TEXT CAFEARTICLE DISTRIBUTION AND SYNDICATION

People attend community colleges for many reasons. One of them is saving money–both in terms of reduced tuition and not accumulating academically related debt.
Community colleges have been seeing a boom in enrollment, due at least in part to the weak economy and the skyrocketing costs of private and public universities.
Matt Braswell, director of counseling and advising, career transfer, and disability services at Harrisburg Area Community College, reported that the Pennsylvania school saw a 13 percent increase in enrollment last year.
“That’s a huge increase,” Braswell said. “We’ve noticed classes filling up much earlier and needing to add more sections, beginning in July. Usually that happens in late-August”.
Students who spend two years at a community college, then transfer to a four-year school, get the same diploma as someone who attends the four-year college all along–with a lot less debt. A year at a community college might cost about $5,000 in tuition, as compared with $12,000 to $20,000 or more for even a relatively inexpensive four-year institution.
Students at community colleges are also eligible to apply for federal financial aid programs, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The FAFSA form indicates how how much students might be able to obtain in loans as well as in grants from their specific schools.
Price has always been a selling point of two-year colleges, according to George R. Boggs, president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Community Colleges.
“With their lower tuition costs, community colleges give students a way to save money while learning in a supportive environment,” Boggs said. “They also allow students to access training for associate-degree or non-degree careers, and they offer continuing education and personal development classes for the broad spectrum of adult learners.”
Moreover, community colleges can offer the boon of easy-to-transfer credits. Most of these schools have articulation agreements with four-year colleges and universities, ensuring that credits earned at the community college will count toward the four-year-degree program once the student has transferred.
HACC, which has more than 600 articulation agreements, has seen an increase in transfer students to four-year colleges, as opposed to those stopping at an associate’s degree.
“Finances are a big part of it,” Braswell said. “Students are very cost-conscious. A percentage of our students didn’t meet the criteria at the four-year-college [they were interested in], but well over half are here because it’s cheaper”.
Students at four-year colleges can save money by heading home for the summer and taking low-cost credits at a local community college. Every credit earned there rather than at the four-year institution can cut hundreds in tuition. .
Moreover, many community colleges offer courses to high-school juniors and seniors. If courses are dual-enrollment, students can earn both high-school and college credits simultaneously.
“Community colleges are an underfunded community asset and an invaluable resource for first-generation college students, low-skilled adult workers and immigrants aspiring to enter college, and downsized workers and mid-career changers transitioning to ar recession-proof career,” according to Phil Ciciora, education editor of of illinois.edu.
Since first-generation college students and adults with a high-school diploma often have little knowledge of what higher education is about or what their career goals are, “Community colleges can be a gateway to an associate’s or a bachelor’s degree, at a fraction of the cost of entering a public four-year college and just about any private institution”, said Debra Bragg, a professor of higher education and the director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois.
Moreover, she added, aside from community colleges, there aren’t many affordable alternatives with a successful track record at preparing students and adult learners.

Ten years ago, the students enrolled in online education courses came from all over the country. Many of them were beginning degrees for the first time, finishing where they left off, or taking selected courses in order to enhance their career options.
In most cases, these students were “nontraditional students.” They were older than the students on campus, and they took courses online because their careers and families made it difficult for them to add regular classroom meetings and assignments to their busy schedules. Online education offered nontraditional students flexibility. They could do the work for their courses whenever and wherever they wanted.
Often the term “online education” was synonymous with “distance education.” This reflected the fact that most students taking courses from an online degree program didn’t live or work in geographical proximity to the university in which they were enrolled. Online education isn’t as distant anymore. In fact, it is becoming an increasingly important component of every student’s college education as more and more campus-based students enroll in online courses that are offered by their universities.
A new survey indicates that one in five college students is currently taking at least one course online, and this number is predicted to continue to rise. From ivies, to large state universities, to small liberal arts colleges, more campus-based students are taking online courses as part of their traditional college education. Many universities are now claiming that increased demand from on campus students fuels the expansion of online education programs as well as technological innovations in education.
Campus-based students are attracted to online courses for many of the same reasons that “distance students” once were: they allow greater flexibility, especially when it comes to balancing work and study. The cost of a college education continues to rise and surpass inflation, government aid, and household income.
Not surprisingly then, more students need to work while in college to help pay their tuition. Elizabeth Farrell reports that a survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA revealed that “almost half of college freshmen — a record 47.2 percent — said there was a ‘very good chance’ that they would have to work during the academic year.” For these students, now almost half of all students, online courses free up their course schedules and make it easier to balance work and education.
Additionally, universities now find themselves with more students and less classroom space. Providing instructors and classrooms to meet the demands of more students has proven difficult. As a result, many students are frustrated over conflicts in their schedules that can slow their progress towards graduation. For example, the only open section of English 101 may conflict with the only open section of Business 101, and the student will have to choose which requirement to take now, and which to defer until next semester.
Consequently, many students would welcome having the option of taking one of those courses online. Traditional bricks and mortar universities are responding to these problems by increasing the number of courses students can take online. Some universities now require students to take online courses as part of their degree requirements because there just isn’t enough classroom space to accommodate increased student enrollments.
Financial difficulties have also driven increases in online education offerings at the high school level. Michigan has recently passed legislation that requires all high school students to take at least one online course. Other states are sure to follow Michigan’s lead. Many legislators recognize that online technologies allow students to have access to educational opportunities that are under-funded in their own local school districts. Additionally, educators and legislators alike are confronting the fact that online education is the way of the future. The sooner high school students can become familiar with the technologies they will encounter in their college-level courses, the better.
Universities with traditional on campus programs continue to create more opportunities for online education. Even students who meet in classrooms for traditional face-to-face instruction will find themselves engaged in online course activities. These can range from downloading lectures as podcasts, to posting responses to course material on a discussion board, to completing and submitting assignments online.
Some classes are simultaneously conducted in virtual as well as bricks and mortar classrooms. These hybrid classes allow students to choose from a set of prescheduled face to face meetings while still completing a portion of the course online. Students get the best of both worlds: face time with the instructor and other students in the class, and the convenience of online learning.
In some exceptional cases, classrooms have entirely moved to virtual reality. For example, a recent survey found that over one hundred universities have campuses in Second Life. Peter J. Ludlow at the University of Toronto recently taught a course in Second Life to real life students enrolled in a real life university. As avatars, they met in a virtual classroom on a virtual campus in a virtual world to discuss the philosophical and social aspects of online worlds. They were assigned real grades that counted towards their real degrees.
While Professor Ludlow found the educational experience in Second Life somewhat dissatisfying, he nonetheless acknowledged that students’ personal learning preferences fuel technological advances in education. College students, referred to as “millennials,” are coming to universities “wired,” eager to use their technological skills for educational purposes.
Professors are increasingly seeing the value of a hybrid education. Many instructors find that by adding online aspects to their classroom courses, creating hybrid classrooms, and in some cases transforming their courses into entirely online courses, they create more opportunities for students to master the course material. For many, this is because students themselves extensively rely on web technologies for entertainment and education, and businesses will expect their new college graduate employees to have an unprecedented familiarity with technology.