Sharpen those green pencils and get your eco-friendlier education at home.
When offering advice about how to reduce one’s carbon footprint, several environmental advocates, organizations, and websites suggest telecommuting to work as much as possible. Telecommuting (or working remotely from home on a computer) saves gas, releases fewer carbon emissions, and…. enables you to work in your pajamas if you are so inclined. But one of the activities that environmentalists rarely recommended transferring to your living room is home study. Telestudying. How about learning from home instead of traveling to school and perhaps relocating to a different location?
Home schooling has been a familiar concept for children under the age of 18 for a while – parents who wish to teach their own children can request permission to do so and instruct their kids at home. Yet obtaining higher education degrees from home is a fairly new concept.
The field of online degrees may have started out among institutions with lesser reputations, but that has since changed and more educational institutions are realizing that they need to be flexible in order to reach their desired student base. Not all students can or wish to relocate in order to further their education, but they still want that degree. And institutions still want to instruct them.
Compared with the eco-cost of relocating and commuting daily to school, home study is almost free. The literal cost is cheaper as well, with lower tuition and no commuting necessary. (If you factor in the cost of those “first day of school” outfits, there’s another savings right there.)
Home study and online degree programs have also, on a more philosophical level, made education more accessible to the masses. If you have access to the internet, you have access to higher education.
Read more about green education:
Why He’ll be Eco-Networking with a “Green” MBA
Eco-Mum on Greening Your Back to School Shopping
Bali Green School is a Model for Green Education Everywhere
