To what level do you respect the validity of online degrees?

Question

Online degrees are available now in almost every aspect of the professional world.

General Public:
What are your thoughts on those who achieve their degrees online through accredited online schools? What professions do you feel warrant traditional schooling as opposed to online schooling? Why?

Employers:
What are your thoughts on applicants or the currently employed who have achieved their degrees through online means?

Please, no cited letters or references. Looking for personal introspective only. Thanks!

Answer 1

10%

Answer 2

As a member of the public and an employer:

It's not about how the degree was delivered, it's about the school it came from. If you go to party central U. and get your degree in the classroom, that weighs quite a bit lower than if you got your degree online at Stanford or Harvard (both have online programs).

We all know examples of people we consider "dumb as a bag of rocks" who somehow got a degree from Local State U. We can point to very few examples of the same from the well respected colleges out there.

Bottom line though - a degree earned online from UMass doesn't say "Online Bachelor of Arts from UMass Online" on it. It says "Bachelor of Arts" and "University of Massachusetts"

Some schools (U. Phoenix for example) have developed their own poor reputation. It's their own fault. It's not about being "online" though - it's that they are perceived as "the easy way" mostly because they tell us it's the easy way.

Given a choice between two otherwise equal candidates, where one has an online master's from Stanford and the other has an in-the-seat master's from East Podunk State Teacher's College -- who gets the job? If you even consider the candidate from E. Podunk because nobody has ever heard of them...

So, it really is all about the reputation of the school (online or not). That same situation applies to traditional degrees. Do you hire the Harvard grad or the Middle Tennessee State grad. when all other things are equal?

Problem is: these wholly online, heavily advertised schools have a pretty poor reputation in comparison to almost all other colleges. But what about when we're talking about comparing Florida State and Adams College? Does the delivery method matter in the slightest? Both offer degrees online and in-the-seat.

Any field can be taught via DL -- some simply require practical experience opportunities. I'm thinking some like medicine would be very hard to do by distance but what if, for example, the med student did all of his academic (book learnin') coursework online but did his clinical work under supervision at the nearby teaching hospital? See, even medicine can be worked out so that the education is available to everyone everywhere.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

Personally, I wouldn't compare it to a formal education and look at it as something lower, and not real (even though it might be). I don't feel you truly learn from an on line degree. I think that something light like a diploma would be acceptable but nothing more...

Answer 5

ia'm not to sure about that i don't want' to lie .