Online Higher Education
Good for your Wallet — Good for the Environment

by Bert Woodall, NCU Web Copywriter

Online learners are likely to be joined by significantly more fellow students in the coming months, as ballooning gasoline prices make the cost of commuting impossible to ignore.

Simple economics and ecological values have favored the virtual classroom all along, but with gas over $4.00 a gallon and rising, the issue has changed overnight from environmental consciousness to personal pain. Driving to campus, so recently a mere inconvenience, is now a serious financial burden—and still inconvenient.

The economies of online education are not new, of course, but have been suddenly and sharply personalized by the price of gasoline. Simply put, there have been two distinct economic models at work—altruistic and pragmatic:

The Altruism Model
Online higher education is good for the world.
The Pragmatism Model
Online education saves me money

Unsurprisingly, pragmatism generally trumps altruism, and with the rapid surge in transportation costs, the pragmatism model is freshly ascendant and driving dramatic increases in online learning enrollments. Indeed, the current—and almost surely lasting—escalation of gas prices may well upend longstanding predictions that the increase in online learning would soon level off.

Pragmatism
Recent reports gathered by the Chronicle of Higher Education document an unmistakable trend. At state universities and colleges in Tennessee, 2008 summer enrollment in online courses is up by 29 percent over last year. At Brevard Community College in Florida, online enrollments show a jump of 25 percent. And in Pennsylvania, Harrisburg Community College saw an increase of 15 to 20 percent, while Northampton College’s online course enrollments have grown by 18 percent over 2007 figures. Recent reports from the Pacific Northwest show the same trend and there is no reason to think other regions of the US will be exempt.

Not everyone is convinced that this change is permanent, or even that gas prices explain the online enrollment spike. Robert M. Brown, dean of the division of continual learning at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, asked by the Chronicle if gas is the factor driving online enrollment gains, responded, “It’s really too early to tell.”

Other sources, though, indicate that Brown may be inordinately cautious in trend recognition. Business Wire, an online news service, carried a story in mid-June regarding a survey conducted by Degee.com, a web-based company that solicits enrollments for a number of online schools. The company reported a 38 percent increase in site visits between February/March 2008 and April/May 2008, “after adjusting for seasonal differences.”

Of more immediate significance is the reason Degree.com site visitors gave for being interested in online education. Sixty percent of respondents in May 2008 cited “higher gas prices” as their number one reason, followed by “convenience, parking, scheduling, babysitting and the cost of classes.” That number bears repeating: 60 percent. In a comparable survey from 2007, “convenience” was the number one reason, and gas prices didn’t even make the top five.

While these recent Degree.com visitors were most likely acting out of plain good sense, rigorous scientific research had certified their judgment.

The Design Innovation Group, a research organization affiliated with the United Kingdom’s outstanding Open University, conducted a comprehensive, multi-year study of the environmental impact of various higher education models, publishing a final report in March 2005. Among the key finding are these:

On average, the production and provision of the distance learning courses consumed nearly 90% less energy and produced 85% fewer CO₂ emissions [per student] than the conventional campus-based university courses.

The much lower impacts of distance learning compared to campus-based courses is mainly due to a major reduction in the amount of student travel, economies of scale in utilization of the campus site, and the elimination of much of the energy consumption of students’ housing.

Of particular salience here is the “reduction in the amount of student travel.” The DIG study found that online learning results in travel cost savings of 88.5 percent. To put that in highly technical scientific terms, with gas at $4.05 a gallon, 88.5 percent works out to a ton of money saved.

Altruism
So, what about that altruism model? Not a problem; still in play. This is a classic case where naked self-interest serves the common good. Online education is very good for the environment. That it’s easy on the pocketbook as well need not be held against it.

The DIG study found that CO₂ emissions associated with distance learning came to only 15 percent of those produced by full-time campus-based higher education. The study also found significant environmental benefits in reduced paper and printing expenses.

This 85 percent savings in CO₂ emissions does not go directly into the student’s pocket, of course, nor even exclusively into the student’s respiratory tract. This benefit, as with the generalized reduction in overall energy demand, redounds to the benefit of all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

A caveat: The DIG study found that “e-learning” courses offered significantly smaller reductions in energy consumption and CO₂ emissions than did “mainly print-based distance learning courses.”

Interestingly, the study attributed this reduced environmental benefit to “high student use of computing, consumption of paper for printing off Web-based material, and additional home heating (probably for night time internet access).”

A close reading of the report raises questions on this point, as the study found, for example, that two-thirds of the “students who took the course in 2000 printed half or more of the 483 pages of Web site course materials, while a quarter printed out none or ‘only the odd page’.” [Emphasis added.] That seems like a lot of pages to print for any course, online or not.

Further, the DIG study seems to presume a dubious level of course-exclusive computer use and utilities demand. The implication is that home computers, and indeed, the furnaces, are turned on solely to support the e-learning processes.

These anomalies notwithstanding, the DIG study did conclude that online distance learning yields significant reductions in energy consumption and CO₂ emissions compared with classroom-based learning. So it is perhaps quibbling to complain that the savings from online distance education are somewhat less huge than those of print-based distance education.

Finally, though, even accepting the DIG assertions that savings in computer usage, home utilities, paper and toner are not that great, we still have that bottom line: Online learning uses 88.5 percent less gas. You can take that deal all the way to the bank.

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Sources:

Towards Sustainable Higher Education: Environmental impacts of campus-based and distance higher education systems, Robin Roy, Stephen Potter, Karen Yarrow and Mark Smith. Design Innovation Group, March 2005

"Go Green With An Online Degree, Says WorldWideLearn.com." Retrieved from http://www.emediawire.com 01-09-2008

Chronicle of Higher Education: "Gas Prices Drive Students to Online Courses" by Jeffrey R. Young. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/free/2008/07/3704n.htm 07-08-2008