Brick and Mortar Colleges Offering Online Courses From Other Institutions

When online courses were first offered, there was much speculation about the quality of learning that might take place in such courses.  The biggest concerns centered around student interaction with students, as well as professors.  Today, smaller colleges and universities are working with online colleges to help students take classes when there are scheduling conflicts, replace bad grades, and graduate on time. 

Normally, students are responsible for finding online courses that their colleges will allow and handling registration, fees, and transcripts. But today, the College Consortium provides an online course-sharing consortium with over 650 colleges.  The best part, they handle registration, fees, and transcripts so the student’s home college will seamlessly accept and include these online courses from various other colleges right on the student’s transcript. 

The student’s home college pays for the registration and tuition for the online college course using the student’s regular tuition paid for that term. The home college benefits because they don’t need to offer obscure courses with low enrollment and the student graduates and moves on in a timely fashion.  The online college benefits because it increases its enrollment, and the College Consortium gets its fees from the home college for handling all of the moving pieces in this very complex program. Everybody wins!

It’s exciting to see creative solutions that help students improve their GPAs and graduate sooner.  Graduating just one semester sooner can save them up to $25,000!  I’m watching to see if there is a change in the quality of the student’s learning and education when students take online courses at different institutions all while receiving their diplomas from their home college.

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