I remember my New Student Conference like it was yesterday. 

More specifically, I remember scrolling through the list of fall semester classes — many of which would be filled five seconds after registration went live — and desperately trying to find something that would fulfill my core curriculum requirements while interesting me enough to take it.

Finally, after looking for far too long, I found a class that seemed interesting while also fulfilling one of those requirements: ECON 202. 

There was only one problem. It was an online-only class.

After cursing myself for not registering to go to an earlier New Student Conference, I begrudgingly signed up for the class, thinking, “If I don’t take it now, I’ll have to take it eventually.” 

I was not expecting a helpful educational environment; more than that, I was concerned that the lack of access to my professor, his teaching assistants and general in-class resources would significantly hinder my efforts to earn an A.

Thankfully, I was completely wrong. Not only did I get an A in that class, but now I’m convinced that most core curriculum classes at Texas A&M should be completely online — or at least offer  that option.

Why? 

There are two primary reasons. The first is that, in online classes, professors are often much more accessible than they would be in comparable in-person classes, specifically when those classes would otherwise be held in huge 100- to 300-person lecture rooms as many core curriculum courses often are.

For example, in Professor Jonathan Meer’s aforementioned ECON 202 course there were weeks when free tutoring or office hours were provided up to 30 hours in one week, either by Professor Meer himself or by his teaching assistants and associated personnel. 

This wide array of offerings was only made possible because the course was online — otherwise, the economics faculty might have been stuck lecturing and dealing with other administrative matters instead of providing personal help to students.

Holding classes online also yields an additional self-evident benefit: you can pretty much do the course completely on your own time. There were nights when I was finishing my online coursework at three in the morning, and there were days when I was doing it at three in the afternoon. That type of flexibility is something that I really appreciated, and as someone who’s really productive at night it made me become a better learner.

Sure, there might be times when you’d prefer to have an in-person class. Maybe the class is discussion-based, or maybe it’s a language class where it’s really useful to be able to actively speak the language to a person as you’re learning it. 

Those are important cases to consider — and certainly ones to have in-person options for. Nonetheless, a great deal of core curriculum classes don’t have any intrinsic benefit to the lectures being held in person. 

Maybe you personally prefer sitting in a physical classroom all of the time. Thankfully, it turns out that we don’t have to restrict offerings to some students because certain people prefer something else. Instead, online and in-person classes could both be offered, giving students who prefer the online experience the flexibility to learn online while also giving students who prefer to learn in person the ability to learn in person. 

In order for education to be effective, it needs to be much more individually attuned than it is today. Although offering online classes is only one small step in that direction, it is one that desperately needs to be made. 

Many people derive almost no benefit from sitting in massive lecture halls, only to later go to talk to the professor and see them being brigaded by 10 students demanding extra credit after the exam. It’s time to reconcile our education with the current age and implement a large number of online offerings for core curriculum classes.

Besides, having more classes online would take some of those annoying freshmen and sophomores out of the buses and off of the roads. If that isn’t sufficient to convince you that more classes should be online, I don’t know what would be.

Kaleb Blizzard is a philosophy sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.