Online Degrees Worth it or Not - CareerAlley

Online Degrees Worth it or Not - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Much like preconceptions about community college education, there is quite a bit of stigma attached to online degrees. Though there may be positive change on the horizon for online degrees, there are still many decrying their woes having spent ample money and time achieving one only to find it is not well received when they are seeking employment. Some employers reject online degrees outright while many others look for at least the stamp of a reputable institution. At the same time, the rate of students enrolling in online courses is significantly higher than the rate increase of those enrolling on campus. Certainly, there is a rising demand for quality education online that is respected by employers and students alike. However, the cost and resulting value in online degrees is still murky water to be treaded carefully. The Bad News The allure of online study needs little explaining. Employment is a necessity. Life also tends to sweep us all into obligations outside our career. For many, on-campus education is not practical. Unfortunately, there are online universities that take advantage of this imposition for their own profit (and online degrees do not often come cheap). As such, the convenience of adapting a curriculum into your schedule is not the main criteria upon which one should judge an online program under their consideration however hard online universities may drive that selling point. When considering an online program, look closely into the following: General Reputation a school may be well known for online degrees, but ones that are also attended at a campus tend to have a better reputation. However, even online schools that have a campus have been rated poorly by students and employers. Make sure to do your research and get a feel for public opinion of the institution. Ideally, contact prospective employers to get their opinion. If you have an idea of what employers you would like to work for, you can get an idea of how your degree will look to them before you plunge into a program. Accreditation according to the Department of Education, accreditation is a priority concern when looking into online education. However, even universities that have touted their regional accreditation in the past have recently come under intense scrutiny with accreditors after creating an abundance of defaulted student loans in the US in recent years. These credentials have to be especially scrutinized by prospective students. Easier or too easy? If students report breezing through their studies to get their degree, the school is probably not providing degrees of much value. Also, if enrollment is an open invitation with money being the only requirement, you may simply be buying yourself a check in the has a degree box. Really, the only thing that should be easier about an online degree is being able to learn and complete course work from wherever you are. Unfortunately, you cant learn everything for most jobs from a book, so a proper online course should implement some kind of involvement in your community in addition to fluid communication with class peers and professors. The Good News The US recession of recent years created a demand for higher education in which for-profit schools reaped heaps of government money while providing education of questionable value with negligible return on investment for students. If anything good has come out of this, it is recognition of a much more positive opportunity to be profitable by providing online education that is as good as (or better than) its on-campus counterpart. According to research conducted by Babson, Over 6.1 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2010 term, an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year. With this, the growth rate of online enrollment was at a steady 10% next to the 2% of overall higher education enrollment and online learning is part of the long term strategy of the majority of higher learning institutions. The benefit of this shifting focus may have yet to become clear, but forward thinking companies are already driving to lead the way. 2U is one such company that has been partnering with quality on-campus schools to develop online education platforms that fully utilize social technology while helping to place students in supplemental learning that requires being physically present. One of the first schools partnered with 2U reported that over 90% of its online students had acquired jobs in their field or were continuing into a graduate degree within nine months of graduation. Mobile and social technologies have been revolutionary in recent years, transforming not only the way we keep in touch with friends and family, but also the way we learn and do business. It stands to reason that higher education will have a more prominent foothold online in the coming years than it has in the past. As online offerings improve in options and quality over the years, we can also hope they will be more moderately priced while still providing the quality education we need. For now, the high cost of online degrees next to slowly changing stigma means that finding the right balance will require sorting through a lot of chaff. Hank Barton is a second generation trucker and writer in pursuit of education in his cab when he is not behind the wheel. He writes for E-Gears, an online CDL Test authority that specializes in a variety of study guides. This is a Guest post. If you would like to submit a guest post to CareerAlley, please follow these guest post guidelines. Visit me on Facebook