● About 40% of all classes in California’s community college system are now online, but students say the quality of the courses is questionable and that counselors are often unavailable to help them choose the right ones, according to a new report in CalMatters. The system serves more than two million students.
● Among other things, both students and instructors told CalMatters they are concerned about “lack of engagement, a sense of loneliness, impersonal lectures, and the temptation to move the Zoom window aside and click on something else.”
● The report included several troubling anecdotes, including a microeconomics class based on lectures that were pre-recorded “more than a decade ago” and led by a professor who gives students the answers to quizzes before they take them.
The bigger picture:
As interest and demand in online education continues to rise, so do concerns about the effectiveness of online courses and whether they’re truly expanding accessibility — particularly for adults seeking to advance their careers — or making higher education less valuable and meaningful.
For instance, The Washington Post reported recently that a growing number of students earn degrees online in a matter of months or weeks as opposed to years through a practice called “degree hacking” that involves racing through the course material.
There are also ongoing concerns about students using AI to take shortcuts on their coursework. A higher education researcher at UC Berkeley, for example, recently found that among undergraduates, 26% of daily AI users had used the technology to cheat.
The CalMatters report is more troubling because it shows that professors and instructors are sometimes complicit in helping students circumvent the system without truly mastering the material.
