Pre-Calculus For Just $99?

Let’s be honest: Does anyone really enjoy taking Pre-Calculus in college? Or Economics I or Accounting I, for that matter? I well remember sitting through these less-than-fun general education courses and wondering, “Why am I paying A LOT OF MONEY to be subjected to this?”

Fortunately, Pre-Calculus despisers like me can now rest a bit easier - the dreaded gen ed may be here to stay, but there’s a new way to avoid some of its (financial) pain.

That way is StraighterLine, a Virginia-based education company that allows college students to take multiple general education courses for just $99 per month. The company has received a fair amount of (mostly positive) press of late, including a February 26^th story in The Washington Post. (Other recent write-ups can be found in the Washington Monthly and Inside Higher Education.)

The Washington Post’s Daniel de Vise writes that StraighterLine “is a serious education company and a force that could disrupt half a millennium of higher-education tradition. The site offers students as many general education courses as they care to take for a flat monthly fee, plus $39 per course. As college tuitions go, it is more on the scale of a cable bill.”

The article continues:  ”The courses, standard freshman fare such as algebra, are cash cows for traditional schools, taught to students by the hundreds in vast lecture halls. They generate handsome profits to support more costly operations on campus. General education courses ‘comprise about one-third of all enrollment’ in higher education, said Burck Smith, the company’s founder, ‘and they don’t cost colleges very much to deliver.’ ”

StraighterLine’s Advisory Board is made up of higher-education heavy-hitters, including the former heads of two accrediting bodies, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges.

Because StraighterLine isn’t a school, it is not eligible to be accredited. But it has made deals with several partner colleges - including “traditional” institutions like Fort Hays State University in Kansas - that enable students to transfer in StraighterLine courses for credit, which then lets them transfer those courses out to other higher-education institutions. (StraighterLine courses also are approved by the American Council on Education, which is another way to earn transfer credit.)

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this unique tweak to traditional academia? Do you think it has staying power? Do traditional universities need to worry?