In January, a group of prominent leaders gathered at San Jose State University to launch what they promised would be a revolution in the delivery of higher education.

In the ensuing frenzy of press coverage, San Jose State President Mohammad Qayoumi, sounding more like a tech CEO than an educator, argued that universities should not be afraid of failure when experimenting with Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCS, and similar online ventures: “We want to fail fast, learn from it and move on,” he said.

Now the spring semester results from this pilot program at SJSU are in. The pass rates in the experimental online courses are troubling and should give educators, students, parents and the Legislature much pause.

In the Udacity Remedial/Developmental Math course there was a disappointing 29 percent pass rate compared to an 80 percent pass rate in the regular face-to-face SJSU course. Only 12 percent of non-SJSU students in the Udacity version of the course passed, including students from Oakland Military Institute, the college-prep charter school.

Likewise, in the online College Algebra course, only 44 percent of San Jose students achieved the required C pass rate compared to a 74 percent C pass rate in the face-to-face version. Here again, only 12 percent of non-SJSU students in the online version achieved a C.

Finally, in the statistics class, which Udacity expected to produce far superior results, only 51 percent of students achieved a C pass rate, in stark contrast to the 74 percent C pass rate students accomplished in the face-to-face version of the same course.

Advocates of this effort will offer all kinds of excuses. They may attempt to blame teachers. They may argue that it is only a pilot program and kinks still need to be worked out or that the data is only preliminary.

However, there are real-world, long-term consequences when we “fail fast” in higher education.

For students, it is wasted time and lost money that for many represented a family sacrifice. For some it means increased debt for courses that lead to nothing. The price of failure for students can also be nonmonetary. They can easily become demoralized and think they are not college material when in fact the medium of their instruction has simply been a bad match.

There are reasons California’s public colleges and universities have been emulated around the world. Because of faculty-led efforts at our institutions, including SJSU, millions of students have come through our public doors and received a quality education. Sometimes it’s face-to-face, sometimes through online courses — but always through an accredited institution with well-vetted and articulated courses taught by publicly paid faculty members more concerned with the transfer of knowledge than the collection of profit.

Dealing with tough economic times by handing off education to private vendors and using public funds to increase online offerings through these vendors will not serve California well in the long run. Politicians’ well-intentioned efforts to increase access for students ignores a proven solution that we know will increase access: investing resources in more class sections.

Thanks to rebounding economy, we finally have a chance to begin reinvestment in our public higher education. Let’s invest these public monies in what we know works.

Kell Fujimoto, PsyD., is assistant director of clinical services at San Jose State University and chapter president of the California Faculty Association. Elizabeth Cara, PhD., is a professor in the department of occupational therapy at SJSU. They wrote this for this newspaper.