Blog 5 - Online Education

For my final decree as internet ruler, I would change the way that online education is accessed and presented. Online education has proven time and time again it can be a sufficient supplement to lecture style teaching. Some theories to this phenomenon are that when the information is not just projected impersonally to their faces, the students then must actively engage with the material in order to learn the concepts by reading, watching videos and learning the content themselves. Some even say with the new generation being so overly exposed to today’s technology, that online classes are the way of the future; mostly all classes will be held on the internet in some degree or fashion. The problem, though, with online education is that typically these classes are offered at usually a higher cost than taking a lecture class. This higher rate of cost can be caused by several factors, but this deters many from attempting to try and see how effective online classes could be. This is especially prevalent in the post-secondary level, where online classes are often much more expensive than their lecture counterparts. However, this price difference seems to not only be hurting the general public’s access to knowledge, but also even holds back the University’s revenue. A study showed “…that online education (e-learning) is highly price elastic and traditional education is price inelastic” (https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/1768624588?pq-origsite=summon) meaning that it is very possible for these universities to lower the cost of their online classes, while it is much more tantalizing to try and lower the cost of a lecture style class. It was also shown that the “Reduction of online tuition and increases in traditional tuition are required to move universities towards the goal of revenue maximization”(https://search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/docview/1768624588?pq-origsite=summon), so not only would lower online education costs  and increased accessibility help the public, but the school’s as well. So if I ruled the internet, I would enforce extremely low prices of online education. Like stated in a previous post, I believe there is nothing wrong with the collective masses having the ability to educate themselves; those in difficult financial situations should have the right to educate themselves, even if they don’t have much to give. And it is a win-win if the University makes more money, for they can put more money into facilities to help educate and form our youth.