That was one of the major points made during a panel discussion on college access and affordability Thursday at a National Education Week “Thought Leader Summit” held at the National Press Club.
As competency-based credentials and online courses become more common on the landscape of higher education, students will have to decide whether football, fraternities and other things to be found on traditional campuses are worth thousands of dollars more than less costly alternatives, one of the panelists suggested.
“For traditional schools, the cost of those institutions is not going to change in the short term,” said Phil Bronner, CEO and co-founder of Quad Learning, a venture-backed startup that helps move high-performing students through community colleges into top tier colleges and universities, thereby lessening the overall cost of earning a four-year degree.
“Because of health care and other things, the price will go up,” Bronner said. “The only way a parent or a student can get a lower cost is to transfer in lower cost credits.”
Future students will continue to get degrees from traditional institutions, Bronner said, but those students will also spend less time at traditional institutions than before.
Burck Smith, CEO and founder of Straighterline, a company that provides online first- and second-year general education courses to help students shave costs off their degrees, said more must be done to help students understand the true price of a degree.
