Traditional students rebelling against online education

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

The students may partly be against this shift as they are so highly motivated and eager to learn in the first place, and Natshar's point about the professors having a new online education paradigm suddenly hoisted upon them and fumbling with it makes a whole lot of sense to me. Many of the B&M programs probably will need to consult more closely with educators who have trained in providing online education. Traditional students may associate online learning with inferior quality...possibly due to the quality of instruction that they're receiving right now, or their preconceived notions about online learning in general.

I think the broader point that will be examined more closely soon is that online learning opportunities have really democratized education. That's fantastic, but people looking at online learning providers with near-100% admission rates would likely assume that the students who attend are "unable to get into anywhere else." People on this forum would know better and could provide very compelling arguments in favor of alternative learning, but we're also staring down the long-standing reality of ease-of-access and supply versus perceived quality and demand.

The students who are able to be admitted into highly selective universities--with the exception of slots set aside for legacy admits and the like--are generally of a similar traditionally "high intellectual standard" and/or demonstrate significant leadership qualities. This goes beyond having sky-high standardized test scores (whole other topic, but these really seem to just correlate most closely with the test-taker's socioeconomic status and access to test prep services) since when applying within the range where you'll start to find the Ivies, perfect GPAs, SATs, a slew of 5's across AP/IB courses aren't enough to be truly competitive; they're essentially the baseline. The applicants must truly demonstrate exceptional qualities to stand a chance, but even then admission can be written off as largely a statistical fluke, since the rejected applicants are just as qualified.

So, even though I know it was partly tongue-in-cheek, when people point to the success of famous drop-outs, they often neglect to mention that these individuals were already gifted enough to be admitted to these top programs in the first place, or that they had a marketable business idea, or the contacts to pursue it. They were already some of the brightest we had to offer anyway.