How COVID-19 is Shaping Schools and Online Education
An often overlooked byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the emergence of remote learning. The focus typically ends up on the evolving workforce, but the fact of the matter is that students across the world are being forced to adapt to online learning. Every aspect of instruction at schools is changing and everyone from professors at renowned colleges to teachers at elementary schools are learning to teach in this new environment.
Online degrees aren’t completely new and accredited programs have been around for years. The difference, however, is that these programs were set up with remote learning in mind. Colleges and schools were forced to make the change in a matter of months, weeks in some cases, and this transition is shaping schools and the future of online education around the country.
A Rise in Vocational Schools
As with online degrees, vocational schools have been around for a number of years but have often been overlooked in favor of a traditional path such as a standard in-person college. COVID-19, however, has caused some students to move away from this traditional path.
Recent data covered from Statista shows how, during the pandemic, 1.38 billion learners around the world were impacted by school closures. Traditional colleges and universities are still charging full tuition, or near full, but students are only getting an online experience and fewer interactions with their instructors. In fact, it’s been reported that roughly one in six high schoolers were considering taking a gap year instead of attending college this fall due to a lack of the traditional “college” experience.
However, trade school attendance has risen in recent years and this form of learning is completely online. Featuring specialized courses meant to prepare students for a specific career, some schools such as Springboard even offer deferred tuition until you are able to pay. As online learning continues to develop, this cheaper and more specialized form of education may begin to appeal to more and more people.
Less Peer to Peer Interaction
A massive downside to the emergence of online learning has been the reduction in peer-to-peer interaction. This effect has mostly been prevalent in students who are younger, such as elementary schools, where social interactions with other students are incredibly important to their development.
Recent studies have found that peer interaction is important for language, cognitive, and social development. No matter how you look at it, it is important for kids to physically interact with other kids that are their own age. As schools close and are shaped amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, kids are being deprived of both their friends and these key interactions.
As schools continue to adapt to this new world, they will need to find a way to foster peer-to-peer interaction over video services such as Zoom, but keeping the undivided attention of a young child over the computer is a difficult task for any teacher.
Tuition Prices and Degree Levels
Alluded to when discussing trade schools, tuition costs are going to be shaped drastically by COVID-19, along with the degrees that are commonly accepted by employers. Colleges and universities still need money for campus operations which means their tuition amounts aren’t changing drastically.
Unfortunately for these institutions, students are unhappy with this fact and, as mentioned, many are considering taking a year off until they can receive some semblance of a normal experience. However, with employers forgoing the exclusive acceptance of only traditional college degrees in favor of degrees from new educational institutions, such as trade schools, students may begin to find those other options more appealing.
After all, why should students pay full tuition to some colleges just to sit in front of a computer and listen to a teacher? It makes more sense, financially speaking, to pay less and attend an educational institution that was made to be online and can offer competitive learning. Doing so may set students up better for the future of education and allow them to make better use of their time while traditional educational institutions struggle to develop online learning.
Conclusion
Remote learning is changing the way kids and young adults everywhere are being educated. The future of the entire educational industry itself has had a massive wrench thrown into it due to this pandemic and it is unclear how it will totally evolve. With that said, remote learning, as with remote work, will likely see a massive spike in popularity as people begin to move away from traditional educational options when the pandemic settles.
Meet the Author, Artur Meyster
Artur Meyster is the CTO of Career Karma (YC W19), an online marketplace that matches career switchers with coding bootcamps. He is also the host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast, which features people with non-traditional backgrounds who broke into tech. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.