UC Dean Christopher Edley advocates an online program.
Taking online college courses is, to many, like eating at McDonald's: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you're just as full.
Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become the nation's first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor's degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus program.
The online education can be challenging because of its difficulty with keeping the quality and a strong revenue model together. Online education can be done effectively. The challenge is that, to do so, it costs a lot. For each school, like a prestigious UC school, to find a niche across this global competition, it is necessary to systematically marry the wonderful f2f campus experience with online components. What makes a school differentiate it from others should be judged by the quality of networking and access to experts.
