Distance learners deserve better than HE’s latest bait and switch

Not long ago I started shopping online for my groceries, giving kerbside service a try. A long-time denizen of the in-store aisles − where as a professor I claimed to do some of my best brainstorming − I surely wasn’t the demographic the grocery retailer had in mind when they launched their newfangled option. And yet, within days of the programme’s roll-out, there I was with my phone at the ready and my hatchback open, eager and anxious for my first contact-free delivery.  

Fast-forward a few months and I find it difficult to imagine doing my weekly shop any other way. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about going hungry in order to stand for my beliefs, nor do I have to face the unhappy prospect of taking my business elsewhere. All the supermarkets near me now offer such services as a matter of course.  

While the world’s big-box retailers have made online shopping a permanent fixture of post-pandemic business plans, many colleges and universities have quietly taken the opposite tack this spring and summer, dramatically reducing online and hybrid learning sections for the coming academic year.

Gone are the reassurances to health-anxious students (and their parents) of a commensurate hybrid or online path to graduation. Gone are most of the accommodations offered to students and faculty for whom “learn from anywhere” served as both a point of pride and pandemic lifeline. 

Once again, it seems, higher ed’s kindly Dr Jekyll is reverting to the unpredictable and self-serving Mr Hyde. 

In rolling back distance education offerings, many universities have pulled a deeply disquieting bait and switch. Remote learning was always off brand for them, many now claim, offered only as a stopgap during an emergency. Now, with public health officials declaring that the worst may be behind us, many of those same universities have doubled down on their historic reputation for in-person learning.

“We don’t really do distance ed,” their revised rhetoric seems to suggest. “If you want to continue with that kind of education, you’ll have to go elsewhere. Maybe try the community college across town.”  

Translation: we don’t want your kind of business here any more.  

Many institutions seem to want to have it both ways. Facing a demographic cliff and lower tuition revenues in decades to come, they rightly insist that each student feel included, accommodated and understood − unless what the learner wants, and needs, to feel respected and included is a timely online or hybrid learning path they can count on. 

As higher ed hypes the supposed superiority of in-person learning and quietly sunsets many of its student-friendly Covid-era offerings, remote learning becomes the latest scapegoat used to justify a return to normal − where “normal” translates to rising tuition costs, record-high student debt and plummeting public confidence in higher education.

Those who call for a renewed institutional commitment to remote learning and ongoing support of online faculty and students are being cast as relics of an era we are all supposed to want to put behind us and never speak of again lest we tarnish the brand. The “whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy” commandment from George Orwell’s dystopian Animal Farm might as well read “whatever Zooms in upon a laptop…”  

Old and outmoded mission statements are now trotted out like mantras: “We are a residential college dedicated to in-person learning. We are a residential college devoted to in-person learning. We are a residential college devoted to…”

Marginalisation and scapegoatism like this fly in the face of higher ed’s greater commitment to inclusivity. In the 15 months since the world health crisis demanded a new pedagogy, many students have formed an identity around remote learning − one that can be every bit as integral to their self-concept as “first gen” or “student athlete”.

Instead of shaming these students or discouraging their persistence by eliminating or reducing course formats that work for them, we should embrace devoted distance teachers and learners and resolve to leverage their unique potential. In a world where distance learning is treated as equal, communities of vested online learners taking online classes together could be as feted and well facilitated as honours programmes. 

While elite higher ed retreats, Bartleby like, from new and necessary market segments, retailers worldwide move emphatically in the opposite direction, increasing online delivery options to match growing consumer demand. After all, it’s hardly the place of a customer-friendly Tesco or Aldi to dictate to its clientele how they should buy their products. Instead, they aim to find ways to provide goods and services to online customers who need, or want, to continue shopping there. 

Granted, higher education and food retail are not the same, nor should they be. Yet both provide a product we rightly regard as essential to millions. And as essential businesses in a time of revolutionary change, their disposition, regardless of historic mission, established brand or other red-herring defences, must be inclusive of robust online options as a matter of both equity and access. 

Zachary Michael Jack is a professor of English at North Central College and a long-time faculty member in the leadership, ethics and values programme. His most recent book is The Art of Public Writing (2020).