Traditional And Online Education: Finding The Right Balance

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Many students aspiring to pursue higher education wonder whether they should go for traditional on-campus learning or online learning. However, the question is not about choosing between online or on-campus learning, when we focus on making higher education widely available and more affordable. It is about how much we need to use among both options.

Online Or On-Campus

This was one of main issues discussed by a panel on college affordability and access at a National Education Week “Thought Leader Summit”. As online courses and competency-based qualifications are becoming more popular in the higher education sphere, now students need to determine whether the campus experience, including fraternities, football, friends and other experiences are worth the huge amounts of

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money than the far more affordable alternatives, suggested one of the panelists.

Phil Bronner, co-founder and CEO of Quad Learning, said “For traditional schools, the cost of those institutions is not going to change in the short term.” He added “Because of health care and other things, the price will go up. The only way a parent or a student can get a lower cost is to transfer in lower cost credits.”

Finding A Balance

Bronner believes that in future our students will keep earning degrees from conventional colleges and universities; however those learners will end up spending much less time than at brick-and-mortar colleges than before.

According to Burck Smith, founder and CEO of Straighterline, more needs be done in order to assist our students realize the real price of earning a degree. Smith said, “If you think about how many ways we—the country and higher education—have to confuse what the actual price is, it’s really sort of astounding. You’ve got the list price, net price, scholarships and discounts … not to mention what kind of loan terms or what kind of Pell grant you get, whether the loans are dischargeable or not.”

About the planned college rating system of the Obama administration, which aims to support future college students take informed decisions regarding which institution to attend, Smith said “It’s almost impossible to know what you’ll be paying. Until you can actually make the price clear, ratings aren’t going to do much.”

Focusing On Competency-Based Learning 

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Chris Etesse, CEO of the online course material providing company Flat World Knowledge, propagated the importance of competency-based education. It allows learners to study at their own pace over online courses which simply “map back” to courses with credit-hours and meet at particular periods.

Competency-based learning allows students, especially adult learners with work and family commitments, to study while in transit or during lunch hours or whenever they get free time to do coursework. Etesse said “That’s where we’re going to get the benefit … when we allow students to learn the way they act in real life.”

What do you think? Share your views and opinions with us by commenting below. We would love to hear from you.

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