Oakland Community College Students May Have to Go Elsewhere for Online Classes

Students who take classes outside of a traditional setting may not have Michigan’s largest community college as an option during the winter term after the school failed to earn accreditation for its online programs.

Oakland Community College will reapply for accreditation for a virtual campus with the Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission, one of six regional institutions that evaluate colleges and set standards for online degrees, The Detroit News reports.

About 3,000 students – 12 percent of OCC students – take classes online. OCC offers 257 online classes and is currently reviewing them to see if they meet the accreditation standards, the newspaper said.

It’s unclear how many classes may be canceled, OCC spokeswoman Janet Roberts told the newspaper. The college said it doesn’t want to put students in the position of taking some or all of their classes online, only to find that the college couldn’t grant them a degree without accreditation.

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Mary Ann McGee, president of OCC’s Faculty Association, said she expects the college to cancel most of the online offerings, resulting in an exodus of students as they look for other online learning options and exacerbating issues with declining enrollment.

OCC had 29,000 students five years ago, but now the enrollment is 24,000.

“This is very inconvenient for students,” McGee said. “We have enrollment issues already, steady decrease for several semesters ... This is just one more problem.”

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