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The man hours depends on how many classes instructor is giving. As for online, once you do the prep, make a presentation, and use that for rest of semester, each and every semester until something new comes up, and presenters want to make changes. But let's face, something new, and groundbreaking that needs an entire class to go over hardly happens.
Documentaries for TV is for entertainment, not efficient teaching. It has to be entertaining. The two are not comparable. Youtube Blogging is the highest level you need, and that is obviously done cheaply.
If you are in a major or want to get into a major, you have to choose specific classes. If you want to get into certain classes, you have to pass certain prerequisite classes. You cannot take certain classes if not in that major. If there are classes that are freebooted, and anyone can take anytime, I guarantee, it largely just filler, and not very informative.
Again, the MOOC companies tried that and failed. You think you have a new idea that's never been tried - put presentations on youtube or some other video-sharing site, and have that replace in-person lectures, and reach thousands at one time. Basically replace the teacher with a youtube channel. Yeah, other people had that idea!
It was tried by companies with a lot of venture capital behind them that included names like Peter Thiel, and IT FAILED. They found a place for themselves as new education/edu-tainment niche. They did not replace college. They tried to use it at San Jose State and it was a massive failure. Drop/Fail rates were so high that if a college tried to run that way, it would lose accreditation.
There's an intangible but VERY important aspect to education, and it's the community. We will all discover soon how important the community is after COVID19 has robbed it from us for the better part of 1-2 years.
Everything is going virtual, which is time and cost efficient. When people get adapted to online learning, it will be difficult to lure them back on campus. It is foreseeable that over 50 % of higher ed institutions will close down their campuses in the coming decade. Education reformation is in the making and thanks to covid!
there are a number of professions (ie medical) that need campuses and in person instruction that web-only instruction won't be able to satisfy....
The man hours depends on how many classes instructor is giving. As for online, once you do the prep, make a presentation, and use that for rest of semester, each and every semester until something new comes up, and presenters want to make changes. But let's face, something new, and groundbreaking that needs an entire class to go over hardly happens.
Except in many of those same STEM and tech fields where you're talking constantly moving targets and job markets. Computer science is a constant pivot and a lot of adjacent fields from engineering to graphic design are constantly changing the tools students need in order to do the job to modern standards.
Every component of remote/distributed/online education has been around a while and can be considered mature. If there was going to be any move to 'campusless universities' it would be far more significant than the few night-school Us around.
Some education is rote learning and programmed marching. Past a certain point, though, it needs to be a far more interactive, spontaneous environment. It also needs hands-on participation for nearly everything but Lit and IT. And good education will always be more than reading the book and regurgitating it onto scantrons.
Education in the US needs drastic reform, top to bottom. But I don't see any wholesale move to remote schooling.
A lot of schooling is not hands on. Most is not hands on. And think of the wasted time and expense just in commuting to get to a class room where so that you can be in person with a teacher. They have turned 'higher' education into a campus 'experience' much of which is not needed to learn anything. Mainly to attract students schools competed in building small town like atmosphere to live in. Sure, it creates an 'experience' which has mostly turned nightlife into a place to party. But hey, that's a lot more fun then learning at home.
If education becomes more online, other ways for like minded students to get together will develop with or without a campus. A campus is not required for that.
I'll simply reiterate/restate what I and others have said:
If you're talking about rote, info-cramming courses intended to generate hiring tickets, like nearly everything in non-lab STEM education (especially IT/CS), you're absolutely right.
If you mean almost any other discipline, field, or area of study, you're almost completely wrong.
The vague idea that all "real" secondary education is a subset of STEM is... pernicious.
It appears that a lot of people are considering the "online" or "video" learning as an "all or nothing" proposition. I think it could be a combination of the two which could achieve the same amount of learning, but at a much lower cost.
By using online or cd's or whatever, a person could eliminate the need to travel to a specific town/city for a large portion of the semester. However, depending upon the subject matter, the student would likely need to go to the university location for 2 or 3 weeks each semester for lab work and finals testing.
Again, the schedule could vary depending on the field of study, but I think that a lot of students would find it much more affordable and doable if they could spend 85% to 90% of their education time at home or in their own home town and 10% to 15% at the university.
As for missing out on the "experience" of being away from home and living in your own room or apartment for the first time, well, that can be accomplished in a variety of other ways. I got my first taste of it in the US Army, but I realize that's not for everyone. But for many, there are certainly less expensive ways of getting a college education than going away to college for 4 years while racking up $100K in student debt.
By using online or cd's or whatever, a person could eliminate the need to travel to a specific town/city for a large portion of the semester. However, depending upon the subject matter, the student would likely need to go to the university location for 2 or 3 weeks each semester for lab work and finals testing.
Again, the schedule could vary depending on the field of study, but I think that a lot of students would find it much more affordable and doable if they could spend 85% to 90% of their education time at home or in their own home town and 10% to 15% at the university.
The public universities have been running some graduate programs like that for twenty years at this point. I know someone who got her MLS from, I think, University of South Florida somewhere around 2009.
It’s one of those areas where it can work well for white collar folks with a full time job who need that next degree for a promotion but horribly for other populations who need more structure in a program to reach academic success
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