Syracuse University became the first school to offer a fully interactive online law degree program when classes started in January. The program is designed to use both real-time learning and self-paced sessions. This degree plan is a win for accessibility.

Students enrolled in the online program will be held to the same entrance and academic standards as on-campus students, and they will have access to both student organizations and externships.

This program will be incredibly helpful to those who just can’t pursue an on-campus law school education. Whether it be because of jobs, families or any other reason, the commitment of being a full-time student on campus for three years can be taxing.

Programs like this are important to the field of law and to the world as a whole. This makes education accessible to a greater number of people, and that’s a great thing.

As long as schools can assure that their online degree programs are as rigorous as their on-campus degree programs, this is something that should be adopted around the country.

As with anything like it, an online law degree won’t come without its own drawbacks or barriers. Karen Hundert Novick, associate dean for administration of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, said it takes a special type of student to obtain an online degree.

“The challenge is you need to be a little bit more organized to be successful as an online student. You need to be a little bit more disciplined to be successful as an online student. There is something very focusing for people knowing that they are going to be in a class on Tuesday at 6 p.m.,” said Novick.

Challenges are present for the schools themselves, too. Making the decision to offer an online degree is much easier than the process of assuring that the program is designed in a way that will benefit the students who decide to use it. By pursuing an online degree, you may miss the level of learning that comes from classroom discussion and face-to-face interaction.

Programs like the Syracuse online law program have been designed to allow for some interaction with professors, just like the on-campus program, but you simply can’t replicate the on-campus experience.

While an online law degree may require more discipline and lack face-to-face interactions, it’s still an effective way to get a law degree. Students will have to be truly committed to it, and professors will have to figure out how to restructure their class to an online audience of students. But it’s doable.

SU should be commended for its dedication to making law education accessible to a larger group of people. At the end of the day, the world can only benefit for making education more accessible.

SU’s decision to offer this degree allows potential students with other commitments to receive a law education that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them.

Accessible education is a problem in our world today, but SU is now beginning to solve that problem.

Nick Turner is a senior political science and policy studies major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at nturner@syr.edu.

Published on February 4, 2019 at 5:42 pm