Rural community colleges, hit by high fuel prices, are moving more instruction online

High fuel prices are causing "basically a paradigm shift" among all rural community colleges, the academic dean of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College told Byron Crawford of The Courier-Journal, who reports that the colleges are having difficulty with attendance by commuting students and moving more instruction online.

"We are either going to have to change the way that we deliver some classes … or we're going to see our students go somewhere else, or not go at all," Wheeler Conover said. When more and more students started missing Friday classes, "Some of them would tell their instructors they just couldn't afford to come to campus for that third day."

The college, which has five campuses, is "trimming some of its humanities and social sciences classes from three to two days a week, with additional work to be completed at home or online," Crawford reports. "Apparently, the story is much the same for most other colleges in the system," which has 16 colleges on 65 campuses. (Read more)