Students’ burden has continued to rise as the cost of living and existing in college has grown in the last decade. Tuition costs have risen, as well as costs for books, living spaces and the like.

With the bill increasing in size on both accounts (tuition increases totaling 15 percent in the last eight years), students have two options — student loans or paying their way through college.

Regardless of the choice, students will almost certainly require some source of income via a job outside of classes.

The university should provide flexibility to students who are holding this extra burden by way of an increase of online classes and the introduction of online majors and minors.

In the 2013-14 school year, 6.5 percent of total enrollments into classes at UK were into online classes, according to Vince Kellen, a senior associate provost at UK and the university’s chief information officer. The rate has grown four percent since 2009, Kellen said, and is a stark contrast from ten years ago, when no online classes were offered at the university.

Kellen also said that one-third of UK undergraduate students take at least one online class per school year, which is in line with a 2011 study from the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board that reported 32 percent of undergraduate students across the country take one online course.

So if we have the ability to take online classes with the same content as presented in regular classes, and learn the same content while succeeding with better flexibility in our lives, then why isn’t the university using the more flexible way more often than 6.5 percent of all undergraduate courses?

Kellen believes that the intensity of interactive learning in an on-campus classroom, plus the ability to develop a community on campus, is why universities such as UK should not get too reliant on a course registrar that features a majority of online classes.

“The intensity of learning is a positive takeaway,” he said. “You get interaction via online classes, but the intensity of the interaction is stronger. In some subjects, it may be viable … but it may not be in others.”

The viability can be problematic for some majors and minors — say, chemistry or art majors — but with the ability of email and programs such as Blackboard, which allows for students to interact on message boards, it can be a plus for history, English or a journalism major whose focus is purely on content and lectures that can be explained interactively in total.

There is little reasoning for an English major to have to go to a classroom. Much of the explanations toward a Shakespeare — or any other — class can be explained via PowerPoints or videos along with Blackboard-held communication between students and the professor. Papers can be sent online, and quizzes can be done via Blackboard. I’ve attended three English classes in my five semesters at UK. Every paper has been sent via Blackboard, and any time we’ve had a “Pajama Day,” it has been accompanied with a video lecture and a quiz. The university has introduced an online minor for the current school year and has allowed graduate students to obtain a master’s degree online. But for undergraduates, the on-campus experience is the only way to go.

Online classes can open up the undergraduate student body to students who do not have to move from states across the country to Lexington, saving expense and adding flexibility. But Kellen explained that, for the sake of the on-campus community and the state, UK has a promise to educate those who live in the state of Kentucky.

“We have to have a loyalty to that first promise,” Kellen said. “We are looking for other ways to progress, but we have to remain focused on keeping our first promise.”

Kellen forsees that UK will continue to add on to its reliability to online instruction, but not necessarily whole classes or majors.

“I think that, in two or three decades, the overall teacher instruction can become 50 percent,” Kellen said. “But that doesn’t mean exclusively online classes. That can just mean that a lot of the content instructed can be through online places like LectureTools and the things mentioned.”

But in an increased interactive technological world, students who do not get the full plate of technology may be left behind once a major university takes a sizeable plunge into the new waters of online degrees from a notable university. Because if the university has the ability to be flexible, it should be.

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