Whether Online-Only Degrees Would Be as Effective as Campus-Based Research Paper

Whether Online-Only Degrees Would Be as Effective as Campus-Based University Education - Research Paper Example Online enrolment has grown over the years by almost one million students as compared to previous years. Surveys made in about 2500 colleges have revealed that approximately 5.6 million students were enrolled in online courses in the year 2009 and by 2010 the number went on to 6.1million students. However there might exit some clouds but the sluggish economy continues to drive the growth of enrolment (The Sloan Consortium, 2012). While the growth of online enrolment is substantial but since 2006 the increase in an online course has increased only by 9.7% as compared to 21.1% in 2009. The report by Sloan Survey of Online learning acknowledges that the dip in the growth rate speculates that the increase in online education may lead to ultimate slowing. However, the growth of online enrolment exceeds the growth of overall higher education. Certain disciplines in online education system experienced gains and losses between 2010 and 2011. A major proportion of psychology and education prog rams saw a major decline in enrolment whereas engineering which had the highest proportion of declining enrolment in the year 2010 experienced improvement in the previous year. Online education has become an integral part of most of the education system, colleges, and universities (Lytle, 2011). However, it is true that online programs are flexible and also provides various kinds of benefits but all courses in the education system cannot be enrolled for online courses. Thus the online system education has both benefits as well as drawbacks for the students and the education system as a whole. Power/Knowledge Campus-based education has always had an edge over online education system because of the power it had and the knowledge that it aimed to provide its students. As stated above, everything cannot get online; there still exists subjects which require training and knowledge from the professors and practical training made available by campus-based learning. Although with the rise of internet campus-based education system has not been completely transformed but it is definitely going to have an immense impact in the near future (Scagnoli, 2005).