State support for online education: VA guv says less aid cuz they cost less

[Hibush]

Virginia's governor is proposing to reduce student financial aid for online classes, increase aid for residential programs, and support community colleges directly so they are lower cost. The state scholarship had provided the same level of support for residential and online programs to Virginia students who attend private non-profit schools in Virginia. The rationale is that online programs cost less to deliver, so the support can be correspondingly less.

One might expect small-government, fiscal-responsibility Virginians to be behind this policy. It turns out that it is being vehemently attacked by the leader of a very large online program that has been benefiting from this taxpayer support: Liberty (195,000 students in the online program). The arguments don't strike me as being fiscal so much as cancel culture: the proposed response is to leave Virginia for West Virginia by moving the border rather than the school.

[mamselle]

Wonder if it's the same counties that say they want to be taken in by W. VA in order to avoid the new gun control legislation the VA legislature is working on.

M.

[Ruralguy]

More or less, yes. However, Virginia's north eastern section and southeastern coast are very different culturally from basically everything else, which is largely rural. Lynchburg itself is urban, but i surrounded by largely rural counties. Not all of the rural counties have the same percentage of right wing and pro gun folks, but it tends to be more of a factor as you go farther south and west in Virginia.

[Aster]

Liberty University has turned into the Monsanto of Higher Ed.

[Hibush]

Liberty University has turned into the Monsanto of Higher Ed.

If so, they are a bad acquisition target for universities hoping to match Purdue's gambit with Kaplan online.
After Bayer paid $63 billion for Monsanto, the combined companies were worth no more than Bayer was before the merger. That is, the market felt the Monsanto was worth nothing.