appear to be self-directed development and independent thinking.

Too bad you went to a bad college. But that's the problem with the US model, there is no quality control (regional accreditation sets a very low bar, as the lawsuits the Department of Education show), and especially first-generation students have no clue how to make the best of the environment and what to do when things go wrong.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#83

Post by boojack »

It's mind-boggling how quick and drastic this shift is happening in terms of the value and importance of college education.

A gap year sounds like one solution. But chances are many of these people would have figured out something that work for them (greater impact, for less money) that others will adopt and follow.

Much of the impact will be here to stay.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#85

Post by Raidion »

war1025 wrote: post #67
User23 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it because it disadvantages the politically competent types while advantaging the technically competent types. Guess which category I fall into.

We are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of having robust technical discussions before implementing new features at my work. Something that previously would be discussed by the whole team is now either just implemented solo or discussed between one or two other people before moving forward. One of the big issues we've had, which I think we're getting better at, is not realizing how much others on the team are in…

This problem is identical to the one you get when you're in the office. If you have a conversation with someone that impacts the group, you need to either a) have that conversation in a public channel (like a team slack channel) and/or b) need to provide a set of notes from the 'meeting' to your team.

If you're used to being able to just tap people on the shoulder and get a group of people looking at something, you can still do that, just get everyone on a call. Working remote, those "collaboration" sessions start to look more like "interruptions", for better or worse. If your team doesn't have more robust communications strategies than being in earshot of each other, it's going to show.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#86

Post by kube-system »

rb2k_ wrote: post #27
stblack wrote: post #8

Schools still have a very large proportion of their fixed costs to cover. Schools and their lecturers need to invest in perfecting onlive delivery. Therefore it's not particularly realistic to expect schools to chop their top-line so soon. This is clearly a transitory and uncertain period. With time, possibly less time than schools hope, they will be forced to adjust prices downward.

Don't a lot of the bigger schools have billions of dollars in endowments that can easily cover fixed costs with their returns?

Yes, but they're already using that money.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#87

Post by 95_JL_OK »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #45
game_the0ry wrote: post #29

A couple of years ago, I was looking into MOOCs for tech education, Udacity's nano degree in particular. I remember stumbling across a video on Youtube where some Udacity folks were discussing the merits of online education with college professors and admins. What stood out to me was how vehemently the college folks were against online education. They were visibly livid - there was no way substituting a live class ro…

Higher education so far as I can tell now is indistinguishable from a cult. You have to pay homage to various absurd beliefs, contribute money to them, and worship the value of it no matter what the apparent merit of it is, and more than anything it has its heresies which appear to be self-directed development and independent thinking.

Interesting take that self-directed development is a 'heresy' of academia, even more so, it's considered hokey and invalid. I've noticed that's somewhat the case, there's an attitude that Formal Education is the only education. I didn't even go to a 'bad college' like another commenter suggested would have an attitude like this.

I've had students try to tell me off (with great vitriol too) for not being a 'real developer' since I lack a CS degree or a Software XYZ degree, despite having worked as a developer for a while. Even professors were skeptical about being able to break into the industry. I did manage it, and it was surprisingly easy to do, which made me scratch my head about where those beliefs came from in the first place.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#88

Post by kube-system »

randomdata wrote: post #31
stblack wrote: post #8

Schools still have a very large proportion of their fixed costs to cover. Schools and their lecturers need to invest in perfecting onlive delivery. Therefore it's not particularly realistic to expect schools to chop their top-line so soon. This is clearly a transitory and uncertain period. With time, possibly less time than schools hope, they will be forced to adjust prices downward.

One still cannot charge more than the customer is willing to pay. Of course, if the customer is willing to pay that much then it wasn’t too high to begin with.

Most are already charging more than the customer is willing to pay, thanks to scholarships/grants/subsidies/etc.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#89

Post by soylentcola »

mumblemumble wrote: post #12

Online courses lack class discussions that are key to making courses engaging. This sounds absolutely nothing like how things worked in the online degree I received. I don't know what is typical elsewhere. I will say, from watching my son's Zoom-based classroom sessions, that Zoom seems to be almost specifically designed to yield a poor classroom experience. For reasons that I believe would also apply to Skype, Googl…

I'm not a Cisco employee nor am I married to WebEx in every way, but I do a mix of IT support and media production at a university and WebEx has been very useful for us so far.

From what I've experienced, Zoom is like a basic WebEx "Meeting" where you join a conference and it's an online approximation of a conference room. WebEx has a subsection called WebEx "Events" with a few minor tweaks that make it more useful for classes or seminars.

Mainly it's just about how they set up "roles". In a Meeting, you're all mostly the same (aside from the host). In an Event, you schedule the thing, add a list of people who will be "panelists", and then they get a special password that allows them to log in with their WebEx account and join with elevated privileges.

The "host" role is still the "admin" and can change settings and assign roles. The "panelists" can turn on their own mics and cameras as they choose, and they can be given screen-share rights.

Everyone else gets a different link and joins as "attendees". Attendees can't turn on their own mics or cameras. They can post in the chat box and they can raise their hand to be given mic rights. It effectively prevents the issues of "bombing" online meetings with disruptive behavior and allows the presenters to do the teaching.

Re: Online classes are not worth cost of full tuition

#90

Post by fullshark »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #48

Online teaching works particularly well for the tutorial model, where you have a small number (<5) of students plus the instructor engaged in discussion. It fails completely for large classes. That's not dissimilar to the situation before the plague.

Wow I'd argue the opposite. Large classes / lectures I didn't even interact with the professor in person, might as well just get that info online. Smaller classes I found in person discussions much more valuable.
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