College of the Desert is facing declining enrollment and tough choices about its future, where and how to build new campuses being the most obvious. But one challenge may be a surprising one: A lot of its students don’t want to come back to school at all. That is, they want to keep taking classes, but never set foot on a campus. A recent survey of 1,350 students showed over a third (39%) didn’t want to take classes in person at all. Another 44% wanted the option of “hybrid” learning, meaning some remote and some in person. As The Desert Sun’s Jonathan Horwitz reported, just 15% preferred to take all their classes in person. COD serves a diverse population, including a lot of working people — some of them parents — who take classes part time. For them, flexibility is key.
