College costs skyrocket - just as college becomes less relevant . . .

I'm sure many readers picked up on today's report that a college or University education is becoming less and less affordable in these United States.

Tuition and fees at private 4-year schools rose 4.4% in the current school year to $26,273, according to a survey released by the College Board Tuesday.

Charges at public 4-year universities spiked over 6% for both in-state and out-of state students, to $7,020 and $18,548, respectively.

"We're in a very strong sellers market for higher education," said Pat Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, who noted that the high school graduating class of 2009 was the largest in history.

"Colleges and universities are capitalizing on that more than any other institution in the economy. If you walk around a shopping mall, nobody else is raising prices at the same rate."

. . .

Grant funding grew only 4.7% in the 2008-2009 academic year, the most recent for which data is available, which means that undergraduates' out-of-pocket costs are higher than ever.

That, combined with higher unemployment and stagnant household incomes, is making it harder than ever to finance a degree.

. . .

After taking grants into consideration, coupled with federal tax benefits, the net cost of college is much lower than the sticker price. On average, students at private schools are paying $11,900, while those attending public schools are spending about $1,600 out of pocket each year.

That still leaves a third of students paying full freight, and every undergrad is still contending with room and board costs that are also climbing, up 5.4% at public schools at 4.2% at private schools this year.

"Tuition is only one part of the picture," said Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at Collage Board. "Even though the net tuition might not be rising for students who get grants, the aid is not enough to cover living costs."

More borrowing. To help bridge the gap between what college costs and what families can afford, student loans are also up. Total borrowing increased 5% between the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years, the most recent for which data is available.

If these trends continue, experts say that it will become even harder to get a college degree.

There's more at the link.

The indispensable Al Fin points out that the answer may lie in the demise of 'traditional' academic education as we know it. Many students actually prefer online courses, and do better at them. Already online alternatives are available offering the equivalent of full undergraduate degrees - for free! All one has to pay to do is arrange examinations for equivalency standard. It's likely that in the not too distant future, such arrangements will become commonplace for most 'basic' degrees, leaving academic classes and dedicated campuses to those disciplines and specializations that truly need them.

This isn't just enthusiasm on the part of Al Fin, either. The New York Times has taken note of the phenomenon.

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction,” said Barbara Means, the study’s lead author and an educational psychologist at SRI International.

This hardly means that we’ll be saying good-bye to classrooms. But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools.

The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

“We are at an inflection point in online education,” said Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program.

The biggest near-term growth, Mr. Regier predicts, will be in continuing education programs. Today, Arizona State has 5,000 students in its continuing education programs, both through in-person classes and online. In three to five years, he estimates, that number could triple, with nearly all the growth coming online.

But Mr. Regier also thinks online education will continue to make further inroads in transforming college campuses as well. Universities — and many K-12 schools — now widely use online learning management systems, like Blackboard or the open-source Moodle. But that is mostly for posting assignments, reading lists, and class schedules and hosting some Web discussion boards.

Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. For example, it will be assumed that college students know the basics of calculus, and the classroom time will focus on applying the math to real-world problems — perhaps in exploring the physics of climate change or modeling trends in stock prices, he said.

There's more at the link.

I hold five University qualifications (degrees, diplomas and certificates). All were obtained through part-time study, as I could never afford to stop working and study full-time, having to support myself as I did. I don't consider them in the least inferior for that; in fact, I think it was a definite advantage to work part-time, as it forced me to be far more self-disciplined in my approach. Also, because I was spending my own hard-earned money on my education (rather than my parents'), I made darn sure I was getting value for every cent! I never studied online, as the World Wide Web was still a pipe-dream when I finished my last degree; but given half a chance, I'd have used it, and I think it'll make part-time study much easier.

I hope the entire post-school educational environment will be revolutionized by the Web. It deserves to be, and the inflated, outmoded models of education that are basically hangovers from yesteryear need to be discarded for the irrelevancies and elitist remnants that most of them are. Who needs the Ivy League today, anyway - particularly given the Ivy League's extortionate extraordinary charges?

Peter