In an ideal world, the purpose of college would be to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills that will make you a more well-rounded and engaged member of society, while also preparing you for your career and life. However, colleges increasingly do not see themselves as institutions of learning and development. A chief example of colleges failing to live up to this idea is the increasing prominence of remote, asynchronous summer classes, which reinforce a growing perception of college as a place where one goes to meet arbitrary requirements, earn a degree and get out as quickly as possible. It’s no wonder why 32% of Americans in a 2024 Gallup and the Lumina Foundation poll said they have little or no confidence in higher education, and 24% feel as though they are not being taught what they need to succeed.
Over the past few summers, I’ve watched many of my friends take asynchronous classes during the summer — which has traditionally been a time off for many students and allowed them to take on internships, work or a variety of other real-world opportunities. Many of my friends have taken summer classes through our local community college in Illinois and transferred these credits to their respective universities. However, one thing remains the same: regardless of how they approach their classes at school, is their attitude towards them as simply a means to “meet degree requirements” with little care for actually learning.
The nature of asynchronous summer classes themselves are not as academically rigorous as those taken in person during the traditional fall or spring semester.
Take, for example, a friend of mine who attends the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He, like many students at The University of Alabama, decided to take a summer class at a local community college. He took this class for one apparent reason: to get credit for a class he didn’t want to take at Platteville.
The main issue with asynchronous summer classes is that they tend to focus primarily on earning easy credit, rather than requiring the rigor the same class would have in person. In his communication class, all he had to do was read a few chapters of a book, take quizzes that he could easily cheat on if he wanted to, and give a few 5-minute speeches to a group of six friends or family members. Poof, he just completed a class that would take months and multiple class meetings a week from the comfort of his own home in less than two months with minimal effort.
Even if a student decides to take a summer class, they are often expected to pay full price for these classes. This complicates some scholarshipping, considering that in order to apply scholarship funding to a summer course it counts as an entire semester.
Are Americans supposed to think college is worth it when this is how colleges operate? Already, many college students believe that a college education is simply about getting a diploma by meeting the requirements their university sets out for them.
One possible reason for summer classes is that they are increasingly profitable for community colleges that charge less than a student’s main university. Illinois Central College, my local community college, offers summer classes that charge only $160 a credit hour for online and in-person summer classes to in-district students, making it an attractive offer.
I cannot speak for all summer classes, especially ones with real teachers in a classroom setting. Still, few people take remote summer classes seriously. Their very existence as an option for students who wish to minimize work shows that a university education has become less academically rigorous.
Not all online schooling is bad. If the classes students take simulate a classroom or at least facilitate learning through an active learning environment, which is often hard to replicate through a screen, then I see little issue with summer classes. However, many students need an environment where they can be made to learn and have found ways to avoid that and get credit anyway by using a system our universities have allowed them to exploit. It seems that we have subtly agreed that college is a commodity to be bought and sold as opposed to an experience to learn and grow as a person both for life and the workforce.
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