Are online degrees equal to traditional ones?
I've been teaching university courses for eight years, and since 2020, I've seen online learning move from emergency stopgap to permanent fixture. But here's what bothers me: we keep measuring online courses by completion rates, not by whether students actually learned anything. Last semester, my hybrid class had a 92% completion rate, yet only half of those students could explain the core concepts in their final projects. Is online learning genuinely comparable to in-person education, or are we just lowering the bar to make it look successful? I've seen firsthand how easy it is to pass a multiple-choice quiz while skipping lectures, and that scares me. Even with interactive tools and discussion boards, I can't shake the feeling that we're sacrificing depth for convenience. So I ask: should we treat online degrees as equal to traditional ones, or is the campus experience truly irreplaceable?