As enrollment in online college grows, students wonder: Why does it cost more? [View all]
Emma Bittner considered getting a master's degree in public health at a university near her home in Austin, Texas. But the in-person program cost tens of thousands of dollars more than she had hoped to spend.
So she checked out master's degrees she could pursue remotely, on her laptop, which she was sure would be much cheaper.
The price for the same degree online was … just as much. Or more.
"I'm, like, what makes this worth it?" said Bittner, 25. "Why does it cost that much if I don't get meetings face-to-face with the professor or have the experience in person?"
Among the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are using online higher education to subsidize everything else they do, a survey of the people who manage these programs finds. And some schools are spending significant amounts on marketing and advertising for it.
The result is that 83% of online programs in higher education cost students as much as or more than the in-person versions, according to an annual survey of college online-learning officers. The survey was conducted by Eduventures, an arm of the higher education consulting company Encoura, for the nonprofits Quality Matters and Educause.
About a quarter of universities and colleges even tack on an additional "distance learning" fee, the survey found.
Universities and colleges "see online higher education as an opportunity to make money and use it for whatever they want to make money for," said Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at the left-leaning think tank New America.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/15/nx-s1-5311603/why-does-online-college-cost-more
Ain't that a kick in the head?
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