Maybe I’m just old school or something, but I’ve had this feeling deep in my gut for a long time that online college educations are watered down and don’t prepare the student in the same way that a traditional college education prepares them. I can’t shake the feeling and I’m genuinely curious how companies perceive potential employees who received an online degree.
Schools like University of Phoenix and Strayer, while doing many things right, in this person’s view, tend to cheapen the college experience. Again, this might just be a generational thing. I went to college in the 1990s and online education didn’t really take off until the 2000′s. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?
The last few days I’ve been doing research on various schools and the degrees they offer. Yesterday I was searching for DeVry University degree information but time and time again just found conflict-of-interest articles that were promoting the school because they were making money by promoting it.
What I want is an unbiased analysis of the online college phenomenon. Is it the future? Or is it a cheap fad?
One Comment
Or is it a cheap future? It really is hard to pin down as an industry, and any generalization will probably be wrong, as you can’t make generalizations about traditional schools either, as some of them are horrible and others are great, and because they are brick and mortar based and in a specific location, they have the advantage of people “having” or “needing” to come to them, where online schools don’t have the same advantage.
I think some combination of online and offline learning would be ideal though.