[TrumpCard]

Students at major universities, by the way, overwhelmingly hated online instruction, and longed for the in-person experience. 

While completely true, it seems to be strangely coupled with a of immense proportions new demand to have courses offered online (or both in-person and online).
It's hard to grasp the logic of, "I hated that online stuff, it was a complete ripoff - how dare you not let me take the next course online"

I heard the same about webinars. Supposedly people hated them, got sick of them, didn't want to see or participate in them...and yet, I have 8x people sign up for (and 10x attend) webinars vs. in-person events.

I can harmonize these seemingly contradictory points.  
(1) people don't learn as well when they take classes purely online.
(2) online classes are very convenient and make getting a degree far easier for someone who either: (a) is sufficiently motivated/independent to learn in that more challenging environment; or (b) gets value from having the piece of paper saying they graduated, so that learning all the material with a high level of understanding isn't a must have requirement.

[TrumpCard]

Students at major universities, by the way, overwhelmingly hated online instruction, and longed for the in-person experience. 

While completely true, it seems to be strangely coupled with a of immense proportions new demand to have courses offered online (or both in-person and online).
It's hard to grasp the logic of, "I hated that online stuff, it was a complete ripoff - how dare you not let me take the next course online"

I heard the same about webinars. Supposedly people hated them, got sick of them, didn't want to see or participate in them...and yet, I have 8x people sign up for (and 10x attend) webinars vs. in-person events.

I can harmonize these seemingly contradictory points.  
(1) people don't learn as well when they take classes purely online.
(2) online classes are very convenient and make getting a degree far easier for someone who either: (a) is sufficiently motivated/independent to learn in that more challenging environment; or (b) gets value from having the piece of paper saying they graduated, so that learning all the material with a high level of understanding isn't a must have requirement.