It turns out the National American University people were right. Despite all the ridicule they received for attempting to highlight their “college” with a cheesy, 30-second theme song, they were ahead of the curve. Sure, we might have laughed when that ponytailed 30-something Milli Vanilli’d the words “online’s just fine” in a room that looked like the oppressed birth child of a high school computer lab and a DMV, but according to a recent study published by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, he’s spot-on: online classes are on the money.

The study, which relied on 10,700 people from 45 universities, concluded online classes were no less productive than in-class instruction, and many professors advocate the new style of teaching. Online coursework, they say, forces students to participate in ways they rarely do in normal lecture halls, and this, combined with more involved discussion sections and group work, leads to a more rewarding experience. We’re left to assume that students’ ability to attend econ lectures without pants on only played a small part in the NAU’s reasoning.

This doesn’t feel right. Online college classes are for the guys at Green Bay Correctional and stay-at-home moms who want to be paralegals, not young university students shelling tens of thousands of dollars out every year. But maybe it’s the logical next step. It’s not like fewer students are going to pay attention if classes are on the Internet. Early morning school is much more manageable when you don’t have to get up until three minutes beforehand. And most professors use PowerPoint to give their lectures anyway, so it’s not as if we’re introducing some radical new technology. In-class instruction is about the least engaging form of education imaginable, and if teachers feel this is a better way to facilitate student participation, it’s probably not a bad idea.

But it’s hard to see universities sharing this sentiment. These are old world institutions, where the lecture hall desks are more uncomfortable than whalebone corsets and we still run multiple-choice tests through a Scantron. Scantron is a Power Rangers villain, not the pinnacle of 21st-century testing technology. Also, it’s hard to justify constant campus expansion when you’re not putting any students into those buildings.

There are also more practical reasons as to why this might not be a good idea. Not every student has a computer or the Internet, and unlike they do with notebooks, the University Bookstore doesn’t sell many computers for less than $2. Also, it’s debatable whether online classes lead to increased student involvement. Walking to class and physically interacting with other students, while burdensome at times, is also necessary for social development. Society is becoming too willing to tell people they can do everything online. If everybody shopped, played poker, dated and went to class courtesy of their Apple computer, it’d be a very pale world.

For now, the point is moot. While the University of Wisconsin-Madison does offer a few courses online, there’s no rush to kick kids out of the classroom. More likely, we’ll start seeing smaller schools offer more online work as an attractive way to recruit students. We’ve already seen UW-Oshkosh introduce a social media major, and that’s 10 times wackier than remote lectures. But I doubt this issue will lay dormant for too long. The student population grows larger every year, and it’s easier to deal with large class sizes when you don’t have to find a seat for every student in a given room. Online classes, despite their potential shortcomings, offer an innovative approach to the age-old science of spreading knowledge. And as long as students can access the shout-outs online, The Badger Herald will survive, so for now, I’m not worried.

Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism.