Learning’s where you take it. My first month back in my folk’s place, after res, was eye-opening.
I was trying to be careful to indicate that I was using “lesser” in a specific, non-global sense.
Chocolate chip cookies are, in a sense, lesser than oatmeal raisin cookies because they lack raisins. Oatmeal raisin cookies are lesser than chocolate chip cookies because they lack chocolate chips. Whether either is lesser than the other overall, in a general sense, depends on who you are and what you want in a cookie (and possibly on who baked those particular cookies).
Given where the OP started, with their odious Youtube comparison, I’m going to stick to the general sense of “lesser” rather than the circular definition you seem to be using.
You’re right, I tend to think of the “American college experience” of high school graduates as equating to the traditional four-year bachelors’-degree residential college. But the reality nowadays is that the majority of US college students are in a different postsecondary-education environment.
You have my sympathy. Good for you for just sucking it up and getting through it, but we—higher education in general and the country as a whole—should have done a better job of protecting your safety while still nurturing your college experience.
Occasionally musing with envy and admiration on the situation of my New Zealand colleague whose university went totally remote for something under three months while they eradicated COVID nationally, and since then everybody’s been going about their business as per normal, although with proactive testing and tracing protocols and border quarantine. It can be done, but we didn’t do it.
You’re out of touch; while it started with janky for-profit schools like University of Phoenix, these days most reputable and accredited universities already offered distance-learning programs for a whole lot of things prior to COVID-19- one type in particular that I noticed a lot of was MBA programs (mostly because had it been an option when I went to graduate school, I might have tried for a much more prestigious school’s distance program instead of a well-regarded but unspectacular local school).
I imagine the big deal is that a lot of the socializing and opportunities to interact have probably dried up because of the pandemic, even if the academic aspects of it have mostly successfully adapted.
If you’re an out of work restaurant worker with a decent head on your shoulders you should be filling out financial aid paperwork and finding the cheapest community college in your area. It will keep you from being homeless while this blows over and you might just find your next career.
College professor, so I can mostly only speak to the academic side of college life – but yeah, it’s weird, and it’s definitely not as good as being in person. (F2F classes are still going on at many institutions, including mine, but they have to be adapted to accommodate students who are remote; sometimes this is done by having some students Zoom in while class is also going on in the classroom. I found this prospect to be too weird, not to mention technically challenging, so one of my F2F classes in the fall ended up being essentially hybrid – one optional day a week of in-class discussion with hands-on activities, a lot of online discussion and lecture material, and one Zoom meeting a week. The other one ended up being fully online since only one student could regularly attend in person.)
Those once-a-week face to face meetings felt like balm to the soul. Just so much more natural than Zoom class, and almost normal, even with face masks. I’m one month into a fully-online semester, and I miss that class so much.
From what I can see walking around campus, the students who are here are finding ways to make their own fun, as students always do. We had our every-two-years dusting of snow a few weeks back, and the mini-snowmen went up like usual. There’s not a lot of extracurricular or academic-enrichment stuff going on, though. The campus art gallery is open, and there have been a few outdoor movie or trivia nights, but that’s about it.
The ones I really feel sorry for are the freshman class. Except for our residential Honors program cohort and some of the athletes, they’re mostly not here at all, since my institution decided to take almost all of the core curriculum classes online and keep a good number of the upper-level electives face to face. It made sense from a distancing perspective, since those classes are smaller, but it means we’ve got a whole year of students who haven’t really met each other, haven’t bonded to one another or to the campus, aren’t going to have those memories of those confusing and exhilarating first days, haven’t really had a chance to do college yet. And I wonder how that’s going to play out over the next few years, and longer into the future – are most of them going to drift away instead of graduating? If they do graduate, do they become the sort of nostalgic alumni who come back for reunions (and donate), or are we going to have one or several cohorts of students that basically have no more attachment to our campus than they would to the University of Phoenix?
Also, online education is hard for students, especially students with weaker academic skills, or ones who are not good at organizing their time and planning ahead; I think we are losing a lot of students with academic vulnerabilities, and they don’t have the chance to form personal connections with the people who can help them. It is absolutely not like watching free lectures on YouTube, though! Actually, it’s more like the SDMB, and that comes with its own set of issues. Since participation is not something that happens organically in the classroom, but something that is required, taking place mostly in written format, and worth a significant chunk of the student’s grade, students who have weak reading and writing skills tend to struggle a lot, particularly if they are also slow readers and writers.
Just my scattered observations from one little state university in the South. Institutional contexts vary, etc.
I can see by the language you’re using in this thread that you have very strong opinions on this matter, but we are allowed to disagree with you.
Living away from home when going to uni is pretty much the default in the UK. I had a year at a local college before moving away to do my degree, and my university experience didn’t really get going until I moved away from home. Having to navigate landlords, utilities, house mates, cleaning, cooking, budgeting - these are all things you don’t fully experience in the bubble of the family home. Not least living in a different part of the country - that in itself is enriching. It opened my eyes to the idea that a whole world existed outside of my home town, and that I didn’t need to be constrained - as I result, I’ve lived all over. My siblings who didn’t go to uni are still in the same town, with the same friends they went to school with 30 years ago, hanging out in the same pubs they went to at 18.
Both stating an obvious fact as though it needed stating, and tone policing, in one sentence. Take it up with the OP, they started with the shitty comparisons right there. I’m just responding to their odious tone in kind.
It’s the default, but 20% still don’t. Are they “lesser”?
And that number is on the upswing. And the UK is an outlier in this in Europe, apparently.
Look, I’m not shitting on res life. I did it myself, in arguably the most exclusive res in South Africa. And it was great. And I lived in digs as well.
I am just aware that it’s not the university experience of a lot of people, whether at Open University, a US community college or other places. That elevating only one university experience as valid is a mistake, and frankly elitist too (e.g. the 20% in the UK will overwhelmingly be from the poorer students. And others will needlessly bankrupt themselves to keep up with the elitist ideal.)
20% is a distinct minority. The numbers are on the upswing because tuition fees are also rising, and living away from home is expensive. It’s still a shame.
And any minute now, you’re going to move on from italics and start shouting in all caps. I really don’t get why you’re so worked up about this subject.
Didn’t suggest it wasn’t a minority. For now. At no point have I suggested UK non-res students are a majority. But that wasn’t the question I asked, that you skipped over.
The OP started off by insulting my second degree. But sure, continue tone-policing me. Never mind that it has fuck-all to do with my points.
What was the question - ‘are they lesser’? No, no students are ‘lesser’ because of where they live, that’s wasn’t what I, or anyone else, was suggesting. But the experience is lesser, it just is.
I disagree.
It’s different, but different is not lesser.
Not speaking about distance learning here, just live-with-parents students - it’s not like stay-at-home students are shut in their rooms all semester. They have friends, and social lives, and all that that entails. Nor are they booted off campus as soon as lectures end. They can take part in the same clubs and sports. Sure, they’re not dealing with a landlord - but they are negotiating around living with their parents as fellow adults - a valuable experience on its own. And many do, in fact, pay rent to their parents from their maintenance loans.
Might I ask, BTW - did you go to uni pre-'98, or afterwards?
Pre '98, so had the benefit of free tuition (and indeed, maintenance grants).
At our college, there are still students on campus and classes taught in classrooms. Student activities also puts together a slate of socially distanced social events. People interact with their roommates, which is different from staying at home.
Online classes are different from a canned video because they are interactive. You can ask questions and get clarifications. You can also hold discussions with other classmates.
Two kids in college, one on campus and one not. Our youngest has done fine with distance ed, but he has a serious, long-term relationship. He was thrilled to get back. His girlfriend is a very serious student, and he’s a hell of a lot more serious than he was in HS. Our oldest is finishing up her AA (hopefully), and is totally online. As long as it’s synchronus she’s ok with it. At least as ok as she’s gonna get.