“Ultimately, online ‘universities’ without ‘bricks and mortar’ expenses can and will win this battle.”
I have a question about that. How is one to confirm that the students have learned the material, and more, that they understand it well enough to apply it in the real world?
I have taken some correspondence-type courses, in the military and the private sector, and it seemed like it would be impossible to fail whether one learned anything or not.
It always felt to me like taking an “open-book test” with unlimited time.
MEDICAL STUDENTS at several universities do not receive grades, and in those schools it's almost impossible to fail, so it isn't just online learning that has this problem. The solution, IMHO, is exit testing. There need to be specific tests (NOT government based) that determine whether or not you've mastered the material - whether form online learning or a bricks and mortar university.
To put this into a relevant perspective, consider the Bar Exam as a test of whether or not your law education has made you competent as an attorney. Hillary, after graduating from one of the ridiculously and pathetically overacted law schools (Yale in this intstance) failed the Washington DC bar exam. People from much ‘lesser’ law schools, per pedigree, passed the exam that year. What does that tell you about the US higher education system? Think about it.
1. Problems in real life are all an open book test with unlimited time.
2. When I went to engineering school (MIT), back in the 60s, all of our tests and exams were open book, open notes, open anything you wanted. The questions were designed to make you think rather than recite memorized facts that would soon be forgotten. In general, if you had to look up how to solve a problem you were not going to get that one right.
I did correspondence courses in the Navy, although thru snail mail. The time can now be limited with the internet, but the "open-book test" is problematic. Not sure of a solution for that part. Someone smarter than me may find it since on-line education is growing.