Online eVersity? Maybe, Maybe Not (OPINION)

The University of Arkansas System wants to siphon $5 million from its brick-and-mortar campuses to finance the startup costs of what it’s calling eVersity.

The UA System says the online school is for the 360,000 Arkansas adults who didn’t finish college. Sounds good, but there’s a problem. University professors aren’t as enthused as the administration. Critics see eVersity as a potential low-budget degree factory that could undermine the traditional route of actually going to campus and earning a degree along with one’s peers.

The professors might be onto something. In our search for comfort, convenience and profits, we’re always trying to find the easy way of doing things. These days, people get traded in for technology all the time. It looks like there’s plenty of potential for just that with eVersity, hence the pushback from the professors.

It’s doubtful a university education can be condensed into a mobile app or a piece of software, but even if it can, earning a four-year degree through a laptop sounds industrial and dehumanizing. College is where you start growing up. It’s where you meet some of your best friends, and maybe even the love of your life, and it’s where you forge memories that will sustain you in the toughest of times. An online education can’t do that, regardless of how well it’s designed and implemented.

Let’s not forget that the Western university was born about 1,000 years ago and that it’s endured war, famine, plague and all manner of natural catastrophes. The computer will continue to change the world, and at this point it’s safe to say that it sits alongside the sail, the wheel and the printing press as among mankind’s most important inventions. But let’s not let it dismantle one of civilization’s enduring traditions.

Maybe those professors are onto something.