Video Killed the Radio Star

Check out this new theory about Internet education:

Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which "going to college" means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges can't survive.

I gotta tell you: I love my online Masters program. But I can’t even picture..how much it would suck to miss the experience of going to college.

I chose to go to The American University as an undergrad because even while I was shooting for a business degree, I loved the atmosphere filled with political science and international service. Breathing the air with these kids that seriously thought that a life of some kind of public service was for them…watching election returns was like Super Bowl Sunday in the dorms. Oh, don’t get me started. Here is the point:

College taught me that I could leave Chicago, go somewhere else, start all the way over without knowing a single soul, be successful and have a great time. You don’t get that from an online program.

This article talks about the economic reality. Online courses are just less expensive to produce, and so many students say that money is the #1 barrier to completing a program. I know that isn’t the entire story, because I have also been reading a lot about people dropping out because they just can’t keep up. Oh, and may I add that my $680 per credit hour is not exactly a bargain.

Maybe this is the new reality. But if it is…what a damn shame.