Now, when we all know that online education is possible and will probably become a part of our academic life, it’s time for us to summarize what the main advantages of remote education are and what we will be losing if all educational institutions stay online.
You can learn from the best
The best instructors are now available to you, no matter where you live or whether you have time to visit classes during working hours. It no longer matters if the expert you always wanted to learn from lives in another country or died a decade ago. Thanks to the multiple EdTech platforms, you can listen to the best speakers and visit classes you would have missed if they had not been uploaded online by some educational enthusiasts. If you prefer to study by night and spend your days earning money, online education will also be a good choice.
You can avoid student debt
Another benefit of online education is that most of the time it is free of charge or costs an affordable fee. This is in sharp contrast to the enormous bills colleges and universities both in the USA and in the UK send their students.
You can adapt your workload
Students in most countries around the globe are assigned plenty of homework. Not all of us can get writing assistance and buy custom dissertations online to ease our academic burden, so the possibility of adapting your workload according to your schedule is a great advantage of online education.
However, we hope that in the future there will still be a place for offline education, and here is why.
Troubles with elementary schools
Education is not only about colleges and earning PhDs, but also about teaching kids to read and count. And performing these tasks online is quite problematic. All those who have nephews or kids of their own know how difficult it is to keep a small child interested for more than half an hour. Doing so online is almost impossible, and eliminating offline education for small kids will lead to the transformation of all parents into teachers, and a relatively poorer elementary education among members of the next generation will be one possible result. What is more, parents will have to spend more time teaching their children and will automatically have less time for efficient work, hampering the growth of their country’s GDP.
Priceless vs worthless equation
It’s funny, but one of the main advantages of education online is at the same time one of its drawbacks. That which has a small price tends to have less value. This means that students are more willing to do their homework and attend all the classes (listening actively to all the lectures) if they pay for their education out of their own pockets. If the prices being paid are as small as those offered by most online platforms, people tend to make less of an effort in obtaining new knowledge.
Soft skills and acquaintances
Great universities have their own atmosphere where people filled with a craving to learn gather together. When in the college, surrounded by other learners, you are always motivated by your peers and professors, becoming saturated with their contagious enthusiasm and curiosity. Canteens, campuses, queues outside cafes, libraries… These are the places where you can meet new people, make a bit of small talk, and figure out who you are destined to do a collaborative project or start-up with. Colleges and universities are not only about getting hard skills but also about being introduced to acquaintances you will use further on in your career.
Online lectures complemented by offline seminars and other face-to-face academic activities have the potential to become a more efficient and much cheaper form of education in the future, and we hope that students all around the globe will embrace the new duo.