A new poll by NewsAmerica finds the majority of Americans now believe online education is the same or even better than in-person education. Varying Degrees 2022: New America’s Sixth Annual Survey on Higher Education interviewed over 1,500 Americans and found 76% of those surveyed believe post-high school education offers a good return on investment. This statistic has held steady since the survey started five years ago.
What changed — and changed quite drastically — was the favorable view toward online education. While ‘only’ 8% of Americans believe online education is better than in-person education (up from 3% last year), 17% of current students believe the quality of online instruction is better than in-person instruction. Additionally, a stunning 47% think the quality of online instruction is just as good as in-person instruction.
This is big news. The late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen predicted back in 2011 that about half of all colleges would fail by 2026. While the timing appears too ambitious, it could very well come to fruition within our lifetimes.
We believe the pandemic has accelerated the online education ‘disruption.’ Furthermore, we believe that the change in the attitude of current students is crucial to driving online education as these students will eventually replace the older survey respondents and as the quality of online educational programs continues to improve. Hopefully, the online education revolution drives down the cost of education while concurrently making it more accessible to more citizens and increasing the perceived quality over the traditional in-person education model.