OPINION: Online courses offer increased access

When California Gov. Jerry Brown released his budget plan for 2018-19, one of the proposals he made was launching California’s first fully online public community college. Brown proposed allocating $120 million to open the college as soon as fall 2019.

Brown’s move is commendable — and his history as an advocate for online education is important — but it should also serve as a wake-up call for universities like USC to build web-based college courses that are as comprehensive and effective are traditional classroom courses.

Today, a college education is becoming an increasingly important requirement for individuals seeking secure, full-time employment. A growing number of middle-class jobs require specific skills and training that a basic high school education cannot provide.

In California, about 2.5 million 25-to 34-year-olds’ highest educational attainment is high school or some college, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Even more strikingly, just fewer than half of those 2.5 million adults are Latinx, reflecting a glaring racial disparity in educational attainment.

It’s easy to suggest that these adults should have gone to a traditional college, or still can, but the economic reality of going to college makes it nearly impossible for many. College tuition costs continue to rise, and most of the time, pursuing a college education requires dedicating the same amount of time a full-time job requires, if not more. And often, hidden costs of attending college as an adult can be inhibiting factors — things like paying for childcare or commuting to a university on a daily basis.

Universities like USC should be at the forefront of innovation in online education programs, not just offering them. When an institution like USC invests its resources in online education, it’s reasonable to say that the web-based systems used to teach online will improve at a faster rate, while community college programs don’t have the same resources to raise grades and completion rates quickly enough.

Currently, USC doesn’t offer any undergraduate online courses, and the graduate programs they do offer are largely inaccessible to a demographic that only has a high school or partial college education.

In a 2010 Daily Trojan article, USC officials said they had no plans offer online courses because they want their students to have a comprehensive college experience — one that is not just educational, but social and cultural as well.

Analyzing the general issue, 80 percent of the aforementioned 2.5 million adults are working Californians — to go to college would mean losing all or part of their income while being expected to spend even more money paying for college.

Online education programs provide a better alternative. Students are able to pursue their education at their own pace, fit classes into their work schedules rather than try to work part-time jobs around in-person classes during the day and pursue programs that are much more affordable for working adults.

But despite the convenience and affordability of an online education, it’s reasonable to be wary of how effective taking a class via a computer is, in comparison to in-person learning. And studies in the past have suggested that online education is much less effective than its traditional counterpart.

In a 2015 study of 217,000 state community college students conducted by UC Davis, researchers found that students who took online courses from 2008 to 2012 got lower grades and lower course completion rates than students who took the same classes in traditional classrooms.

But this fact isn’t a problem inherent to the college education being online — it’s more reflective of the relatively new nature of web-based learning programs. With any education program, improvement comes over time. It’s foolish to expect online programs to be as effective as learning methods that have been improved upon for decades, if not centuries.

And we’re seeing that kind of improvement in newer online college education statistics. According to California Community Colleges executive vice chancellor Laura Hope, while only half of students completed online courses during the 2005-06 school year, in 2015-2016, nearly two-thirds of students completed online courses. For comparison, traditional classes at the state community college level have a completion rate of 71 percent, a number that has remained steady in the last decade.

It’s true the college experience is a beneficial one — but it’s one largely designed for students who have the economic privilege to go to college after high school, while the 2.5 million adults left behind are not looking for a college experience, but for the essential training they need to attain skill-based jobs that require a college education.

Currently, few private institutions offer online undergraduate classes  — out of the top 30 online bachelor’s programs as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, only seven of the online programs were offered by private colleges. Even fewer colleges on the list are major universities that have made names for themselves as traditional higher education institutions.

But the ones that do offer online programs have been largely successful. George Washington University offers online bachelor’s programs in health sciences and nursing, and certificate programs in fields ranging from legal studies to educational development.

GWU’s online education costs substantially less than its in-person education — students pay $5,000 per semester plus $570 per credit. Comparatively, tuition at GWU is $26,717 per semester. And the quality of their online programs is strong as well — U.S. News gave it a score of 85 out of 100, compared to 61 out of 100 for GWU’s traditional bachelor’s program.

USC and other private institutions should follow GWU’s example and provide their own online programs that make education more accessible, and to make online learning programs more innovative and effecient.

As educational institutions, USC and other similar colleges have the responsibility to make higher education as inclusive as possible. They can do so by providing online college courses and building curriculum and web programming designed to make online learning as effective as possible. Such can change the lives of millions of adults who’ll be able to pursue well-paying jobs as a result.