olldflame wrote:JK37 wrote:They genuinely don't like LU's money either, nor the source of it. Online education is still frowned upon by academic elitists, and that money would make us competitive VERY quickly.
Totally agree. Even forgetting about the source, the money is an issue. It stinks to high heaven, but the reality is, what we thought would be a huge asset going into this process has turned out to be a liability. The main reason the MAC won´t even give us a sniff is the fact that they have several schools who are struggling to make ends meet financially despite limited budgets and have facilities that don´t measure up to ours. It´s looking more and more like our only hope to get an FBS invite in the forseeable future is for some of those schools to fall victim to the economic realities of the rising cost of FBS football (including FCOA) and drop the sport like UAB, sans the alumni bailout.
The issue is moreso the money than it is the source. It's true that academic elites still harbor ill-will towards online learning, but with the rising costs of higher ed and the slashed budgets, many of the more pragmatic academics have begun to see the value of having a real online presence. Schools like UCF, FIU, Troy, LSU, etc. have all done this. I heard a commercial the other day on the radio for online education that covered some of the most important talking points every LUO phone agent discusses with prospective students over the phone, except the commercial was for Arizona State University. If more of the publics really make a push for online education and they figure out how to get away from the in-state/out-of-state model, we may just find ourselves wishing for the good ole' days when they were snooty and naive to the cultural/technological changes taking place in the education industry.