Executive Summary

A renewed interest in online education has surfaced recently, largely sparked by issues of bottlenecking and course availability on college campuses in California. Decision-makers across the state, including campus administrators and state legislators, have been looking to online education as a potential solution to many of these issues. It has become a fad across the state, sparking investments by both public and private parties, campus projects, and even a few startup companies. Until now, one voice has been largely missing from the entire discussion: the voice of students. Students are the target audience for online education. They are the group that will benefit or suffer the most from it, and have yet to provide any real substantial input on the matter. This white paper is one of the first official opinions of college students in the California State University System on the topic of online education. In it you’ll discover our hopes, our fears, and our ideas, all put together to help shape the future of higher education. However, this white paper is much more than a collection of opinions; it is a discussion about the future. The point of this paper is not to talk about what online education has been, but rather what it can be. As the official representative body of the over 437,000 California State University students, the California State Student Association has worked with student leaders from across the CSU to compile a set o