E-Pell for E-College

If our experience at Harvard is any guide, nothing can replace the experience of attending college in person. But not everyone has that option, as some students are constrained by barriers, especially financial ones, that would make the cost of attending college prohibitive. That is why we welcome Congress’ recent decision to open federal financial aid to students attending online schools.

Congress’ recent decision to open federal funding to online colleges involved removing the previous stipulation that colleges had to teach at least half of their courses in person on a campus. The increased funding will simply mean more college graduates, something that can only benefit society.

In a pilot program allowing a few dozen colleges to waive the 50 percent hurdle for funding, enrollment at eight of them rose eight-fold over six years. Raising funding for online colleges provides an effective way of increasing access to higher education, and the increasing number of college graduates will be an overall boon to the U.S. economy and to society as a whole.

The practicality of an online education makes it a sensible vehicle for providing continuing education. Its accessibility to rural and working students, as well its lower cost, will provide a far greater reach than a traditional college education. With increased federal funding, more students with no previous possibility of postsecondary education will now have access.

We recognize, however, that the academic experience of most distance education programs does not compare to the experience at traditional four-year schools. The solution, then, is for private accreditation agencies to evaluate online programs to ensure that their curricula are as close as possible to a comparable physical college—or, at the very least, that the schools are not merely diploma-mills. This is similar to the current system for physical colleges; before a student can be eligible to use federal aid at a particular school, the Department of Education uses the ratings of private firms to evaluate physical colleges. The current lack of a universal accreditation for online schools should not stand in the way of an otherwise worthy initiative.

The glut of for-profit schools in the online school industry raises questions about the fairness of the government subsidizing students attending these schools. But the government should not refrain from funding students at online schools just because those schools happen to be for-profit institutions. Such a move would cause unjustifiable harm to students on federal aid and would lead to a large decrease in online options for their students.

While there are concerns about the quality of online education, we can envision appropriate mechanisms, in the form of accreditation agencies, that could mitigate this problem. Moreover, the chance to open up postsecondary education to many people who otherwise would have no hope of attending college outweighs these lingering concerns. Making higher education easier, cheaper, and more accessible is just the sort of work that Congress should be doing, and providing funding for online colleges is a sensible and effective way of doing so.