Perspective: Filling the gap

and another 26.4% have an associate degree. Greater Fort Lauderdale’s universities awarded 19,078 degrees in 2019, with 21,837 male students and 37,087 female students, according to DataUSA. The largest universities by number of degrees awarded are Broward College (13,281 and 69.6%), Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale (5,583 and 29.3%) and City College-Fort Lauderdale (120 and 0.629%). Median tuition costs in the region total $17,000 for private four-year colleges, and $1,968 and $1,968 respectively, for public four-year colleges (instate and out-of-state students, respectively).

Like elsewhere, the pandemic has pushed higher education online in an unprecedented fashion, and it is widely considered that aspects of this — blended learning, as it is called — is here to stay. The growth of companies such as Coursera, which specializes in providing online courses to universities, has been staggering: its list of university clients grew from 30 to 3,700 over the course of 2020, and now represents about 2.4 million students.

Even still, such methods of online, remote pedagogy are not without their limitations. Part of learning in a classroom setting involves class discussions, just as part of attending university is all of the networking that goes along with it (especially true at the graduate level). Both of these aspects suffer as teaching goes online.

Many are betting that at least some of these changes will remain after the pandemic has gone away. Despite its limitations, online education opens up new avenues of instruction, as well as more highly concentrated curricula, than ever before. Additionally, as schools face rising operating costs and students face rising tuition costs, online learning is being seen by many as a more economical option than traditional, brick-and-mortar education.

Jacqueline Christophe-Hayot

Dean of Miramar Campus – DeVry University Since we serve a nontraditional learner, flexibility is so important because they are often shouldering a lot of responsibilities outside of getting their degree. At DeVry, a student can take one class at a time or two classes at a time, and it’s 100% online. Many of our professors are working professionals with expertise in their field, so they are able to understand how to bring real-world applications to the classroom.