Another Hard Knock for Community Colleges : Campus Correspondence

Declining budgets and rising enrollments may soon force California’s community colleges to shortchange their students’ education. The Commission on Innovation, established by the colleges’ Board of Governors to deal with the flood of students, has proposed that the colleges seriously consider offering more “distance-learning” courses to keep pace with enrollment. And the board has helped clear the way for such courses by, in effect, relaxing the academic standards governing them. Unless this momentum toward distance-learning is snapped, community-college students may be denied the opportunity to interact with a teacher in any meaningful way.

The “ancient” form of distance-learning was known as correspondence courses. Then in the late ‘60s, the general manager of KABC-TV and 18 colleges developed an education program that was broadcast via television. It mainly targeted students who lived in rural communities separated from the nearest school by an hour or two.

Today, 42 community colleges in California offer some form of distance-learning for selected courses. Credit for these courses must be transferable to the university or state university systems, an important requirement to ensure their academic integrity.

Which is why the Board of Governors’ decision to add non-transferable courses to the distance-learning curriculum is so worrisome: A check against cheating has been removed. But this approach to learning has other drawbacks.

The most common form of distance-learning is a videotaped series of lectures. Students take the tapes home and follow the study guides that accompany them. Once a week, they either meet with an instructor to ask questions or call one to get more information.

This system works well for older, employed and self-motivated students. But what about younger students who just graduated from high school and lacks the discipline to complete course work without a teacher’s constant supervision?

Another form of distance-learning broadcasts a professor’s classroom lecture to non-campus settings, which allows a teacher to reach a larger number of students. Questions from these students are either answered directly by the teacher via telephone or by a tutor present at the locations. But how is a single teacher going to field questions from potentially 500 students in one hour? Students lucky enough to have tutors within talking distance risk missing out on portions of the lecture (no interruptions permitted) because they want to ask a question. This is hardly an atmosphere conducive to learning.

Fortunately, community-college students can still choose between a traditional teacher-student class or its high-tech version. But should distance-learning become the system’s main response to budget reductions, they may soon be forced to watch a videotape. For the majority of students, the community-college mission--preparation for a four-year university--would be imperiled.*