What Do Today's Students Think About The Future Of Higher Education

In order to unravel college students’ desperation of choosing whether they should enroll in an online course, Content Marketing Specialist of Collegis Education, Kristina Ericksen, has devoted experience from taking online courses to produce and provide a solution for any student. Her written article for Rasmussen College, “What I Wish Someone Told Me BEFORE Taking Online Classes,” exploits the hidden challenges and the usual shortcomings that bears in the name of online learning, such as there are certain learning styles that are not meant for staring at a computer screen, so according to Ericksen, “an advantage to one student may be a disadvantage to another.” While learning styles is only one of her subtopics in the article,

Education has long been the frontier for society and academic advancement in one’s life. Long gone are the days where only a handful of people were expected to enter into college and earn a degree. In 2014, there are so many colleges and universities that one can choose from. Not only is the choice, whether or not they attend school, but the choice is, whether they want to attend school online or in a traditional college setting of brick and mortar.

However, Barszcz points out that freshman enrolled in only DL courses are 15 percent more likely to drop out, and that the “Students themselves seem to understand the weaknesses inherent in the setup.”(7) Another example of this is where the author speaks of a survey conducted for eCornell. The survey showed that “Less than a third of the respondents expected the quality of the on-line courses to be as good as the classroom course.”(7) Barszcz strongly produces yet another illustration: “Regardless of their expectations or desires,” (7) Fairleigh Dickinson University students, “are now required to take one DL course per year.”(7) This is supposed to give students the skills necessary to function properly in today’s technological age. Conversely, he explains that these universities are more interested in making money that preparing their students for the future.

All Students, Regardless of Social Status, Race, Gender, or Minority, Have Equal Opportunity to Pursue a High Quality Education

I will disagree with those people because, students shouldn't take those classes unless they want to. If they don't, they're going to have a hard time in that specific class. If they're put in art class for example, most of those students either won't like the class, or just don't know how to draw. If students want those classes, they should choose it as one of their electives for the following year. Students should not be required to take music, drama, or art class unless they feel comfortable in it and will like it. There could be a student who wants to be an engineer, and is in a drama class, that makes that student look awkward because, everything he sees, he'll use his imagination and make it have to do something with engines.

The system of higher education in America could be in trouble. Due to dramatic change in what society values, they could soon be under attack. In the two articles that I analyzed, these issues were discussed in further detail. The first article was titled, “The Future of College” and was written by Graeme Wood. Its purpose was to draw attention to a new approach at education. The second article, “The Troubled Future of Colleges and Universities”, written by Gary King and Maya Sen, focused on the obstacles that universities are facing and gave suggestions of ways to overcome them. Along with this, both articles, addressed what education may look like in the future. With the development of technology and information from new studies, many wonder what the outcome could be. Will lecture style classes remain? Could higher education convert to a completely online experience? What is the most effective teaching method? In the first article, Wood argues for a completely online education. Whereas, the other article believes that universities need to focus on the importance of research. However, students learn in different ways, therefore, today’s higher education institutes should offer a variety of instructional methods.

“We are now taking the lead because for too long the public school system in Camden has failed its children”, exclaimed Chris Christie, the standing Governor of New Jersey. On the one hand, The New Jersey Public School System was awarded number 1 as the best system in the nation by 2012 Education State Ranking (Morgan, 2011). Yet on the other, only 2 percent of the graduates from Camden High School scored high enough on the SAT’s to be considered college prepared. This blatant inconsistency echoes the hyper-polarization of wealth and indigence throughout not only the state of New Jersey, but also the country as a whole. In response to this crisis, NJ’s Governor Christie has proposed the Opportunity Scholarship Act, which would stimulate competition between schools and in turn boost the quality of education. The act would create this competitive open market by providing scholarship funds to eligible low-income children who attend a chronically failing school district in order for them to choose to attend an alternative public or non-public school.

Companies are benefitting from their employees increased training and education. However, they are paying out higher wages for the same employees. Additionally, working adults are putting in longer hours after work to study. The students that cannot attend a traditional college or university are finding that online degree programs fit their needs and schedule better, which helps motivate them to complete the journey they set out on. These new programs are already being accepted by most employers, resulting in an increased number of online students.

Students won’t be all excited about technology and spend the whole class playing games or staying up all night messing around on the web. Students will no longer in the honeymoon phase with technology, and they won’t be as obsessed as it seems they can be in high school. Lastly, students will know the consequences of messing around when it comes to technology. Doulos should be teaching students how to handle technology and the consequences of messing around. They should know the difference between free time and work time, and how to manage the two. In college, a professor will not re-concentrate a student who is watching a movie instead of taking notes. In college students are paying to be in class, and most times in a big college, teachers will not care if they are paying attention. They expected students to have learned how to handle technology by this point. Although, how can anyone expect students to be good at this skill if they’ve never learned it. Many say that technology is a distraction to students and results in wasted time. However, High School is the time when students should learn the consequences of not being on task, because in college no one is going to be there to make sure they are doing their work. They need to know the

In today’s society, so many people are continuing their education beyond high school. We realize that in order to make a decent living, a degree is most likely a requirement. In some cases even a bachelor’s degree is not enough to qualify for many positions. Nevertheless, thanks to technology, we now have the option to learn online or in a traditional classroom setting. There are very few differences between the two, and students need to understand that as much time and energy will need to be devoted to the online courses as on a campus. “A 2010 meta-analysis and review of online-learning studies concluded that online learning was as good as or slightly more effective than traditional face-to-face instruction” (Mendenhall, 2011).

In order for students to be able to take college courses online, they need some type of way to organize themselves and push themselves finish their work since their teachers really can’t (Bird). In a physical classroom, teachers are able to move around and be able to answers questions right then and there, but with online schooling students would have to wait a while to get a response from their teachers if they have questions (“Key”). The dropout rate for online schooling in very high, mostly because students don’t know how to prioritize their school schedule and don’t know how to be self motivated (Bejarano). Learning independently is very challenging, and students may become discouraged when they have to face challenges with learning online by themselves (Bejarano). Online learning would not be a good option for students that can’t self motivate and can’t focus

However, advocates of classroom learning believe the online method isolates the students from one another as well as their professor minimizing the overall value of taking the course. They also claim that students learn better when working together with their instructor and their fellow classmates. Students learn better when they are given the opportunity to ask questions, join in class discussions, and they move the process of learning forward through their participation. Face-to-face advocates firmly believe that this kind of interaction is not possible over the Internet; and for many types of education, e-learning will never meet the potential of live human interaction in the classroom. An article in the New York Times titled, “Second Thoughts on Online Education,” backs up the points made above. A recent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, comes to the conclusion; “A rush to online education

Technology is changing every aspect in our lives, even the way we learn. Online classes are a rapidly growing trend it today’s society. Online classes are a cost-effective substitute for traditional courses and more convenient for many, so more schools and universities are offering this option. Due to the increase in online course enrollment, people are questioning if students truly learn something from online classes because it’s not a traditional learning environment. Online classes are just, if not more, effective as traditional classes because grades have increased and online discussions provide students with the chance to interact through networking while earning a degree for less than what it would cost to enroll at the same university.

Education has undergone significant changes because of the development of information and communication technology over the 21st century (Lin & Jou, 2012:2). As a convenient and inexpensive way to gain knowledge while pursuing higher education, online learning, a form of training or teaching that takes place over the Internet, has been considered as an alternative to traditional classroom learning (Zhang et al, 2004). This essay will argue that even though online learning has benefit such as flexibility which could outweigh traditional learning, traditional classroom learning might still not be entirely replaced. This essay will discuss positive and negative aspects of online and traditional learning in terms of four criteria:

Online education has grown since it first came about, there are mixed views on whether it is truly beneficial. The reasons for the huge growth of online education is money even though online education targeted working adults that have little or no time to sit in a traditional classroom for millions of men and women serving in the armed forces online education has made earning a degree much more possible.