Online programs little success in offering low-cost courses for freshman year college credit

When Arizona State University announced in 2015 that it would offer a freshman year’s worth of credit-bearing “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) for a fraction of the cost of its regular online and in-person classes, the news was met with both excitement and alarm....Some academics saw the new model as a threat to traditional colleges, warning that it would steal students from community colleges and regional public institutions and destroy the livelihood of faculty members...
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Three years on, both the hype and the hysteria seem overblown. Though the program has drawn large numbers of students, it’s been plagued by the same problems that have dogged MOOCs since their creation: low completion rates and a high percentage of learners who already have degrees. Of the 373,000 students who have enrolled, barely 2 percent of students (8,090) have completed a course with a grade of C or better, and under 22 percent of the completers (roughly 1,750 students) have received credit from Arizona State (ASU) for their work. Fewer than 150 have enrolled in the university as regular students....

Although Global Freshman Academy and other programs that seek to unbundle freshman year, such as StraighterLine and Freshman Year for Free, have yet to become household names, the need for cheaper, more flexible pathways to a college credential is clear. A growing number of jobs today require postsecondary education: in 2017, 68 percent of individuals holding only a high-school diploma were employed, in contrast to 84 percent of those with at least a bachelor’s degree (see Figure 1). Yet more than half of Americans over the age of 25 lack even an associate’s degree, and in many underdeveloped countries, attainment rates are even lower. Often, adult learners don’t have the time or resources to enroll in a mainstream four-year college, or even a marginally cheaper online program....

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