Lone Star accelerates plans for online degrees
Pandemic propels remote learning; college system working on comprehensive path for earning diplomas in various sectors
The Lone Star College System has talked for years about creating an online college that would allow students to get theird egrees completely online. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced its hand.
Before coronavirus, LSC had around 34,000 students online. Now it has closer to 70,000.
“We have the largest online enrollment of any standalone community college in the country,” Chancellor Stephen Head said.
Now, across LSC campuses, the college system is working on creating a comprehensive online path for the various degree programs it offers. This would allow LSC to create an entire online curriculum so students aren’t tied to a physical campus, but are getting a comparable education.
One of the challenges that LSC is facing with an online degree system is the success rate across different groups. Currently, LSC online success rates — meaning students finishing with As, Bs, or Cs — for white students is around 72 percent, for Hispanic students is about 67 percent, and for African American students is 53 percent. Uneven progress in the student success rate is a challenge Head knows the college system needs to address.
While these statistics are broken down by ethnicity, Head said success rates have more to do with a student’s socioeconomic status. Students from higher-income families, especially families who also have college educations, are more likely to succeed.
“We’ve got work to do, I think, from that standpoint,” Head said.
When classes were moved online because of the pandemic, the college system ordered 6,000 laptops to give to students who would need them in an effort to bridge the technology divide that is a common factor in socioeconomic inequality.
The college already has an office and infrastructure for online classes. Moving forward, the online degree system would be staffed by LSC professors and adjuncts who want to teach onlineonly courses, Head said. The new system wouldn’t include a new vice president or deans, it would be an expansion of an existing system.
The new online system would help LSC fulfill what it already tells students.
“We offer over 30programs online andwe tell people you can get a degree online, but it’s difficult because we’re not filling out the courses the waywe should,” Head said. “In other words, if you want a degree online you should be able to get it in two years, and we’ve got gaps in the scheduling right now so we’re trying to pull all of that together.”
A new online degree system won’t be happening overnight. A lot of decisions are still to bemade about its academic and administrative structure. But Head knows that online education is the future of education and he wants LSC to be ready. He expects that, at the earliest, this online college system will be rolling out the spring semester in 2022.