Not from one of those “online” only school. I mean a degree that you get online from a real school. Such as Upper Iowa University and Florida Metropolitan University.
Accredited Online Degrees – Online Graduate Degrees
Read about online business degrees
January 29th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I think it would generally indicate that one is either lazy or not serious about preparing him/herself for a career. Although, I can understand if the student in question is a single mother or something like that….
January 29th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
So far the only experience I have with on line schools is via my nephew who got his degree from Phoenix. It is an accredited school and he really worked hard to get it. I see no reason to disparage legitimate on line schools. The degree is accepted by many corporations.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
It depends on whether it is a reputable school. Some schools have the reputaion of being diploma mills, UP, Devry. Others such as Walden, Capella, Bellevue, or online divisions of B & M schools do just fine in preparing students for a degree. What happens when you have a student in an isolated 200 person village in Alaska- they have no choice but to do online.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
I’ve been taking all of my courses online for my Bachelors in Information Science through the University of North Texas, and plan on continuing into the master’s level program (which is also web-based) in the fall. Online courses are really convenient if you need to structure your school work around your job or family life, or if you don’t live near the university that offers what you need for your degree. I’m really lucky with my degree in that the information and library science department offers all of their regular, on-campus courses online, because there are many departments at the university that offer very little, if anything, online, mainly because many of the professors don’t want to learn how to use the e-class software or are limited in their computer skills.
The belief that online degrees are for the lazy is actually a big misconception, and just the opposite is true. Getting an online degree requires a lot of self-discipline, and in most cases is actually harder than a regular, on-campus degree. The workload is higher and often the content of most online courses is harder and more exhaustive. The lazy people that register for online courses find out really quickly that online courses aren’t for them because they can’t keep up with the workload or the time constraints and fast pace of the courses. They also end up dropping or failing because the e-class software tracks every movement made by each student in the course (course web pages clicked on, how much a student logs into the classroom, etc.), and most professors use this information as well as other methods (class discussion, group projects, etc.) to calculate a class participation grade, so if they’re not participating and logging in as they should be, they end up losing enough points to usually knock them down a letter grade.
But overall, if you’re lucky enough to find a school in your degree field that offers online courses, and you feel that you can dedicate yourself to completing the work, it’s worth trying for a course or two if you need to structure school to fit your schedule.