What's Lost When NY Times Guest Essays Are Uninformed
"What’s Lost When Community Colleges Go Virtual" vs. research on student outcomes at the same system in question
Phil Hill
October 15, 2025
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Two weeks ago the New York Times published a guest essay titled “What’s Lost When Community Colleges Go Virtual” that argued for more focus on the downsides of online courses [emphasis added]. 1
For those whose work schedules don’t mesh with a traditional class schedule, online classes offer more options for studying and working at the same time — a flexibility that’s baked into the mission of community colleges.
But have we fully considered the downsides? Research has shown that online students tend to do worse than students who attend courses in person. For many course subjects, in-person learning is the better way to go, especially with direct access to services like tutoring and counseling.
The author Daniel Seddiqui is pushing his book about discovering truths about jobs, and as is typical in this genre, he anchored his NYT essay to his own experience.
I grew up in Cupertino, Calif., the home of De Anza College, one of the state’s many community colleges. In the 1990s, as a teenager, I took a few courses at the college, so I spent plenty of time there. The campus culture I look back on was about friendships, dating, sports and activities. B.B. King came to De Anza in 1996, Bruce Hornsby in 1998. Sometimes on weekends, there were bustling flea markets, and the recreational center was loud.
De Anza is still home to flea markets and has vibrant on-campus club days. But for some community college students, the campus atmosphere these days can be different.
He essentially understands and forgives the adoption of online courses, but he argues strongly that it is a second-class experience.
I appreciate Seddiqui’s intentions and desire to help community college students, and I get that many students benefit from on-campus options. But his is a beautiful argument of belief unburdened by understanding or evidence.
The Missing Understanding
Russ Poulin, former executive director at WCET, had a great response to the NYT essay at LinkedIn.
Short-sighted essay in The New York Times about #onlinelearning at community colleges.
This article criticizes online learning at #communitycolleges by:
-citing research about DeVry University, which is a for-profit and not a community college. Meanwhile, Foothill-De Anza Community College District (which author lives) and the California community colleges have a more than 10 year effort to improve online course completion. Last I saw they exceeded the goal of matching the in-person completion rate and what was learned also improved on campus success
-worried about online cheating. Online faculty take #academicintegrity seriously. On campus students also buy papers and tests from nefarious companies.
Finally, the author ignores that many community college students either would not attend at all or would have their road to degree completion stretched out enormously....this risking their ability to persist.
There is another element of context that is missing - online and on-campus are not binary options. Many students augment on-campus education with online courses, a mix-and-match approach to help college students fit education into their lives.
The Missing Evidence
Ironically, there was a public report released in March of this year explicitly looking at online education in the California Community College System. Clearly this report did not inform the author’s views nor the New York Times’ editorial review.
The key result, which is fascinating, shows the correlation between online course taking in the system and degree completion [emphasis added].
Analyses indicate that students who attempt a greater proportion of online credit courses tend to earn more credits overall and are more likely to graduate from the community college within four years; however, their likelihood of university transfer remains unaffected. On average, students who took all their courses online earned 26 more credits than those who took no online courses. We also found that for every 1% increase in the proportion of online courses a student takes, their chances of completing a degree within four years increases by 17%. For example, Figure 4 reflects the relative impact on degree completion rates based on the percentage of online courses students take within four years. Importantly, there is no evidence that taking online courses negatively impacts students’ ability to transfer to four-year institutions.
This is from a study that looked at 355,133 student records, augmented by survey results from 34,815 students. We’re not talking about cherry-picked data, although the student records data are old. 2
From a more up-to-date student preference perspective, the students who took online classes preferred that modality in retrospect.
I obviously do not believe all higher education should be online - different needs for different student realities - but here is clear evidence that online education is helping students graduate, is not harming their transfer to four-year universities, and is preferred by the students who made that choice.
A little bit of understanding and evidence for you, Mr. Seddiqui.
Disclosure: PH&A has consulted over the years with California Community Colleges, helping to establish what is now known as the California Virtual Campus (CVC) and more recently with the Digital Center for Innovation, Transformation and Equity. All views here are my own.
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1 Are you kidding me about not considering the downsides - have you met New America and TCF and CAP?
2 And more up-to-date data could possibly show even better results for taking online courses, given the improvements to online education undertaken in the system.