Online Learning Should Return to a Supporting Role
Winner-take-all economics and cost-cutting may make many in-person lectures obsolete, but the best education continues to be intensive, expensive and done in person.
As the coronavirus pandemic forces schools and college campuses to go online, the delivery model of education — largely unchanged for centuries — has suddenly been disrupted.
This may seem like the acceleration of a permanent shift toward online learning, but I have my doubts. In fact, economics tells us that technology will make in-person education more valuable than ever.
At the moment, teachers from kindergarten through graduate school are struggling to take their classes online, and the initial results are, understandably, spotty. But the longer this mass experiment continues, the more familiar remote learning will become. And, has been predicted for many years, online performances by superstars are increasingly likely to replace more pedestrian in-person lectures.
This can go only so far, because other important aspects of education are best done by teachers in more intimate settings. Educators will increasingly be tutors, mentors and role models, and economics also tells us that these features of a great education will not scale up.
Therefore, I worry not about the future of teachers but of students. I fear that on-campus learning will become an increasingly important quality differentiator, a luxury good that only students with means can afford.
Consider that online education has been around a lot longer than Covid-19. According to the latest estimates from the Department of Education, 35 percent of college students took at least one course online before the pandemic, and this share has been growing steadily for more than a decade.
This spring, schools and universities had to move courses online with only a few weeks’ notice, and the results have often been ugly. Students face significant challenges, such as spotty access to the internet or an unstable living environment. CONTINUE READING: Online Learning Should Return to a Supporting Role - The New York Times