The average yearly tuition cost for brick-and-mortar colleges and universities in the US today is more than $20,000, an expense that has increased 1,120 percent since 1978. By comparison, students of all ages can often earn an online education for one fourth of this annual cost -- and more businesses are starting to acknowledge online degrees.
It’s small wonder that online course enrollment growth has been in the double digits in recent years, with a current online education student population of more than six million students.
Yet, not all is perfect with online education, either. In recent years, students have joined forces in federal lawsuits against online colleges, alleging that these colleges put them into a mountain of debt without giving them accredited degrees, forcing them to take courses over at brick-and-mortar schools. In California, plaintiffs filed 20 lawsuits against five different online law schools, alleging that the schools lured students with promises of bountiful employment opportunities they would find after obtaining a law degree -- at a time when jobs for lawyers are in a dramatic decline.
So, what do you do if you’re a student and you’re considering an online education?
Look before you leap
It pays to ask prospective employers how they value online degrees in the hiring process before you enroll in an online program. In IT in particular, online degrees have met with recent success. The reason? Many online courses have the ability to closely simulate the work environment, because students actually do their lab work and technical projects on computing platforms that they will ultimately use in business. The IT educational community has also put considerable effort into building strong online courseware and attaching rigorous testing and certification to it.
Suited for the role
Online education is self-directed. The plus side is that it allows people with fulltime jobs to study when they have the time -- and to participate in their studies from anywhere. The disadvantage is that individuals who like to learn in collaborative settings are challenged in this “do it yourself and alone” environment. Then, too, there are few online universities that do a good job in providing a personal instructor or mentor who is available to students when they have questions. “One of the differentiators we hope to put in play is to actually have instructors available to answer student questions on the spot when students have them,” said one online technology college entrepreneur. “Today most online schools fall miserably short in this area.”
Research credentials
Is your online school accredited? And by whom? Accreditation is a major hurdle for many online schools. It isn’t just because they’re startups -- or because many in the education business believe that they are second-rate. The challenge is also political, since established brick-and-mortar schools have a vested interest in preventing online schools from cutting into their tuition fees by offering students similar education for less money. If you are a student considering online education, this means you should confirm that any school you are considering is accredited. If an educational association won’t recognize the school, it could be that a future employer won’t, either.
Mix your learning styles
For most students, a mix of face-to-face and online learning works best. Online education has yet to replace the intangible “human elements” of learning that enable students and instructors to feed off each other when they are collectively working on a project or question in the same room.
The bottom line on online education is that it has its shortcomings, but it is also here to stay. Brick-and-mortar schools have recognized this as they roll out their own online learning programs. The key for those students considering online education, as with most things, is to know themselves. The more you know about what you want to get out of your online learning experience, the happier you’re going to be with the results.
I was raised in an atheistic country, so my education was based on evolutional theory, with all of respect to people's fellings about religion, I am sure, that students should be given several options, not only one, about the Mighty One...
Linguistics is a scientific treatment of languages, and I can understand how anyone with a Masters in Llnguistics would be alarmed by the message, Mashka.
Mary, I am doing a TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) on-line course. And that is some recognised on-line college that offeres many programs.
But the content of lectures sometimes terrifies me. I have MA in English Linguistics, so when I read that a variety of languages was caused by Babel Tower, or here is a quote-
"A voice is a wonderful instrument given by The Most High so that people can communicate with one another. Think how dull it would be if everyone spoke every word in a monotone, on the same pitch.The Most High has given us voices with the wonderful ability to do a variety of things, including change pitch."
- I am thinking about these children who pay 600 dollars and get no idea about linguistics or philology.
Choosing to go for an online school versus attending an actual university should really depend on what course you're going to take. As Hhawk mentioned, there's little point in schooling yourself about principles and theories that can only be fully understood when there's interaction and input from fellow students, as in an MBA.
We are actually seeing more of that, with for example technology and healthcare organizations partnering with some colleges/universities on developing or tweaking programs to better-meet real-world demand. I also ran across programs like this, from Disney. Pretty amazing.
Still, the online experience isn't the same as the traditional classroom
@hhawk, I agree with you. I think online degrees are good if student is interested in theoratical knowledge. I dont think it would be good idea to attend MBA courses online because more than theoratical knowledge MBA needs personality development which can only happen in traditional classroom.
There are so many folk who have a degree in one field but end up working in a totally different field that I sometimes wonder what actual benefit they got from their higher-ed degree.
@Alison, very vaild point. I think sometimes this happens because educational institutions dont upgrade their syllabus to teach new skills to the students. I think educational institutes and industry should join hands to upgrade the syllabus so that students can learn new skills which is required by the industry.
By comparison, students of all ages can often earn an online education for one fourth of this annual cost -- and more businesses are starting to acknowledge online degrees.
@Mary, thanks for the post. I agree with you. Infact some colleges offers courses for free. For example courses offered by MIT are free. Such courses are also very popular because classes are conducted by very experienced professors.
Great points, Alison. The relevance of any course is the key.
We have a long way to go in increasing the true business value of many degrees and education classes. The marketable skills to business need to be the priority, or the value of education is minimized - no matter what form it takes. Harvard actually questioned the value of MBA's, unless the students can be better prepared to solve business problems.
To Mary's blog, I think the key is "accredited" colleges and universities. Most of them are beginning to build online and/or hybrid classes that move education forward for the students and better prepare them with business skills.
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New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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