(04-08-2014 10:34 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 10:00 PM)MU88 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 01:37 PM)CommuterBob Wrote:  One of the components of Florida's education bill from last year was to allow UF and FSU (and any other FL state university who can meet their levels of funding, research activity, and academic rankings) to offer on-line only bachelor's degree programs at 75% (max) of the standard tuition rate. There are several state schools that offer online classes already, but none offer complete degree programs that allow for students to never have to set foot on campus, until now. The two schools each get an extra $15M in funding from the state to run those programs as well.

Lots of state schools offer complete degree programs online. See for example, the University of Iowa:

Iowa

I believe such state schools as Colorado State, Alabama and many, many others offer online degree programs.

Yes but online education isn't their primary focus.

No, online degrees are not the primary focus and the selection of those degrees is very limited.

Not sure about the other schools listed but I believe to take the limited degree programs Iowa offers students must transfer into the program with 30 semester hours, meet the prerequisite course load by program and a have a 2.75GPA.

I think it's great that some courses are available online, the student still has to academically qualify for the school and they will get a good education. It's not the same as the open admissions provided by the for-profit schools like DeVry or U. of Phoenix. Those schools serve a purpose, a good one too - providing vocational degrees.

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

(04-09-2014 08:55 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

Ok. Its alright for Alabama and Vanderbilt and Georgia and Ole Miss and Ohio St. and Iowa and TCU and ... to take federal $ and spend millions on football stadiums, but not Liberty.

(04-09-2014 09:27 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:55 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

Ok. Its alright for Alabama and Vanderbilt and Georgia and Ole Miss and Ohio St. and Iowa and TCU and ... to take federal $ and spend millions on football stadiums, but not Liberty.

Alabama's stadium pays for itself.

Still, it's okay to an extent. 85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

(04-09-2014 09:32 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

I saw a U.Phoenix ad the other night that alluded to a grad becoming an astronaut

(04-09-2014 09:37 AM)Hitch Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 09:32 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

I saw a U.Phoenix ad the other night that alluded to a grad becoming an astronaut

That's downright predatory, especially considering how expensive those worthless educations can be.

In fairness to Liberty I don't think they are maxing out student loans like those other 'schools' but they are still handing out tens of thousands of online degrees of questionable worth.

(04-09-2014 09:44 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 09:37 AM)Hitch Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 09:32 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

I saw a U.Phoenix ad the other night that alluded to a grad becoming an astronaut

That's downright predatory, especially considering how expensive those worthless educations can be.

In fairness to Liberty I don't think they are maxing out student loans like those other 'schools' but they are still handing out tens of thousands of online degrees of questionable worth.

If people are willing to pay for them, maybe they are worth it. If they aren't, people will quit paying for them.

You could argue a lot of degrees are pretty worthless. You could get a sociology degree at Yale and not be able to do anything with it except get into a school for another degree. Maybe you get "educated," but it still has limited value.

(04-09-2014 08:55 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

The federal aid money goes to student, they don't just give it to the school. I am currently attending Liberty on GI BIll for biblical studies and my degree is not worthless to me, which is all that really matters.

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:40 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-08-2014 11:27 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  Handing out thousands of useless, and expensive, online degrees in order to finance a new weight room just screams 'good Christians' doesn't it?

Even better when 50% of the online tuition is on federal taxpayer backs.

It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

No disagreement here on that one.

(04-09-2014 09:32 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 09:27 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:55 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

Ok. Its alright for Alabama and Vanderbilt and Georgia and Ole Miss and Ohio St. and Iowa and TCU and ... to take federal $ and spend millions on football stadiums, but not Liberty.

Alabama's stadium pays for itself.

Still, it's okay to an extent. 85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

Let's not fall for the "pay their way thing"

USA Today has consistently found no more than five FBS programs spending equal to or less than what they take in. Even those programs who have a year where they do not need to tap into university resources have infrastructure that the university provided along with unpaid seed capital invested for a century or more.

If MegaState University went out and built a new stadium from scratch with 100% donor money, odds would be that it would be built on land that the university, not the athletic department had purchased years ago and the university would be funding other related infrastructure changes.

(04-07-2014 11:33 PM)Waterloo Wrote:  Would love to see some Missouri Valley Schools move up - Missouri State, Illinois State, Indiana State and Northern Iowa.

Would love to see the Valley sponsor FBS football and expand to 16.

(04-09-2014 11:25 AM)CAJUNNATION Wrote:  

(04-07-2014 11:33 PM)Waterloo Wrote:  Would love to see some Missouri Valley Schools move up - Missouri State, Illinois State, Indiana State and Northern Iowa.

Would love to see the Valley sponsor FBS football and expand to 16.

Just find 8 willing FBS schools to join.

(04-09-2014 11:25 AM)CAJUNNATION Wrote:  

(04-07-2014 11:33 PM)Waterloo Wrote:  Would love to see some Missouri Valley Schools move up - Missouri State, Illinois State, Indiana State and Northern Iowa.

Would love to see the Valley sponsor FBS football and expand to 16.

Rumor has it that they tried to do that through the WAC. The WAC's commish (Hurd) said 'no' and told to them that their football members needed to be full-time WAC members. Of course, that was a deal-breaker for both parties.

Truthfully speaking, the MVFC, CAA (if they still had UMass, ODU and Georgia State) and Big Sky could move up as a whole. Unfortunately, the current rules will not allow them to. Also, I do not think each of those conferences could find 8 ready football members that could meet all of the NCAA requirements (staffing, Title IX, 15k attendance, etc).

Online education is the way of the future. Seriously a large number of computer science courses have already made the switch. My junior and senior year literally everything was online even though we went to class. It got to the point where I did not even take anything to school besides my tablet.

It's not going to be long before all courses are online with optional class meetings.

(04-09-2014 01:29 PM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  Online education is the way of the future. Seriously a large number of computer science courses have already made the switch. My junior and senior year literally everything was online even though we went to class. It got to the point where I did not even take anything to school besides my tablet.

There was distance education before the world wide web existed ... true online classes are web-assisted distance education, and substantial web-assisted components to face to face classes does not actually make them into online classes.

That break down with upper division online classes as part of a degree program is going to be more common, though. It allows students at two year branch campuses to take the bulk of their intro courses and general bachelor's degree courses face to face while having access to a much greater diversity of upper division courses than a branch campus could support, so for a lot of larger flagship universities with branch campus networks, it will be a choice between having face to face and online courses versions of the same course side by side, or doing the whole upper division course online, and many departments in many larger schools will opt for the latter for the greater flexibility in staffing.

However, online courses are killers on retention, so it seems likely that many large schools will favor face to face as their primary delivery method for the bulk of their lower division courses, since avoidable drops in freshmen and sophomore years cost the University quite a lot of potential tuition revenue.

(04-09-2014 01:29 PM)TrojanCampaign Wrote:  Online education is the way of the future. Seriously a large number of computer science courses have already made the switch. My junior and senior year literally everything was online even though we went to class. It got to the point where I did not even take anything to school besides my tablet.

It's not going to be long before all courses are online with optional class meetings.

This is a shame. Online is fine for those who must have it. But it does not replace the campus experience and interacting with faculty. College is as much about learning to network and socialize as it is taking tests. When college becomes something you can do in your bedroom between games we will have lost a lot.

(04-09-2014 09:32 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 09:27 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:55 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 08:23 AM)JMU2004 Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 07:07 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  It makes me respect the anti-government hard right Christian schools who won't accept Pell. They stand by their principles.

Frankly, if the school is making that much money from federal $, they should be rolling it back into financial aid, not building new athletic facilities with it.

This!

I have no problem with them taking Federal Aid dollars if those dollars are being used, as they should by a non-profit, to further the goals and such of those who are served. New football stadiums and fees to enter D1 don't qualify in my opinion.

If Liberty scaled back their online operation and put it more in line with other institutions then I don't see any problem with them. However, as is they are half Bible school half U of Phoenix Online which is crap.

Ok. Its alright for Alabama and Vanderbilt and Georgia and Ole Miss and Ohio St. and Iowa and TCU and ... to take federal $ and spend millions on football stadiums, but not Liberty.

Alabama's stadium pays for itself.

Still, it's okay to an extent. 85% of funding being worthless online degrees largely paid for by the Feds, a la U of Phoenix, and other diploma mills, is bull****.

All those stadiums (or improvements) were financed the same way Liberty's was.

People are finding hybrids as the balance and "way of the future." Participation, retention, flexibility, performance...all there. It's just a bit too new and not as cost-effective as the online options (or classroom ones). People were saying online courses were the way of the future when they were pioneering this stuff almost 15 years ago. It's still seen as fluff.

There is strife among faculty and administration over things like academic freedom because of the online courses. Administrators and department chairs love it when book publishers come to them and present this nifty product that can almost teach the class itself, bridging performance assessment to outcomes and whatnot. And, boy, do the publishers know the online terrain. Faculty are, naturally, resistant. And they should be. Because ANYONE can pick up a textbook and be self-taught, no college needed. Textbooks shouldn't be teaching people. People should be teaching material with texts as supplementary pieces. That's "college."

There's a reason the online diploma mills are fighting congress for exemption from assessing job placement. The accrediting bodies, which schools adore because of the legitimacy the good ones exude if you belong to it, will find a way to bring them down. They want to put their name on winners, and the mills aren't. The next generation of parochial snobbery.