ASU is widely known for its recently unparalleled expansion in higher education, and while the four on-site campuses might have spatial limits, it’s the online campus that may see the most change in the near future.
The Arizona Board of Regents is calling upon the state’s three universities to dramatically expand their online education offerings, asking ASU on Friday to increase its current enrollment of 3,000 online students to 27,000 by 2020 as part of the Arizona Higher Education Enterprise plan.
For ASU’s “fifth campus,” this means allowing more students across the state to reap a respected educational brand without further overpopulating the classrooms on our four traditional campuses across the Valley.
In addition to the Online and Extended campus offering access to higher education for military service members all over the world or people living in rural environments, the online campus makes education more affordable during these hard times. Cost per credit hour is $232 cheaper, excluding fees, than the current freshman tuition at the Tempe campus.
While this cheaper option may not put the boiling tuition hikes on the back burner, nursing students — who have admittedly been displaced a lot in recent years — can enroll in a fully online nursing program. Other programs that have opened up are the criminal justice studies and K-12 teaching degrees. ASU Online offers 10 freshman degrees, 16 transfer student degrees, 27 graduate programs and three graduate certificates. The campus also offers seven-week courses from the 101 to 400 level.
But there is a stigma, especially on the four physical campuses, that online classes are blow-off credits that leave too much opportunity for students to cheat, or do not allow enough contact with an instructor for adequate feedback.
Online coursework also has to stand up to evidence against its success. A recent study by Kennesaw State University found retention rates of online education are 15 to 20 percent lower than classes in traditional settings.
The study also looked at different engagement strategies, such as developing more personal connections with classmates, but this had no affect on dropout rates, according to the study.
Students should keep in mind that if the University’s future funding hinges on freshmen retention rates, as administrators propose, the higher likelihood of online dropouts could affect the students at the other four campuses. This could put a lot of pressure on the digital learning experiment our University has built up.
Not to mention, if Blackboard can’t handle traffic as it is now, it’s bound to be more congested than Sasquatch’s shower drain as this fifth campus grows.
Although there is still much left unknown about where the ASU Online campus could take the University in general, it’s encouraging to see our state and University leading the way for education’s future. If nothing else, there’s some pride in the thought that, just like Great Britain in its glory days, the world may see a day when the sun never sets on the ASU Empire.
