At Blue Marble University, we don’t follow “seat time rules”. We don’t think 4 years of seat ttime is a requirement for an undergraduate degree. An undergraduate program is the runway to further graduate study, and need not and should not be filled with required courses irrelevant to the student’s goals or interests. A math or science major should not be required to take foreign languages. Likewise a literature major should not be required to take any math courses.
At Blue Marble University, we have many combination BA/PhD degree programs that last 5 years total. The undergraduate component for these programs is only two years. And our only two stand-alone Bachelors degree programs in Business Science and Computer Science are set up for 3 years, and this is based on the time necessary to achieve competency in the subject matter, as recommended by the USA Department of Education.
Did you know that even the USA Dept of Education questions the need for “seat time” and would like to see it abolished? In both it 2010 and 2012 reviews, the Department of Education stated that “ emphasis should be given “to schools that organize around competence rather than seat time…[and schools that provide] more flexible scheduling that fits a student’s individual needs rather than on traditional academic periods and lockstep curriculum pacing”. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology: “National Education Technology Plan 2010″, November 2010, P.12. This position was re-affirmed in the January 2012 publication by the same agency: “Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity”
And due to consumer demand, we now see some institutions beginning to offer 3 year undergraduate programs.
In forming and developing Blue Marble University, we noted that some educators thought as we did, that there was a self-serving monopoly in education, created to benefit traditional institutions and to stifle any change or innovation. For example, Dr. Gideon Burton made the observation that “Academia wants to have the Internet, but not let it change its exclusive knowledge management practices. It wants to exploit the advantages of online communication without letting such communication challenge its expertise model.” What he was really saying is that traditional institutions want to control online education for their own purposes, which are primarily motivated by preserving their monopoly on education and continuing to make the public believe that only their credentials and accreditations are reliable, and most importantly–required. And that anything less is suspect. Traditional institutions currently charge the same for online distance education as they do for campus based programs even though the former can be delivered at a fraction of the cost. Traditional institutions have been highly successful in getting legal authorities to pass laws and regulations requiring that online distance education can only be offered by institutions that already have a campus—“an adequate on-ground program already in place”. Now why is that? Education can be delivered very effectively using computer technology and a campus is certainly not a requirement for learning anything. Dr. Gideon’s full text is at:
http://www.academicevolution.com/page/2/
Blue Marble University continues to be a part of the new parallel education model, sometimes referred to as “alternative education”, which is gaining wide acceptance among people and employers. For example, even now, many state universities are mandated to accept Home Schooled students, who never attended any traditional format at all.
At Blue Marble University, you can achieve a combination BA/PhD in just one extra year that most students are spending on just a bachelors degree alone–5 years vs 4 years.
Blue Marble University..We Know Distance Education and We Do It Well…
Blue Marble University 