Two steps forward, one step back

Recently I’ve been fairly optimistic about the increasing acceptance of online learning in education as well as more broadly across society. Last week’s post, for instance, mentioned
 
“a new normal around the increased acceptance of online learning. With the growth in online school and course enrollments, and the doubling or so of online schools in traditional school districts, the educators that DLAC serves are inching closing to mainstream acceptance. This too is accepted as a new reality, often without the need for additional discussion.”
 
But even if the long arc of history is bending towards more and better educational options, there are going to be setbacks along the way. The most recent example comes from the University of California system. The headline and synopsis capture the situation:
 
University of California System Bans Fully Online Degrees
“The 10-campus system closes a loophole that could have let undergraduates piece together a degree. Experts and some inside the system say that in justifying its decision, UC perpetuated outdated claims about online learning.”
 
To sum up: The UC system has not had a formal online degree program, but it also hadn’t outright banned online degrees, so an enterprising student could put together an online degree. The article doesn’t say how many students did so, nor does a quick online search reveal those numbers. Therefore, the issue may be more about the attitude this change reveals about learning online, as opposed to a major change for students.
 
What is that attitude? A couple of quotes are revealing:
 
“The University of California is known for a certain kind of excellence,” Mary Ann Smart, professor of music at UC Berkeley and chair of the Berkeley division of the Academic Senate, told Inside Higher Ed. “If it’s going to move toward offering online degrees, that should be a deliberate, conscious and carefully planned decision, and that decision hasn’t been made yet.”
 
My question to Dr. Smart would be: how long does it take to make such a decision? If the quarter century history of post-secondary online degrees from other institutions is not enough, what is the timeline?
 
A second quote reveals a further bias:
 
Employers see online degrees as “second-class,” according to Barbara Knowlton, professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Knowlton, who serves as chair of the Senate’s Board of Admissions and Relations With Schools, expressed the sentiment in a letter to Susan Cochran, president of the Academic Senate, during deliberation over the new policy. Knowlton argued that “applicants listing online degrees actually receive call backs at an equivalent or lower rate than applicants who listed no degree at all.” As evidence, she cited a pre-pandemic (2016) study.
 
This quote reveals an opinion disguised as fact for at least three reasons. First, quoting a study from 2016 (which uses data from 2014) in a field as rapidly changing as online learning is inherently flawed. Second, the labor market was very different in 2014 than it is now, with an unemployment rate almost twice as high as it is now, as the country still had not fully recovered from the 2007-9 Great Recession. Third, a close reading of the study reveals that the authors were comparing online degrees from for-profit institutions with both onsite degrees and public institutions. The study authors explain this well, but a cursory citing of the study as evidence of attitudes towards online learning in 2023 suggests that Dr. Knowlton didn’t look very closely at the research she was citing.
 
The larger issue here is that at the post-secondary level, online learning is being adopted by many outstanding institutions, but by relatively few institutions that are broadly thought to be among the most prestigious. California provides a perfect example. In general terms, the University of California system is considered to be made up of leading schools including Berkeley, Davis, and UCLA. This is the system that has just announced that it is banning fully online degrees. Meanwhile, the Cal State system—excellent but not generally considered to be at the same highly selective level—has embraced online courses and degrees.
 
This issue isn’t specific to the California public universities, of course. If you were to create a list of leading universities offering online degrees, and compare it to a list of exclusive post-secondary institutions, there is not much overlap. From Ivy League universities to the selective small liberal arts colleges to highly regarded state schools, with few exceptions these are not the institutions that have invested heavily in their own online courses and degree programs.
 
Related dynamics may be playing out in K-12 education. During the pandemic and since, numerous new K-12 online schools have launched. Many of them are serving a wide range of students, including high performing students. In addition, it’s clear that reaching the students who were not well served in traditional settings is critically important. As a field, we are telling those stories quite well.
 
But we need more stories that will resonate with the students and families who are aiming for the most selective universities and careers. More examples that are the K-12 analog of this video, from Arizona State University. (Really, take three minutes to watch that video!)
 
K-12 online, hybrid, and blended learning have done so much good for so many students, many of whom needed a new educational option. These are wonderful stories that deserve to be told. Now we need to do a better job talking about students who went on to the most selective universities and prestigious careers.