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Why Online Courseware Can't Replace A 4-Year Degree

This article is more than 10 years old.

Guest post written by Andrew Grauer

Andrew Grauer is CEO of Course Hero, a provider of online study guides.

Online education is getting a lot of attention as many elite schools are opening up their classrooms for the world to access what, for a long time, had been reserved for a fortunate few. There is no question that this movement is going to transform education and society in the years ahead. However, there is a tendency to think about open courseware as a rip-and-replace response to the traditional university experience. Bottom line: it’s not.

We need to stop thinking about online courseware as a replacement for a college degree. At this point in time, we’re not there and we’re not going to be there until we amend key issues currently plaguing the advancement of online education. This is going to take time.

In a recent article, Siva Vaidhyanathan of The Chronicle of Higher Education stated, “I enjoy MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] … MOOCs inform me… [but] the difference between a real college course and a MOOC is like the difference between playing golf and watching golf.”

Yes, massive open online courses allow anyone with an Internet connection to log on and learn, but does it meet the learning needs of every student around the world? Have we perfected teaching methods to deliver the same lecture experience via your computer as in a live classroom? Absolutely not. Have we created online communities that are sufficiently collaborative yet plagiarism free? No. Can a student of a 100,000-person class easily and readily connect with a professor, tutor or classmate when a question arises during a lecture? Not yet, but we’re working toward it.

But just because MOOCs don’t yet simulate a classroom experience to the extent that an edX degree is the equivalent of a Harvard diploma, doesn’t mean that there isn’t still significant value in online courses and the movement to improve access to education. MOOCs make the overall education system and the job market more efficient by marrying quality educational content with the flexibility, scalability and access afforded by the Internet. With MOOCs, people across the globe can leverage online courses to acquire the additional skills they need, as they look to enhance their resumes and improve career prospects.

Many individuals with degrees are struggling to land jobs – government stats show that 53.6 percent of bachelor’s degree holders under age 25 were jobless or underemployed last year.  And the required skill sets for the workplace are changing rapidly. Take the case of the shortage of design, developer and engineering skills. In the Bay Area, there is a huge unmet demand for Web designers and developers, resulting in a tremendous opportunity and market for individuals with those skills. It doesn’t make sense to go to a university to get another degree in Java – although as the intricacies of these subjects change all the time, it does make it necessary to keep the option open for continual learning. The present real value of open courseware lies in its ability to help people bridge the gap between their own existing skillsets – whether from formal education or their careers – and the demands of the job market.

Just from my own experiences, I’ve seen increasing numbers of students graduate from school in non-computer science majors and teach themselves to code in response to this opportunity. My friend Tim, for example, went to Stanford University, graduated with a degree in Biological Sciences, works in medical devices and is now being tutored in computer science on weeknights and weekends. He’s taking the initiative to learn a new set of skills while at his current job in hopes of expanding his career options down the line. Another friend, David, who majored in Economics at Yale, taught himself how to code on the Web and from networking with people in San Francisco. Now he is an entrepreneur and freelance mobile and Web developer. Both are taking advantage of free online courses and other learning resources that may or not be accredited degrees, but have no less helped them achieve the tangible skills necessary to found their own businesses or enhance their career prospects. All of this achieved, mind you, in conjunction with obtaining an accredited degree from a walled university. Free open courseware can meet real business needs and make an impact, without replacing the current degree.

As noted by a Dell recruiter in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, an online certificate on its own won’t replace a degree, but for those that already hold a four-year degree, specialized skills are a resume sweetener and offer a competitive advantage. This means that the initiative to take a free online course on programming can be the key element that helps an art history major be a more viable candidate for a position at a tech company—possibly even as a programmer.

To keep pace with the changing world, an individual needs to be able to evolve his or her education at the same rate as, if not faster than, the demands of the business world. The traditional four-year degree holds a huge amount of value on a person’s resume that open courseware just can’t compete with yet, but we can’t pause our lives to get another degree every time we want to learn new skills.

Online courseware empowers us to rise up and continue on the learning path without giving up our current lifestyle or being locked into the time/financial impact of a second degree. Until our efforts are realized to make online learning as energized, collaborative and reactionary as classroom learning - and the employment market agrees - then the four-year degree will remain top of the class.