Abstract
The City University of New York is taking a new, local approach to online instruction: offering an online baccalaureate for degree completers, designed for NYC students who have “stopped out” in good academic standing and need the “any time” flexibility of asynchronous learning to finish the degree. What is especially distinctive about this online program is its goal of access for local students, its core constituency and mission. Though CUNY is addressing a local problem, online access to higher education for local students may address nation-wide problems with rates of degree completion and progress towards completion. As more institutions provide online instruction, localness may well be the key to access and timely completion for local students, with time and not distance being the key obstacle it overcomes.
Highlights
The Distance Traveled Since the Days of Distance Ed. Throughout most of this young century, a series of Sloan surveys has been documenting the dramatic growth in online learning: Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003 [1], Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004 [2], Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005 [3], and Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 [4]
CUNY turned to its own institutional research, which showed that, over the last six years, 64,000 students left in good academic standing—and without enrolling anywhere else. (It must be remembered that this number is a reckoning, over more than half a decade, of “stop-outs” from an institution with close to a quarter of a million students pursuing degrees at any given point in time.) Focus groups revealed academic difficulty was not the issue for these students who stopped out, nor were problems with CUNY
Once satellite and ancillary in some institutions, grass-roots and under-the-radar in others, online instruction is increasingly integral to the missions and goals of more and more institutions so much so that it has been argued that “the growth of online learning, its rhizomelike reach into all aspects of institutions of higher education, poses the intriguing possibility that we are converging on a single, integrative model, albeit from different directions” [11]
Summary
Throughout most of this young century, a series of Sloan surveys has been documenting the dramatic growth in online learning: Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003 [1], Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004 [2], Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005 [3], and Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 [4]. As the second survey in the series, Entering the Mainstream, reported over two years ago, “Virtually all public institutions offer online courses...” [2]. What this means is a simple but compelling fact: If you’re a student, and you want online instruction, you can get it locally.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
