Is online college easier now?

[Vle045]

Difficulty is pretty subjective. The only thing I have seen with data is that grade-inflation across educational institutions has made it easier than ever for more people to achieve higher grades.

Grad classes tend to be less work than undergrad.  More often you are not studying as much for tests as undergrad and instead are mostly working on applying knowledge to projects or reports or a final thesis.


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I've wondered about grade-inflation and how much of that is going on.   And that's a good point about applying knowledge to projects.

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I have found courses much easier today than they were in the 90's. There's far less reading and coursework overall. Exams and tests are often open book or open notes today. I never had that back then. Even some grad courses I've taken I've been surprised at the level of work involved - definitely didn't feel grad level.

Interesting thing about open book/open notes.  On the one hand, we all have the internet at our fingertips now.  For some types of work, you could definitely figure things out as you go along - to an extent.  Although, back when I decided to get a paralegal certificate, I felt like my classes were too easy since everything was open book and I got straight A's.  So I switched schools where the work was harder and I had decent grades, but not straight A.

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Classes now are much easier, quicker, simpler than before, way back when, there were correspondence schools, everything was done with snail mail and video recordings, cassette tapes, physical text books, and the whole nine yards.  Having said that, it's the medium that has changed, mostly the same subject information, but placed online instead of print/video recordings.  Subject matter also depends on the student previous knowledge, class content seems easier, shorter, and there are so many more resources online to help students...

The resources and delivery are definitely different.  I think I was on the very end of a time where we had microfiche for research.  I remember having email and some sort of very basic online access, but nothing even close to what we have now.