Afternoon Must-Read: David Deming, Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, and Noam Yuchtman: The Disruptive Potential of Online Learning

…The most basic question about online programs is whether they can actually reduce the cost of tertiary education…. Does the quality of education suffer when content is delivered online?… Two recent studies have found negative impacts of switching from in-person to online instruction on course final grades in an introductory economics class (Alpert et al. 2014, Joyce et al. 2014)…. For business job vacancies… employers strongly prefer applicants with degrees from (nonselective or selective) public institutions as opposed to applicants with degrees from for-profits. The biggest callback ‘penalty’ is imposed on the applicants with an online for-profit degree…. Online education… can succeed in cutting… costs…. But preliminary evidence suggests that–t least for the time being–the new technology comes at a cost of quality…