University of California System Bans Fully Online Degrees

[Pats20]

It’s all about $$$$. California doesn’t have a legitimate beef against online degrees. They’re just broke. What happened to being inclusive ?

It's definitely NOT money, if you're comparing the cost of offering online courses vs. offering in-person courses - in-person, with the cost of hosting courses on a physical campus, is WAY more expensive.  The way to make more money is to offer MORE online courses, not fewer.

My guess is, it IS about money, but not in the way you're thinking.  In order to keep more people OUT, you have to have a good way to do so - and the best way to do that is to make people go to a physical campus.  When you do that, you keep out a significant portion of people who can't do that, either due to being too far away from campus, or having other commitments.

The best thing to do here, is for many, many people to decide that the UC system is not a great option for them, and to not go there.  That's the only way to get out of the spiral; to have demand go so low that they have to start offering more of what people want.  But until that happens, they'll continue to do things like this.

I wasn’t comparing the cost of online courses vs in person. I said it was about the money. Follow the money one way or another. Either by less revenue in the cities and greater area  that UC exist. Or by disenfranchisement. The need for a permanent underclass. There could be all kinds of motives. But money is at the root of it.