“If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.” — Dorothy Parker
My friend Randall alerted me to this fascinating article in the Washington Monthly about Straighter Line, a company that's developed a set of online courses where students can take as many as they like for $99 per month. The idea is that many lower division courses are fairly simple and inexpensive to run, and that through this all-you-can-learn buffet students can get their general education courses out of the way while saving a lot of money.
It's an interesting idea, but it's not perfect. For starters, Straighter Line is technically not itself a school, it's a company that offers courses, and there are only a few schools that accept Straighter Line courses as transfer credit. There are ways to have Straighter Line courses recognized by an accredited school, and then transfer them from that accredited school to other accredited schools, but there is additional expense and inconvenience to do so.
I'm curious why Straighter Line didn't just buy an accredited school. There are a number of existing schools that have been challenged by the recent difficult economy and are available for some group to swoop in and save them. Also, the American Council on Education has a service to evaluate courses as the equivalent to college courses, and those evaluations are often accepted by colleges as a way to give transfer credit for non-college courses. In fact, they could have done both of these things. For example, Penn Foster College is very inexpensive, and many of their courses are ACE evaluated, so even regionally accredited schools that otherwise might not accept their credits as a DETC accredited school will take them based on the ACE evaluations.
The real lesson of Straighter Line is that most people pay far too much for higher education. If Straighter Line can make a profit by offering courses in economics, math, English, etc. for just $99 per month, it raises the question why so many other schools, charge so much more, especially for online programs. Let's say you have a typical online three-credit course with twenty students in it. Charge $200 per credit, like many schools do. You're pulling in twelve thousand dollars in tuition. Adjunct instructors rarely are paid more than two thousand dollars to teach a course. Where does the other ten thousand bucks go? Sure, schools have overhead, even online schools, but is it really that much?
There's nothing wrong with making a profit. If someone has something to sell, and other people want to buy it, that's their business. But I find it very welcome that the marketplace seems to be pushing back when it comes to the usuriously high cost of higher education. Straighter Line seems like it's part of that market reaction. Low tuition DETC accredited schools like Penn Foster College and Andrew Jackson University do too. What does the future hold when it comes to tuition rates for online programs? Hopefully it will be the continuation of this trend, so that online students will end up with a dollar left in our pockets after all!
Next, on the anniversary of 9/11, I remember the firefighters.
Image courtesy of Tracy Olson