Last month, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill academic officials announced that starting in Spring 2010, all beginner Spanish courses will be conducted entirely online. Despite the lower oral test scores of students at UNC who have piloted parts of the online Spanish class, administrators felt that the move was necessary in light of the university’s current budget woes.

Technology, computers and the Internet have become an important part of the educational landscape in the past decade, connecting students across the globe, enriching classroom learning, and increasing access to education.

Within the right context—like community colleges and technical schools, where classes are a means to an end—online courses are a wonderful resource, enabling those without time and financial means to obtain a post-secondary education.

But for universities like Duke and UNC with the goal of student development, computer screens, online discussion boards and elaborate educational software just can’t compete with an old fashioned chalkboard, in-person dialogue and the skillful teaching of a good professor.

Students come to residential colleges and universities to be a part of an intellectual community of academics and peers, learn life skills and develop specialized interests and knowledge. Online introductory classes would pose a significant threat to this experience.

Ideally, the classroom should be a place of interaction, synthesis and discovery. In many ways, it is the locus of intellectual life at a university. Eliminating this physical space takes away the learning process it facilitates.

In the classroom, professors can form strong relationships with students that spark their intellectual passions, and they can mentor students through the duration of their academic career. This type of interaction—so central to a quality, enriching student experience at Duke—cannot be replicated online.

Along with faculty-student interaction, in-person classes also foster valuable relationships between students. Especially for first-years, who most often take introductory classes, meeting, learning alongside and debating with intellectual equals is a big part of what makes the academic environment at Duke so rigorous and enlightening. In addition, removing the classroom removes a venue to form friendships with diverse peers of all ideologies and backgrounds.

Not only is the classroom experience diminished over the Internet, the quality of online courses is also inferior. In person, good professors can take nonverbal signals from students when one method of teaching is not working, and tailor their material to students’ needs and interests. This simply would not be possible with virtual classes.

The Internet and all of the educational tools it offers should be a supplement—not a replacement—for rigorous coursework at most institutions of higher education. For example, online recordings of class lectures increase intellectual engagement and reinforce classroom learning without undermining the educational imperative.

When elite colleges look to cut costs, online courses are a step in the wrong direction. For students paying upwards of $45,000 a year for an educational experience, online worksheets and video lectures simply don’t suffice.