Education in San Antonio

Not many years ago, getting an academic degree without spending time in a college or university classroom was impossible. Dramatic changes have altered all that in the last two decades as a little bit of research into grants for college materials will show. It’s a transformation that not only remade the basic concept of a quality education that can be provided, but also where and how the process takes place. Now service men and women in remote locations around the globe have as much access to education as the person who has a local campus right down the street.

The concept of “Long Distance Learning” is nothing new. Those who love watching old TV shows from the 50′s to the 70′s will usually come upon a comedy where one of the characters got a “degree” from some highly suspect-sounding institute of higher learning. In those days it was called a “mail order degree” and in some instances quite rightly was cause for suspicion.

While in these sitcoms the degrees were always fake, and unfortunately sometimes also in real life, there were institutions offering legitimate courses through the mail that would result in a degree. In 1958 the University of Wisconsin had over 12,000 students taking courses from among the 450 the school offered. These were working men and women, some on the GI Bill, who needed a way to improve their careers and their lives.

It was the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) and its greatest creation, the Internet, that pushed colleges online. The net was created to pass information from one point to another at the speed of light. The first organizations to jump on board, in fact the ones that did most of the primary research, were universities. Many of these institutes of higher learning had long distance learning wings. With the advent of the personal computer back in the early 80s, it didn’t take these ivory tower rocket scientists much to put it all together.

No longer the punch line of comedy routines, the number of those getting a degree online is growing. Currently, women comprise 67% of the student body and a lot of these students are working moms. Because college classes can be taken at a distance, our active duty military men and women are continuing their education while they perform their duties. Those currently in the work force who may have an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s are first exploring online college grant information and then returning to school to get the degrees they need to advance in their careers.

Starting with the University of Wisconsin to the current crop of accredited institutions, the list just continues to grow. Major universities offer online programs, as do local community colleges. There are even sites that offer free classes, although they may not be accredited, just informative. Online education has been recognized since the 1990′s and the federal government, as well as state governments, have responded with financial aid for students to attend.

When looking at the benefits of online college programs, it’s not hard to see why more and more students are engaging in this form of education. From access to the finest libraries in the world to class textbooks online, your home (or a coffee shop, or even your lunch hour) becomes your own personal learning institution. Students won’t be missing that personal attention from an instructor either as e-mail has actually been found to improve response time. Nor will you miss peer interaction as online study groups are very common.

With the advent of ebook readers such as the Kindle, the field of education from online universities continues to evolve, although it’s good to know Pell Grants are still there (though larger). Taking a course “anywhere” has a literal meaning with satellite communications. We may remember snail mail courses fondly, but what we now experience is lightning fast learning.