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You could be getting course credit for this!

As part of my ongoing effort to have a heart attack before I'm 30, I read the Drudge Report every day. Imagine my surprise when today, I clicked on a random link and saw dear ol' Dean Edley staring quizically back at me! It seems our illustrious Dean has made national news by advocating a fully-online degree program at UC Berkeley. (Drudge's reasons for posting this remain mysterious, as it neither induces panic about the deficit nor refers to a place that is unusually cold for the season.) An excerpt reflecting the two sides of this issue:

"We want to do a highly selective, fully online, credit-bearing program on a large scale - and that has not been done," said UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the effort.

. . .

"We find Dean Edley's cyber campus to be just the beginning of a frightening trajectory that will undoubtedly end in the complete implosion of public higher education" in California, Berkeley doctoral student Shane Boyle testified.

While I hesitate to throw my support behind anything that is absolutely certain to doom the Earth, I must admit my experience with Barbri has warmed me to the idea that online education can really work. Yes, I dread turning on that lecture every morning, but I also learn about as much from it as I did in a 120-person lecture. (Although I do miss supplementing the lecture with 20-minute debates between H*rsh and Schw*rtz about the finer points of Epstein's economic approach to Torts.) Plus, the boundary-less nature of the system means that I can learn Con Law from Chemerinsky himself, rather than whatever professor happened to teach at the school in my area. And I think an online lecture from Chemerinsky is at least of equal value to an in-person lecture from anyone else.

But, of course, there are downsides. My college experience was made up of more than simply watching lectures and taking tests. In fact, I learned far more from the people around me, extra-curricular activities, and weekend benders than I did in any of my courses. Such experiences would be nearly impossible to duplicate over the interwebs (although you still might see the occasional double-rainbow). Also, were online education to become widespread, it would likely lead to some of the dire results Boyle predicts. After all, if everyone in the country can take Con Law from Chemerinsky, why would a school bother to hire anyone else?

Online college should never replace the brick and mortar system, but that doesn't mean it has no place in a school like Berkeley. While plucky young 18-year-olds should never even think about missing out on the best four years of their lives, an online program could be a boon for qualified older students who, for whatever reason, cannot easily move to California or even leave their homes all day. Yes, they'd be missing out on some of the intangibles of higher education, but with the right admissions requirements and a real dedication to creating a great program (something better than the online Barbri system, hopefully), I think there is something of real value to be obtained from a digital Berkeley.

Now if we could only get them to consider making Nuts and Boalts a seminar course...

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on July 12, 2010 (boomark / email).