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Online Degree Programs May

Change the Future of Higher
Education
The more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States offer
many different educational experiences.

For hundreds of years, young people have come to these schools to

learn new things and find direction in life. But now, with the help of
technology, the way knowledge passes from teachers to their students
is changing.

In February 2016, the Babson Survey Research Group reported that 28

percent of all U.S. college students took at least one class over the
internet. The research group, part of Babson College in Massachusetts,
studies all levels of education across the country.

Yet, having students take a few online classes during their college years
is not the only change technology is driving.

Many U.S. colleges and universities now offer full degree programs
online. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for students around the
world.

One such student, Leanne from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is using an
online degree program to meet her needs. The 30-year-old asked VOA
not to share her last name as she has yet to complete her studies.

In 2012, Leanne earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing through a

traditional study program at Thomas Jefferson University in
Philadelphia. She then started working as a nurse in the Washington,
DC area.

After a few years, Leanne decided she wanted to earn a master’s

degree to help further her career in medicine. However, she did not
want to move to another city to continue her education, as can often be
the case for students. Her job and her husband were in Washington,

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and she only wanted to study part-time. So, Leanne decided to look for
an online program.

"There were a lot of good, appealing things about doing it online -- it

allowed me to work full-time and fit the schoolwork into my schedule,
which often made it a lot more financially feasible. And … the nurse
practitioner program, they have nationally gone … towards being online,
to the point where it’s actually very difficult to find a program that was in
person."

In 2014, Leanne began taking nursing classes through the online

master’s degree program at DC’s George Washington University. The
program provides medical training videos through her home computer.
She also is involved in discussion groups, takes tests, and submits
projects online.

Leanne says much of her studies are self-directed. But students also
must physically visit the university at least four times during their three-
year program for in-person testing.

Leanne says her program appeals to a lot of people with full-time jobs.
And, George Washington University is not alone in its efforts to spread
online education.

The communications company AT&T gave the Georgia Institute of

Technology $4 million to create an online degree program in 2014. This
led to an online master’s degree program in computer science.

And in the past few years, the program has become a true success
story, says Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of public policy at
Harvard University. Goodman studied the effects of the online program.
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published his findings last
September.

Goodman says online degree programs have faced two major barriers.
First, it has often been lesser-known, lower-quality, or for-profit
universities that have offered online programs. Second, well-known,
high-quality schools charged the same price for online and in-person
programs. This often led to students choosing the traditional programs.

But the Georgia Tech program may have solved these problems,
Goodman says. Many experts consider the university to have one of the
best computer science master’s degree programs in the country. Also,

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Georgia Tech began offering the online program at less than one sixth
of the cost of the traditional program.

The school’s in-person program only has room for about 300 students.
The online program had about 1,700 new students at the start of the
school year.

Yet Goodman argues it is not just the quality or the price that make
Georgia Tech’s online program so successful. The average age of
students trying to get into the traditional program is about 24. The
average age of the online students is 34. These are people in the
middle of their careers, Goodman notes. They are not free to drop
everything and spend a few years studying instead of working.

Goodman says before the Georgia Tech program, many of these people
had no other good choices for furthering their education.

"The folks who applied for this program … did not have other
educational options that they would do if they didn’t get into this
program. … What we found is that if they got into this program, they
went, they did this degree. And if they didn’t get in, almost none of them
went to another university. So it seems like this program is creating
educational opportunities for mid-career people that would not have
otherwise existed."

Online degree programs seem to not only help students with non-
traditional needs. In some cases, the appeal of the programs has
helped the schools themselves. This is especially important considering
many colleges and universities have struggled financially in recent
years.

Simmons College is a small, private college in Boston, Massachusetts.

For several years, Simmons accepted more graduate students than
undergraduates. In 2012, the school created a plan to start offering two
of its most popular master’s degree programs online. The two are in
nursing and social work.

Last year, the college collected about $45 million in student payments
for those programs. This year the programs are expected to bring in
about $55.9 million. This is about $3 million more than all the in-person
graduate programs Simmons offers, combined.

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Suzanne Murphy is the head of the online programs at Simmons. She
says the reason those programs appeal to so many students is the
quality.

“You measure success in student outcomes,” Murphy said. “‘How are

the students doing?’ ‘How are they progressing through the programs?’
Things like that. And the programs that we put online are the same
programs that we have on the ground.”

Leanne, Goodman and Murphy all agree there are many other ways to
improve online degree programs in general. Next week, we will look at
some of the problems such programs still face.

I’m Pete Musto.

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