For many students, the primary benefit of community college is that it is local to their community. In recent years, however, community colleges have begun to offer more classes online and plans for an all-online community college in California are underway.
So, what are the benefits of attending community college online, and are there any drawbacks? Keep reading to find out.
The Evolution of Online Education
The first American community college was born in 1901 and, over the past eleven decades, they have served the educational needs of nontraditional and financially constrained students. One of the biggest draws of community college, as compared to traditional colleges and universities, is that they were local, and they provided a more convenient, reduced-cost alternative.
From modest beginnings, the National Center for Education Statistics says that the community college student population has grown to over 6.4 million students. Of those students, nearly 2 million are enrolled in at least one online course.
Online education is nothing new, at least not in the realm of modern education. Technically speaking, however, the technology needed to facilitate online education (namely, computers) is over 170 years old. The precursor to online education was correspondence courses which were first offered in Great Britain. Instructors developed lessons and sent them to students by mail who then completed the assignment and mailed it back.
The advent of the Internet has made a great many things possible that were once unfathomable, and it has been an instrumental tool in the
