Online courses hurting students
Online courses make it easy for college professors to reach students, particularly in rural areas or with those who juggle school, work and other commitments.
But a new study from the Brookings Institution found that for some students, enrollment in these courses decreases their chances for a degree.
The report’s co-authors — Eric Bettinger, an economics professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Susanna Loeb, a fellow at Brookings — tracked more than 230,000 students in 168,000 sections of 750 courses at DeVry University, which offers the same courses in classes and online. Students work with the same syllabus and take the same tests.
The analysis found that students who take an online course not only get worse grades but are more likely to receive lower grades in the next term.
A student who took an online course was 9 percentage points less likely to stay enrolled in a degree program than a person who took an in-person class, they found. Differences were sharpest among lowperforming students.
“The tremendous scale and consistently negative effects of current offerings points to the need to improve these courses, particularly for students most at risk of course failure and college dropout,” the authors wrote.
DeVry, a for-profit college, has campuses in Austin, Irving and San Antonio. Nearly all of its degree programs are offered online.