Last week, the Charlatan published a feature discussing the advantages and disadvantages of attending online university. This piece was informative but may confuse readers, so I’d like to make something clear.
Online university is not university; it is an accreditation program designed to give the appearance of higher education. All it does is saturate the world in degrees that are besides the point of attending university.
The central purpose of university is not to produce degree-holding citizens ready to get jobs in their fields. The purpose of university is to challenge students to learn, innovate, and expand their borders. University has an important skill-building and social function that should not be underestimated.
A main argument in the feature article was the convenience of attending school online. The article cited an athlete with a limited time schedule as an example. With online university, that athlete can get some form of degree.
It is true—everybody who struggled through doing laundry in their dorm in their first year will tell you that university is not convenient. The goal of university is not convenience—school shouldn’t be set up to be convenient. Higher education should be a challenge—not only academically, but socially. From a life balance point of view, it shouldn’t gift wrap itself to individuals on an “as-needed” basis.
Anybody, desperate for friends, who joined an interest group in second year didn’t do it for convenience’s sake. But, that’s how the Beatles were started and how Spielberg directed his first film.
Before anybody points out that the Rolling Stones and Tarantino never attended a day of university in their lives—that’s beside the point, because Pulp Fiction certainly wasn’t written by contributing to online forums for a reading Tarantino skimmed over 30 minutes before hand.
This isn’t an argument for or against university degrees. Obtaining a degree is not for everyone. If going to a brick and mortar school doesn’t appeal to somebody, they shouldn’t be pressured to study online. Instead, they should try new things and travel the world.
Or, they could be like Tarantino: work at video store in Los Angeles and obsessively watch movies until they’re knowledgeable enough to be one of the best directors of all time. But, that’s not the discussion here—the discussion is what’s lost when we move university online.
A common response to the argument for online university is the affordability of online school.
This argument is fallacious and dangerous to free education, as it isn’t truly an argument for free university education. The cost of university is high and that makes it inaccessible to some, but the solution to this dilemma is not to give out a cheaper, dumbed down version of the experience to those not able to afford it.
Instead of delivering a subpar product, the obvious solution should be to make school more affordable for all. The same thinking can apply to student mental health. Student life can be exhausting and difficult. This is an issue has come to the forefront in the recent years.
On-campus mental health solutions are becoming more well-structured and better funded—this is a solution. Telling people to stay at home on their laptops and do school on their own schedules—this is not a solution.
The kicker of the article was that employability is unaffected by where the degree comes from.
But, as a society we can’t think in terms of valuing every degree like an expense sheet. Traditional university has been at the heart of so much change, and should stay as it is.
