Utah Loves Them Some Online Education
With all the negative talk about budgets cuts for education and financial aid, it’s nice to hear about some positive legislature gaining movement for education. The odd part? It’s in Utah. Nothing against the Beehive State, but when I think “Utah” I don’t exactly think “progressive” (however I do think about that HBO show ‘Big Love’ and how all those wives’ period’s must sync up and if men thought about it that way they probably wouldn’t think polygamy is very cool).
What this bill proposes is that any high school student in the state of Utah will have access to any online course available. And the institutions that offer these courses will receive 40% of the budget to create more courses to meet the needs of all these students. Sounds like an open invitation for a Ponzi-Madoff-Gordon Gecko scheme. However, that 40% is conditional; they’ll only get it if the student successfully completes the course.
Talk about accountability! The better quality of the course, the more likely the online education provider is of getting some green.
What Utah is essentially doing is placing emphasis on the quality of education, not how long the student sits in a classroom. It’s revolutionary, really. Online education has mostly been beneficial to college-age students so why not set the age bar a bit lower? This way it won’t matter what school a student goes to, if they want to take the best Advanced Placement course around, they simply have to sign on.
This is great information. I live in Utah and need to get scholarships for college.
Thanks for this great information. I don’t live in Utah, but am interested in going to school there. Would I be eligible for this schollarship?
I live in Utah and went to high school there. Now I live in Nebraska. Would I be eligible for this scholarship program?
Getting scholarships from states is such a great idea. This is a good option for high schoolers. Do the high schools have this information?
I keep finding out about new types of scholarships. Is there a central place where I can look up all scholarships that might be available to me?
Thanks for the information. This would really help me.
My experience both taking and teaching courses through online portals is that just as in classroom settings students only get out of the experience what they put into it. As for the financial aspect I agree that there needs to be a change. If this Utah method proves to hold online schools more accountable I am all for it. It would be nice for a solution to come along that makes online education more accountable.
Hi Marie. A great place to start is Education Connection’s grants and scholarships page. Good luck!
Hi Wendy. This was a proposed bill in Utah and it unfortunately failed and was not passed by the Senate.
Hello Samantha. This was a proposed bill in Utah, and it unfortunately failed and was not passed by the Senate. Sen. Howard Stephenson did note that he will likely try to bring the bill back to the floor some time soon.
Hey Joseph. The proposed bill in Utah failed and was not passed by the Senate. Senator Howard Stephenson did note that he will likely try to bring the bill back to the floor some time soon.
I think that it is great that this is in Utah!
This is great – I hope it is a huge success and then other states will adopt similar programs!