Your opinion on online college degrees, please

[dmaul1114]

Yep, it's just that some pieces of paper are worth more than others when you're being compared to other applicants who have similar experience etc.

Having the degree from a prestigious university can be the tie breaker--or some bullshit like having a degree from the hiring person's alma mater etc.

The best you can do is try to make that paper worth as much as possible by getting a degree from the most prestigious school/program you can get into and afford and get the highest GPA you can earn.

 

[Liquid 2]

[quote name='dmaul1114']Exactly.

The student who gives full effort in a class room (participates in discussion, talks to classmates, talks to the professor) along with full effort in the reading and homeworks and studying etc. will be better off than the person who puts full effort into an online course since they have no personal interaction with the professor or classmates.

That's the inherent difference in the two IMO. Trying to compare to the student who half asses it in a real class is muddying the comparison IMO.[/QUOTE]

What I was highlighting is that it's up to the student to make being in a physical college more meaningful than being in an online one. Yeah, a real college is better, but only if one takes the initiative to make it better.

 

[dmaul1114]

[quote name='Liquid 2']What I was highlighting is that it's up to the student to make being in a physical college more meaningful than being in an online one. Yeah, a real college is better, but only if one takes the initiative to make it better.[/QUOTE]

Yep, my point was just that you have to compare the same type of students.

The same students putting in the same effort . IMO the one taking the real class over the online one will learn more everytime. Also considering that the professors/instructors are equally competent etc.

That's really the only valid comparison. You can't compare a shitty student in one type of school to a good one in aother or a shitty real class to good online one.

You contrast good students in good classes of both forms if you really want to talk about the merits vs. online vs. in person classes.

So I just though some of the comparison's people were making where just absurd ways to make online seem better. Take equal students and equally competent professors and the real universities win everytime IMO. Especially if you consider that online colleges aren't going to have instructors on par with faculty at good colleges. Online courses offered by good colleges are a different matter--assuming they're handled by tenure track faculty and not lecturers and grad students.

 

[Cry Havoc]

Of course a degree from the generic online school isn't as good as a traditional degree from another school worth its salt. However, I'm not convinced a traditional degree is necessarily better than an online degree if they came from the same school or the students took the same classes. They're just....different. Depending on the job I needed to fill, I might consider one an advantage over the other, or it might not matter at all. It depends.

However, I wish some of my professors had an online class or two when they were in school. Maybe then they would have learned to answer a ing email instead of making me coordinate my time to be there during office hours for a question that takes 30 seconds to answer. But that's another topic...

 

[dmaul1114]

Yeah I don't get professors who do that. I encourage students to e-mail as that's much quicker for both them and me.

And it works, I answer questions quickly and I don't have many people coming to office hours leaving me more time to focus on work (course prep, grading, research etc.).

Guess some older professors are just adverse to technology. But hell, I graduated from undergrad in 2002 and most of the professors I had were good about e-mail. *shrugs*