I grew up in Cupertino, Calif., the home of De Anza College, one of the state’s many community colleges. In the 1990s, as a teenager, I took a few courses at the college, so I spent plenty of time there. The campus culture I look back on was about friendships, dating, sports and activities. B.B. King came to De Anza in 1996, Bruce Hornsby in 1998. Sometimes on weekends, there were bustling flea markets, and the recreational center was loud.
De Anza is still home to flea markets and has vibrant on-campus club days. But for some community college students, the campus atmosphere these days can be different.
In no small part because of the Covid-19 pandemic, community colleges have increasingly embraced online classes, and many students avail themselves of these offerings. It’s a trend that has made classes more accessible, but has also diminished the campus experience at some of these schools — institutions that have been rightly described as the backbone of higher education.
How we got here is understandable: During the pandemic, students at all educational levels, not to mention many white-collar workers, were at home and on Zoom full time. As life got back to (almost) normal, the increased popularity of online classes remained: In the fall 2022 semester, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 58 percent of two-year college students took at least one distance learning course; 31 percent of two-year college students took distance learning classes exclusively. (At four-year colleges, those numbers were 53 percent and 25 percent.)
For those whose work schedules don’t mesh with a traditional class schedule, online classes offer more options for studying and working at the same time — a flexibility that’s baked into the mission of community colleges.
But have we fully considered the downsides? Research has shown that online students tend to do worse than students who attend courses in person. For many course subjects, in-person learning is the better way to go, especially with direct access to services like tutoring and counseling.
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The post What’s Lost When Community Colleges Go Virtual appeared first on New York Times.
