Online and There Is No Choice

By Herman Berliner. In a recent consultant’s report, in a section where the discussion focused on online degree programs, the report noted that 34% of the master’s degrees in education are earned through online education.  I’m not surprised and I fully expect that this number will exceed 50% within the next five years.  What is surprising to me is that there is still so much resistance to this inevitable trend.  More than a decade ago, I began regularly talking about the need for part-time graduate programs to move into a distance learning mode.  There was not surprisingly substantial resistance.  The key to this resistance is the legitimate fear that you lose the personal interaction so important to gaining the maximum educational benefit. Read more...