What is your opinion of online degree granting Colleges/Universities?
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Online degrees are not useless, they are a fabulous opportunity for busy professionals who are working and have kids. Thousands of people earn online degrees every year, many of my nursing instructors earned their Master's online at U of P, or at least in an excelerated format, such as National University.
I earned my BSN online and the curriculum is exactly the same curriculum the university offers to it's students in class.
online degrees?
I equate them with a degree from sending in X amt of cereal box tops
USELESS.. and not worth anything
an online degree is far less valuable than a traditional degree
Maybe. But if you took online courses from a local college or university instead, that would be different. It doesn't show on your degree whwther or not your courses were online, just that you have a degree. I'm online at with my community college and one of my teachers specifically stated that it didn't matter.
From a good and well respected uni they are ok
Recent surveys have indicated that business owners are generally less impressed by online degrees if they recognize that they're online--which of course they will for Kaplan and Phoenix. To be honest, though, businesses in places like IA and MN might let it slide. In general online isn't regarded too well on the coasts, at least not for prestigious jobs.
The RN below is right, but not totally right. Her profession is in serious shortage across the US, and the shortage is worse in the red states (her posting location). In such a situation, for a life-and-death job, any credentials will tend to be accepted. I guarantee you, though, that if she had a traditional RN from Johns Hopkins she'd be making a lot more money. Just the way it works.
There are two kinds of learning: training and education. Training involves learning specific tasks to do a job. It's fine for what it is, but high-level jobs tend to be a function of education, which is about "soft" stuff like interaction with your peers, learning how to think instead of just learning facts, building connections and being mentored, etc. This is why so many hotshot investment bankers have Ivy League degrees in English...and boss around the person with an "MBA" from Kaplan.
Remember. It is in their interest for online degrees to claim "they're just the same." They're not. You are also not able to judge, since you do not have the education. (What a racket, eh?) Sure, you might be able to do just fine with an online degree. That's not the question, though.
My advice: identify a *specific*, high-demand, low-supply field in your area that appeals to you and get qualified to do that. You might want to work traditionally at a local public night school--it'll probably be a lot cheaper, for one thing. Remember the RN, who picked a good field in a place that needed that field. The world does not need another "MBA." It almost certainly needs another accountant specializing in estate taxation rules.
Online degrees are becoming a joke. Unless it is from a reputable university (princeton, yale, harvard) I wouldn't do it. If you were interviewing someone with a degree from university of phoenix you would be thinking "oh yeah... they keep sending my computer spam and pop-up windows".
Besides, college is fun. Go meet some interesting people face to face!
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