Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:933] Critics of Online Education
From: Brent Muirhead (bmuirhead@email.uophx.edu)
Date: Fri 19 Jan 2001 - 04:18:00 MET
From: "Brent Muirhead" <bmuirhead@email.uophx.edu> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:933] Critics of Online Education Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 22:18:00 -0500
As our discussion progresses, it is important to address the concerns of
critics of online education. Recently, Dr. Randall E. Stross attacked online
education in the January 15, 2001 issue of U.S. News & World Reports.
Stross' article was titled "The New Mailbox U.----Discarding standards in
pursuit of a buck." He attacks the University of Phoenix and other online
schools for being developed as for-profit business operations. Stross states
that "the tempting vision of earn-a-college-degree- anytime-anywhere has
beckoned us for a long time. In his 1922 novel, Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
lampoons the claims of `mail-box universities,' whose offerings have an
uncanny contemporary appearance, an eclectic mix of courses jumbled together
without distinction: Short-story Writing, Improving the Memory, Banking,
Spanish, Electrical Engineering, Window-Trimming, Chemistry."
Later on in the article, Stross makes a bold assumption about the future of
online education. "The embrace of Web economics and the triumph of quantity
over quality will lead administrators, soon enough, to wonder why they
should bother with human adjuncts to serve as online proctors. They will be
tempted to make a college education wholly self-directed and be done with
it."
Sadly, the article plays on a variety of fear-based themes involving the
interaction of technology and the business world. He assumes that the
business community will greatly diminish the quality of online education
while eliminating the need for traditional schools and teachers.
Unfortunately, the author appears to stress negative educational scenarios
without having any reliable information about the online institutions that
he freely attacks in his article.
Brent Muirhead D.Min; Ph.D.
University of Phoenix Online
bmuirhead@email.uophx.edu
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