Devil’s advocate i hate online classes. It’s so much harder for me to contribute to discussion or ask questions when i have to do the extra click click steps, and much harder to maintain focus in a place like home where distractions are within arms reach. but i AM old so whatever, take it for what it’s worth

Online learning is very isolated and individualized. It’s possible to learn a lot, but what you learn isn’t as often checked against social realities.

College is a social environment meant to expose you to different people, views, and opinions. Other people have learned similar things as you, but in vastly different ways. Seeing and learning how others understand a topic and negotiating to a shared understanding is fundamental to mastering a topic.

These social aspects of mastery and integration with the community are necessarily a bit inefficient, but you need them to actually make your knowledge useful.

Many university programs require hands-on labs, but I agree that online classes are sensible for those that don’t.

If 1% of sign ups to university free online courses make it to the end of the course, it was wildly successful compared with normal free online courses. Human beings are fundamentally social animals.

I think there are a few that do. WGU comes to mind, and “online college” yields a bunch of results. I suspect those with a bunch of “brick and mortar” investments, are reluctant to declare them obsolete, but new colleges welcome the low overhead of online-first.

Because some of us actually like to learn something