It was once thought that online learning would sweep away old-fashioned college coursework, but that hasn’t happened. Online education has, however, carved out a considerable place at many colleges and universities.
One of them is the University of Southern California (USC), and in today’s Martin Center article, Professor James E. Moore explains the rocky road the university has traveled with regard to its online presence.
A fairly recent development at USC is the Bovard College. Moore writes:
Bovard College serves only online master’s students and has no full-time faculty. New, part-time personnel deliver all instruction. Master’s degrees offered by Bovard College are in highly applied, career-oriented subjects not traditionally captured by any of USC’s 22 other schools. Bovard admits students completing any undergraduate degree and requires no standardized test scores for admission. Bovard degrees require only 24 units, the minimum permitted by the university and fewer than needed for any other USC master’s programs. Finally, the provost’s office formulated the curricula for Bovard’s degree programs without substantive input from regular or other full-time USC faculty members, despite content concerns raised jointly by the deans’ offices of the Marshall School of Business and the Viterbi School of Engineering.
Moore calls Bovard College “a mystery” to the rest of the university. It seems to rake in money, but what’s the educational point?