Throughout recent years, online education has become increasingly popular. Many praise online learning for its accessibility; some even claim that courses on the internet could replace their degree, while others are, to put it mildly, skeptical. This raises the question: Is online education really worth it?
The impact of the internet on modern education is undeniable. Not so long ago, one could not get a book if there wasn’t a library nearby with it. Let alone getting a professional opinion or learning advice about a certain subject; such things were available to a relatively small group of people.
Nowadays, everyone with internet access can Google a question and get feedback from people all over the world, find lecture notes from top universities for virtually any subject, and get a variety of job certifications in the demanded field. Clearly, all these are advantages of online education. Still, I would argue that the new online educational system is not entirely beneficial.
In essence, there are practically no limitations on who can create an educational source. This attracts a lot of con artists or people who are just trying to get rich, selling courses with little credibility. Of course, many of them have buyers, i.e., people wasting their time and money. This was the case for my father, 50 years old, who was trying to get better at probability theory for his programming job and bought an online course that at first glance seemed pretty decent. Furthermore, lots of people have unreasonable expectations from these online courses, mostly because of advertising. I do agree that some of the lectures online could be a great supplement for a formal degree or a powerful tool to get ready for a job interview. Still, thinking that simple Googling could replace, say, a math PhD, is just absurd, primarily because most of the material online is not so specialized and often lacks accuracy.
All in all, I believe that online sources are a great tool for learning, although one should always check their credibility and have reasonable expectations from the learning outcome.