Emerging Technologies Consulting

It’s interesting to see so many articles discussing the pros and cons of online education.  The economy seems to have pushed people into thinking about what online education is, and what it might mean for higher education as an industry.  This article from the Washington Monthly looks at one approach that separates classes from time, so that a person can take as many classes as they can manage, one after the other without having to wait for a semester to begin.  The article does a good job of forcing us to look critically at how colleges have done business in the past and how that might now be seriously outdated or at least not meeting the needs of a segment of the population.  And yet, it acknowledges that traditional colleges do provide some benefits to its immediate community and society at large, and that shifting to online only might threaten some of those community goods, such as research and cultural contributions.