"I am not going to bed right now. I am going to college!" said a pajama-clad girl in a commercial for Education Connection, a website that seeks to help prospective students find online degree programs. Before former University President John T. Casteen, III left, he said the University needed to expand in areas such as online education. "Imagine what we can do in places where we have never been but where our name is known," he said. Bill Cannaday, dean of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, is currently working to expand the University's online education opportunities. Although expanding these services may be an effective way to increase revenue for the University, offering online degree programs will adversely affect the prestige and value of degrees earned from the University.
Specifically, Cannaday wants to expand the University's online Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies degree. This may sound appealing at first because more students will be able to take classes without setting foot on Grounds, but they will miss a vital component of the University experience. Of course, learning is the main purpose of earning a degree, but interaction with the University community is a major factor that contributes to the distinctiveness of a degree from the University. More online classes mean there will be many students who will graduate without ever going to a University home football game, wandering to Cohn's for a midnight snack or crossing the Lawn from class on a cool autumn night. Although this sentimental rhetoric might appear inconsequential, the experience is important nevertheless. The Academical Village is not merely a place to earn college credit but is also a community in which professors and students live and work together to foster a vibrant academic environment. An student earning a degree online will not have the luxury of visiting professors in office hours, creating study groups or capitalizing on many of the University's resources. These adventures cannot be mimicked online because e-mail does not have the same effect as meeting with a professor face-to-face, participating in study groups or interacting with peers. Also, these students will not be able to benefit from the wealth of resources available at the University's libraries that are not available online.
University students should be opposed to expanding the University's online degree options. I am sure the University would work hard to maintain its prestige, but the negative ramifications of such programs are unavoidable. If degrees from the University become more common, they will be less valuable to future employers and graduate or professional schools. That is not to say that we should limit the undergraduate population to issue fewer degrees, but having a substantial number of graduates who never took a class on Grounds would decrease the worth of a University diploma. A University diploma not only incorporates the many hours spent studying and going to class, but also the time spent learning how to network, balance time, work and interact with professors and peers. Since first-year orientation, students are told to major in what they love because, more often than not, their job will have nothing to do with what they studied. President Teresa A. Sullivan gave a speech to members of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society earlier this semester and said "at the end of four years of higher education, progress is made toward the development of a personal identity. Also, we are more likely to vote and donate to charitable organizations. We are more likely to use principled reasoning on moral issues." Sullivan was attempting to answer the question of "how can we (the University) know if we're any good?" She also said University graduates are perceived as remarkably engaged and informed members of our community - both locally and globally. This is why individuals work so hard to earn a degree from the University: It is respected as a measure of one's ability, work ethic and communication skills. A University degree, therefore, is more than an accumulation of credit hours.
While expanding online opportunities would create, as Cannaday said, the "opportunity to make the University of Virginia accessible for students who can't get here in traditional ways," with the time, money, and work I have invested in my education here, I do not believe expanding "accessibility" in this way would be good for the University. I would hate to see the value of a University degree equated, justly or not, with the peppy pajama-clad girls in commercials.
Nathan Jones is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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