College for $99 a Month (Online Education Could Be Catastrophic for Universities)

Washington Monthy ^ | September / October 2009 | Kevin Carey

[OldBullrider]

Homeschooling costs....one child 2nd grade - one child 5th grade = 2 children per year(Year round school) The 2009 year will be less.

Books, Pencils & Paper, Misc supplies, Extra curricular activities: $1403.00 a year (2008 costs for 2 children)

Costs associated as these children mature: Priceless!!!

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.

My grandson asked if he would be able to attend college from our home on-line, I told him more than likely it will be possible. At least I can keep an eye and an ear tuned to what this youngster is being taught.

[Rumplemeyer]

Me as well

[wintertime]

There are only a few courses. Too bad.

Otherwise I might have been interested.

[stevio]

I’ve always wondered why society rants about the expense of medical care, and energy, but never questions the expenses of the legal and educational establishments, most of which could be learned through books and on-line courses.

Me too. Especially when the tuition goes up more than the cost of living. I guess not enough sheeple are spoon fed this fact.

[wintertime]

A whole lot of professions would only need to actually be physically in a classroom or apprentice type setting at the end of their academic careers.
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Large portions of the first two years of professions such as medicine and dentistry could be done on-line. Even large portions of the 3rd and 4th years could be done online at home. The students could take the courses, be tested at a Sylvan Center, and schedule blocks of time for the needed hands on labs, and rotations. Even in dentistry, many of the projects of the first two years could be done at home and FedExed to a school for evaluation. The dental students could show up in person for special hands-on testing.

[wintertime]

What was the name of the university? I would like to check their website.

[wintertime]

I’d love to see this done for high school as well.
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Check out the BYU high school courses. My homeschoolers used a few. They were excellent.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Great article! Cannot wait until the Marxist dominated Universities in this country are forced to dismiss their favorite commies from conducting their propaganda indoctrination and either end the courses such as women’s studies and black studies and whatever other “studies” as have been institutionalized since the 60’s in most every University in the country.

Thanks for the information also - and best of luck to all entrepreneurs in this field!

[Recovering_Democrat]

sounds good to me. Crush the academic monopoly.

[wally_bert]

No doubts there. The typical brick and mortar university is so out of date.

[Rashputin]

Now if we could replace public schools with online education...cut our damn property taxes by 60 to 70 %...sweet!"

That's what the government should be doing in a republic, taking advantage of every new technology to reduce the cost of government and give more responsibility back to citizens when centralization is no longer helpful for one task or another. Give people back their damn lives and quit trying to pretend that the imbeciles in government know what's best for everybody.

Just like the friggin "health care" crap, you'd think that an honest to God insurance policy purchased for each citizen at the time of their birth would solve the whole health care issue. Noooo, we need a new bunch of agencies, panels, decisions on who should be taken out and shot, and lots of other crap. Do you have any idea what kind of gold plated policy you could get each citizen for 1/10 the kinds of money these people are talking about? And I mean everybody, not just the currently uninsured.

You're right about the schools for sure. We're paying through the nose for buildings, employees, support personnel, transport personnel, food service personnel, and all those hundreds of thousands of folks get regular retraining, up training, and paper training. There's a superior solution sitting in nearly every home and for those who don't have one, giving them one costs less than having a Phd wipe his butt.

Unfortunately, there's no way to pretend that the geeks who keep a network up for others to use to educate themselves need bimonthly trips to exotic destinations for a conference on, "how to effectively communicate the proper narrative to people who have deformed left index fingers". Make people available online or even some evenings or afternoons for those that need extra help. This "unionized educators" is an oxymoron if there ever was one, they can't teach anything except extortion and they're so stupid extortion that they're choking the goose to death. How can they call themselves, "educators" if they're so stupid themselves that they didn't realize they pricing themselves out of work?

I hope things have festered to the point that everyone knows how bad it is and helps lance this infected carbuncle we call "the federal government". Otherwise, it's going to be really ugly when it bursts and people are killing one another to avoid the oozing slime.

Regards

[achilles2000]

“I also hope the Internet can continue to expand to home schooling...”

Homeschoolers have been using online and other forms of distance learning for years. e.g. AOP, Escondido Tutorial Services, BJUP and ABEKA DVD and satellite based products, Seven Star Academy, Texas Tech online. There are many beyond these examples.

[keats5]

That’s exactly what I was thinking. This would mean a more conservative America.

[keats5]

One of my kids is dyslexic. We tried everything from intensive home attention, private tutors, special classes... you name it. He took an online Sylvan course and that changed everything. For him, it was much more effective than the a one-on-one tutor using the same curriculum.

[5by5]

It seems there’s enough upside in the business model that Straightline could just buy a small respected college and fold their business in.

[NonValueAdded]

The bricks and mortar crowd will hold this off with the accreditation racket for a while. The only saving grace for them is that the textbook racket is not harmed.

An online education CAN be much more rigorous than the classroom and your efforts are very measurable. The ability to timeshift, take classes while on business travel, and really collaborate with your classmates makes this very effective if the instructor is on the ball.

[phs3]

Ping

[kalee]

ditto :)

[trevelyan22]

The cash cow under threat here is the commodity lower-level course taught from a textbook by a graduate student or post-doc instructor. These courses are taught at low cost and make lots of money. Losing them may put significant price pressure on universities forcing them to cut back on research funding.

It seems inevitable that the market will eventually erode this market, which might tank these institutions as research organizations anyway. Research funding will probably be cut before administrative funding is, anyway.

Full disclosure: I run a business that teaches how to learn chinese online. I'd be happier not to have to compete with subsidized public courses in my own industry, but am not sure how I'd feel about this playing out in fields like medicine.

[dennisw]

hmmmmm I only graduated 3rd grade