Economist Writing Every Day

A simplistic view that I have heard about online learning is that it is of worse quality but cheaper than traditional classroom learning.

We should take the cheaper part seriously. Cheaper can mean new opportunities for many people. Delivering a lecture online can mean that, once the fixed cost of creating the video is incurred, the marginal cost of adding a student is nearly zero. The average cost of delivering instruction goes down with every student who joins the course. Economy of scale is a wonderful thing.

Now, let’s assume a family that has a quiet home and reliable internet service. Assume that a mom, m, signed up for a rock/geology class, r, for her school-aged son who cannot read. It’s me. I signed my son up for an online “rock camp”. I thought it would give me 45 minutes of time to get work done while my son was distracted in a Zoom room.

This week I got an email from the online school company about how to get ready for rock camp. I’m instructed to assemble a supply kit of about 30 items so that my kid can do a hands-on science experiment every day of the camp. This is not what I thought I was signing up for, and I no longer think rock camp is going to save me any time.  It gets me thinking about scale and online education for kids.

All the parents of rock campers will have to separately assemble a kit of supplies. The economies of scale would come from having the children in a physical school. Buy the supplies in bulk and hand out a pack to each kid all at the same time. It would be great to have a *classroom* where the students could *go*. Even though many classes do not involve vinegar and magnets, the point can generalize.

We should take scale seriously. I support experimenting with different kinds of education and giving students choices. Personally, I benefitted from getting to pilot an experimental program at my high school that allowed me to take microeconomics for college credit online. I also participate in online education sometimes as an educator.

However, it’s overly simplistic to say that the scale idea always points us in the direction of online education. Even at the university level, some products/services can be cheaper to deliver in a traditional class setting.