Back some 20 years ago, online college courses were talked about as if they would soon largely supplant face-to-face courses. Many of the offerings fell flat, however, and now there is much less discussion about them. One reason why is that they have evolved and improved. Now, many colleges and universities have online programs that fit nicely into their curricula.
In today’s Martin Center article, Jenna Robinson and Adam Kissel write about this development:
Online learning comes in many forms—some better than others, as we learned in 2020. Leveraging effective tools is essential to making it work well for students and schools. In the past decade, North Carolina universities have tested various programs, with varying degrees of success. In doing so, the state has come closer to realizing the large potential benefits of flexible online learning.
The market for online coursework has worked nicely, but the Department of Education is interfering, just as one would expect. Robinson and Kissel continue:
For one thing, the U.S. Department of Education has sought to interfere with and regulate a wide variety of partnerships between universities and ‘third-party servicers,’ leading to uncertainty in the online-education space that has inhibited innovation, ultimately hurting students. The department’s effort is part of a broader departmental animus against for-profit actors of all kinds in education.
Perhaps online higher ed will improve more rapidly in the future, providing that a new leader at the department is less interventionist than Secretary Cardona.
Our authors conclude:
Online education continues to evolve rapidly. Smaller universities can keep up by finding technology partners to provide OPM services. Regulators, though, cannot keep up and should not try. The best thing for regulators and legislators to do is stay out of the way and let facilities—public, private, for-profit, non-profit, or PPP—adapt, fail, or succeed on their own merits.