Friedbeef’s Tech

A quick check on my spam folder would reveal a good number of emails advertising quick fixes for higher education.  It is a great pity that this happens so often as it does tend to mar the reputation of professional institutions who are indeed serious about provide proper education online.

EarnMyDegree.com is one such site which offers such packages, and we’re going to have a look at their offerings as well as get a quick overview of online education as a whole.

How receptive are employers to online degrees?

Depending on who you ask, here are some quick numbers from Wikipedia about the perceived quality of online degrees in America.

• 100% - employers who responded felt that distance education program graduates performed better on the job as a result of their degree (as compared to their previous performance)
• 55% - percent of employers preferred who traditional degrees over online ones
• 41% - percent of employers who would give “equal consideration” to both types of degrees

In a nutshell, you probably won’t be wasting your time going to an online institution, but there is still a slight bias towards traditional degrees.  This would probably differ based on the field of study - You’d have to imagine courses which involve a lot of group and lab work probably would not work as well in an online environment.

How good are online schools?

The lack of long-standing authoritative metrics is no doubt a problem when developing credibility for an online degree.  Many of the metrics which work for ranking traditional degrees do not work for online universities, causing most of them to be unranked in traditional lists.  There are rankings for online institutions alone, but there is no authoritative list which combines BOTH traditional and online universities.

Here is an evaluation of EarnMyDegree.com’s featured universities - both in the traditional sense as defined by USNews, and online rank as defined by OEDB.  The site offers many more universities, but this was a list which they placed most prominently on their site.

It’s important to keep in mind that in the below list - ‘unranked’ does not mean ‘ranked too poorly to count’ - It just means that it was not taken into consideration.

• American InterContinental University (AIU) - Unranked in traditional rankings, 3rd in online rankings
• University of Phoenix - Unranked in both traditional, 15th in online rankings
• Capella University - Unranked in traditional rankings, 4th in online rankings
• Florida Metropolitan University (FMU) - Unranked in traditional rankings, 2nd in online rankings
• Liberty University - Ranked as a 4th tier traditional university, unranked in online rankings

…and that’s a headache.  If a university is ranked #2 online, but UNRANKED in the traditional sense, how good is it?  When cross-referencing both the USNews and OEDB list I only found ONE link between the two:

• ‘Post University’ - Which was ranked #7 for Online Universities, but was a 4th Tier university on the traditional list (this university is not featured on EarnMyDegree.com).

To sum it up, coming to a conclusion on the relative quality of education is very difficult given the current resources which are publicly available.  Whatever little evidence we have seems to point us to this:

• Traditional universities do not focus on full-time online degrees as a means of expansion via the Internet
• Online universities are may be ranked poorly in a traditional list, even if they rank well among other online universities although…
• The gap between the Top 3 online universities and the other universities on the OEDB list are significantly large, meaning that those at the top of this list may be significantly better than those ranked 4 and below

Should you bother with an online degree?

Before you make that decision - here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure your program is accredited in your country.  No point graduating from a program which no one recognizes.  Do the relevant checks with authorities.
2. A poor traditional university is just as bad as a poor online university.  The same can be said of a good one.  Don’t pick a university using a brick-and-mortar vs online argument.
3. Going back to the study cited at the beginning of this article, just about all employers felt that getting a degree, online or not - it did make a difference to performance.
4. You will probably get better access to higher paying jobs if you get a degree.  U.S. Department of Commerce has determined that people with Bachelor degrees take home over 98% more lifetime pay, and over 170% for Masters degrees.

EarnMyDegree.com is a good way to get access to many online institutions, so if you do decide to pursue this option - it is as good a place as any to start.  Also check out their helpful tips in their learning center at the bottom of page.

If you didn’t have a degree, would YOU enroll in an Online University?  Help us answer the quick poll below and/or leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on the matter!

Disclaimer: EarnMyDegree.com has paid me to review their service, and to give an honest opinion. Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, and have not been influenced by EarnMyDegree.com in any way.

[tags]online university, education, college [/tags]

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