Hillsdale should be careful about offering accredited classes. Courtesy | Flickr

When the pandemic brought my freshman year at Hillsdale to a halt, students received an email stating the importance of education taking place in the classroom, not on a computer. 

“It is worth saying a word about why the college is the way it is, and not an online college,” College President Larry Arnn wrote. “At least since Plato’s Academy, people have come together in small groups to learn in friendship. The best kind of learning requires direct conversation, also intensity of concentration, also friendship amounting to love.” 

That’s why it was so great that Hillsdale held in-person classes in the fall semester of 2020, at a time when many other colleges and universities were fully online or offering a hybrid education.

This semester, Hillsdale College is testing two online courses for college credit. The pilot courses are currently offered only to high school students, who may then use them either as elective credits if they later attend Hillsdale, or as college credits if they attend another institution. 

Although this program seems like a well-intentioned effort to make Hillsdale classes available to a broader audience, the truth is that an online course will never replace the in-person Hillsdale experience. If this testing period is successful, Hillsdale should not let the online program grow too large. 

Part of what makes a Hillsdale education unique is the small, close-knit student body. Hillsdale also has a low faculty-to-student ratio, which allows professors to get to know their students.

Online education can’t replicate this personal quality; even though the online high school students can communicate through virtual lectures, online students don’t have access to everything that makes a Hillsdale student’s educational experience well-rounded. The online high school students don’t get the same experiences that a local dual-enrollment student would have: the culture of campus and the local community; the peer pressure to perform well, and above all, the chance to form personal relationships with classmates and professors.

When the pandemic forced us off campus and online in the spring of 2020, our professors made great efforts to deliver a high-quality education with Zoom classes, video lectures, and podcasts, and we students did our best to listen in, write our papers, and take our tests. But we all know the truth: It wasn’t nearly as good as being together. During my Zoom classes, I felt disconnected from my peers, unmotivated, and overall unengaged in the material.

According to Director of online learning Kyle Murnen, the college is not aiming to provide the full Hillsdale experience through these for-credit online classes, but rather a bite-sized version that is more accessible to those who may not be able to attend Hillsdale.

“These courses are based on the recognition that only a few people are able to pursue a complete Hillsdale education here on campus,” Murnen said. “The goal of this program is to provide some key parts of a Hillsdale education to a wider group of people — especially those who may need to go elsewhere for their college degree.”

It is laudable that the college wants to offer a piece of Hillsdale to a wider group of people–something that it already does through the existing online courses, which are not accredited. Yet Hillsdale always has valued the quality of its education over the quantity of students receiving it, and that should remain true, even as it explores opportunities in online learning. 

The college should keep the accredited online courses limited. Professors’ priority should ultimately be students on the actual campus. We can’t do it all: if part of what makes Hillsdale so special is the small, in-person community, we will never be able to replicate the Hillsdale experience by diluting it and offering it to a broader audience online.

While offering online classes for high school students will make Hillsdale’s curriculum available to more people, it will never compensate for the other core parts of a Hillsdale education. Rather than caving to the growing demand for online education, Hillsdale should go against the current and preserve the idea that the best education is offline.