Online Degrees Offer Strong Benefits: Convenience and Flexibility, But Come Bundled with Some Drawbacks
Know the Advantages and Disadvantages to Distance Learning
Brainstorming the advantages to an online degree provides no degree of difficulty. The evidence to suggest that distance learning has now reached an enviable higher education threshold has come to pass. Maybe it’s the collection of institutions now offering their online wares—institutions the likes of Yale and Harvard, University of North Carolina and Boston University. Let’s not leave out online pioneer University of Phoenix. This institution may have instilled as much doubt as it did promise in its zealous pursuit of legitimate and online, university-caliber degrees.
Not very long ago “legitimate” and “online degrees” were not in agreement. But the fact remains: there are very good, even excellent, distance degree programs, and remote, busy, and talented professionals are seeking them out.
Number One Advantage: Convenience
Before any other pro may be weighed, the leading belief is that online degrees offer convenience and flexibility. Do they?
Quality and accredited online degree programs make distribution of higher educational opportunities a mainstream reality. These online products, then, may be more carefully defined as valuable commodities marketed to learners without accessibility to college campuses or with stacked work and family schedules. They are convenient, however, when matched with the right learner. Not everyone is suited to the academic demands imposed by a virtual environment. Degrees demand time, professionals tired at the end of a day may simply not have the desire, in the end, to spend two hours or more in front of a computer and immersed in online coursework; and this, for a year or two at a time.
But for the right individuals online degrees bend to personal schedules, are available 24/7, and may sustain the student that simply has no other choice.
Self-Pace Perk: The Idea That No One’s Breathing Down Your Neck
Self-pacing is a key reason many working people seek online degrees. Work and family schedules impose long hours, so it makes sense that curriculum with built-in flexibility and loose time constraints is a big benefit. Again, in the hands
of a procrastinator, self-pacing may be detrimental. Almost all degree providers are clear about the fact that participants must consistently make visible progress toward their degree goals—no one is allowed to simply languish in degree Neverland.
of a procrastinator, self-pacing may be detrimental. Almost all degree providers are clear about the fact that participants must consistently make visible progress toward their degree goals—no one is allowed to simply languish in degree Neverland.
Affordability Myth: Online Does Not Mean Cheap
Customers used to shopping in an online environment may assume that degrees delivered online must also be discounted. Unfortunately the cost for online programs is about even with the cost of on-campus credit hours. The affordability factor, though, matters in terms of cost of attendance. Students on a traditional campus have room, board, and other academic fees that miraculously boost the cost of attendance at a particular school—what many people continue to erroneously refer to as “tuition.” Tuition—the actual cost for the academic portion of a college education—between a traditional campus degree and an online degree is surprisingly similar, that is when the educational metrics are alike—quality of program and type of degree provider.
Online students often have the option to pay for courses as they take them, or per term or semester. This does afford many consumers a big financial break, a payment schedule that to some appears to be a cut-rate tuition.
Legitimacy Still Up for Grabs
Doubts about online degree legitimacy continue to roil about, but not as raucously as they once did. Factors that have served to satisfy some naysayers include the sheer number of online students and subsequent tides of degree seekers. The business world has spawned a number of professional populations that are hypercompetitive and hungry for career traction. Business professionals, nurses, educators, and engineers generate a significant portion of online degree fervor. They will work into the wee hours in return for the convenience of Bachelors, Masters, or even PhDs with which to charge their resumes.
Employers have historically been the last holdouts when it comes to validation of online degrees. Most have automatically assumed the worst—that “online” means fake, of the diploma mill species. The media coverage of high-level professionals found to have phony degrees on their resumes has set many employers on alert when it comes to anything online. But even they are turning over a new leaf; they have to. If that many talented and skilled professionals spend time on degrees earned online and some from very reputable institutions, then there must be something to the distance learning, after all.
Elite universities such as Harvard and Yale—both of which have launched their own online degree programs—help the cause. But it’s not for this altruistic purpose that they set their sights on distance learning; it’s for the competition.
You better believe that higher education is big business, and if it’s moving to online realms, then when everyone arrives it will be a very good place to be.