Editorial: Free, online courses cannot replace college experience

Considering the high cost of a college degree, the thought of a free education could likely make… Considering the high cost of a college degree, the thought of a free education could likely make many of us wistful. And soon, college courses from Ivy League institutions will be offered on the Internet for anyone to take at home while wearing pajamas, sans competitive admissions interviews and high tuition fees.

In early May, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced edX, an online educational collaboration between the two universities that looks to offer free, not-for-credit courses to anyone with an Internet connection.

Free online education from reputable universities has existed for a number of years. For example, the well-known OpenCourseWare system began in 1999. However, these video- or audio-based open courses lack interactive components and methods of evaluation. According to the edX website, the Harvard and MIT courses offered will be open-source and built around self-paced learning, online discussion groups, assessment of learning and online laboratories. For a small fee, certificates of completion will be granted to students who prove mastery of course material through assessment; however, these certificates will not be usable toward earning a degree at either college. Since the initial announcement, debates have sprung up about whether or not these courses should be offered for credit.

Although it would be ideal if intellectually rigorous, free courses could be offered online to help anyone work toward a degree, we believe that it is most appropriate that these courses be offered for enrichment purposes and not for college credit. When taking online courses, students lose valuable contact with professors and other students. And although online discussion boards exist, they are not a perfect substitute for the spontaneous interaction of an in-class discussion in real-time. Additionally, while online labs could certainly be enriching, we think that they’d likely be less reinforcing of class material than activities and experiments done in a real laboratory with professional equipment.

We believe that the online format of the edX courses will be beneficial to learners with a wide variety of purposes, the most obvious being those who would like to take college courses and receive some form of certificate but who cannot attend a traditional college because of economic or geographic constraints. These courses could also benefit retired people looking to enhance their knowledge in various areas of interest.

We also believe that these courses could significantly benefit traditional college-aged students. Students who are undecided on their future field of study could take online courses to sample a wide range of subjects for free and without worrying about the difference between a B and a B+. And university-destined high school students could sample college courses before committing to a major. Also, professors and students could use edX courses to supplement traditional classroom material with additional content.

It’s clear that the edX courses will prove enriching to a wide variety of people for many different purposes. But we believe that they should remain courses that are not for credit because the many facets of a traditional university education cannot be perfectly duplicated in an open, online format