Online Degrees and Employers: Ponyboy or Donnie Brasco?
There’s one big question that surfaces any time a student considers taking an online class, enrolling in an online university, or pursuing an online degree. How acceptable will the education be to employers?
Since the value of any college degree is really determined by whether or not an employer accepts it, the question is especially important with online degrees, whose history has been somewhat shrouded in skepticism. With an online degree, would you be like Ponyboy, the lost, downtrodden outsider who can’t seem to gain a strong foothold in anything, or would you be like Donnie Brasco, the FBI agent who walked into the Bonanno crime family and became a trusted associate?
Ok, that’s a strange analogy. But putting aside the contextual details (14-year-old greaser, undercover cop), one of these is a strong position to hold, and one is not. Which will apply when you walk into a job interview with a bachelor degree from an online university on your resume?
According to sites like About.com and CareerBuilder, employers are becoming more accepting of degrees earned online. And surprisingly, it’s mostly because they’re just seeing them more often. Where two years ago, 96% of employers said they would prefer to hire someone with a brick-and-mortar education over someone with an online degree, more recent accounts say employers now consider an online school’s accreditation and prestige, just as they would a traditional degree.
That’s because with more working adults trying to find ways to better their income and education, taking classes online is looking more like the best option for someone with a busy schedule, and less like an easy way to crank out a diploma — especially when you consider that most college professors consider online course material to be just as valuable as the face-to-face kind.
Does this mean you can walk into a chair position at IBM flashing your University of Phoenix diploma like you’re Johnny Depp joining the mob? Not likely, just yet. But at least you’re no Ponyboy.
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Tags: distance education, employment, online classes, online degrees, online schools
December 9th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
[...] Kimmich presents Online Degrees and Employers: Ponyboy or Donnie Brasco? posted at Ace Online [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
In the early days of online learning (relatively, of course) this was a big issue. It was somewhat more obvious because f2f was the norm for bricks and mortar (B&M) and online was often done as an offshoot to the B&M institution or by some newby going down the online path. Newbies always have to earn their stripes no matter what form they take. Online offshoots were always a bad idea (sort like the losing strategy of Barnes and Noble to compete with Amazon which was occurring at the same time).
In reality, an employer would not know how much online content was taken by any B&M graduate these days. It varies by discipline and by institution, but can be substantial. So, what’s the difference?
For me, there is one important difference. Part time students of any type have to make far more commitment to achieving their degrees than full time students and off-campus full time students (we used to call that distance but that is misleading) generally require more commitment and self organization than on-campus students. Part time students are generally older, more mature and will often both put more in and get more out of their learning experiences.
So, as an employer, which of these looks more attractive? If I can get the maturity, commitment and experience of an online graduate from an online degree program that has earned some level of quality in its reputation, then it seems pretty good to me. Which would you take?
December 12th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Good comment, Allyn.
With more and more students enrolling in part-time and full-time distance courses, employers will start to realize it’s just another part of new technology in the workplace. And it definitely says something if a student made it through an online learning course while simultaneously working a full-time job.
…and the more a school’s reputation becomes a consideration, the more online schools will have to get theirs in shape if they want to be successful.
December 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
[...] MBAs. We can comfortably assume this of most online degrees, and as we’ve discussed before, online degrees are steadily becoming more popular with employers. Plus, campuses have mosquitoes [...]