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Originally posted by Edmond:
Done online from a brick and mortar school, it requires the same academics as going in person.

Those schools that cater towards military such as Kaplan (now Purdue Global), Excelsior, Liberty and American Military University seem kind of shady.

Some of them give out credit for getting through AIT or some other forms of training. If you've ever been through military classes/training, you know most are "everyone passes." At least it's like that in the Army with many schools.

I knew a guy who went to Kaplan and finished some sort of degree there. They get bought out by Purdue (the real Purdue in Indiana), they call it Purdue Global, but he has a real Purdue sticker on his car. If that's not false advertising, I don't know what is.

I went to real schools myself but I'm wondering how much someone can really learn from those military centric schools.

Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue & former Governer of IN has a soft spot for easier-than-Purdue colleges. As Gov, he turned Ivy Tech (laughable community college/ 5th-6th year of HS) into Western Governor's U (Name changed, same M.O.). It hasn't worked that well, one of the few disappointments I have as a IN resident & Purdue alum. Overall, he's a good one though.

There were a lot of classes that I would have preferred to be online when I was at Purdue - like the 7:30AM M/W/F lecture with a professor that couldn't walk & couldn't talk - she pointed to overhead projections. And a fucking quiz every time.
I had something like 95% on tests/labs, but got a C because I wouldn't waste my time. As a person, I felt bad for her (degenerative neurological disorder), but as a student paying my own way & working 30+ hrs a week, I felt cheated.
That said, the hands-on I got at Purdue was 2nd to none. I also wouldn't get random 4AM phone calls from a dude on an oil rig off the coast of Russia had I not met a few friends there.

What is the expected ROI?

What’s the plan to do what, with a degree?

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Originally posted by OttoSig:
There are a very small percentage of jobs that require your degree to be from a prestigious school. And I don't wanna work for any of them, feel bad for the person that insults my intelligence because my degree theoretically came from online.

I couldn't agree more with what Otto said. I am in my Freshman year in an online program. I work for a very large (world wide) manufacturer, who is paying 100% of my education as long as a I get a "C" or better. So far I am holding a 4.0 GPA after 3 classes. With these courses and my previous in person credits, I'm close to having my 1st year completed.

My company knows I am going to school online, and prefers it, because it is ALOT cheaper than me going in person. Once I finish my degree, I will be in line for further promotions and my company is very supportive of this school that I am attending. As a matter of fact, a plant manager in another location was another attendee, and graduate, of the same school as me, and had a 0% chance of getting the plant manager job he has until he finished his degree online.

Online degree shaming is bullshit. College is college. Period.

One place I worked there was a completely useless guy that never or accomplished anything of substance. He was the guy that got sent to 6 Sigma training (because doing without him was no worse than having him around) and became a "blackbelt" that never completed any projects. Then he got a PhD online at Capella University instead of working. I often had to wait to print out machine drawings for my maintenance people because the useless guy had the printer tied up printing his PhD crap.

And then after he gets the degree he has to be called "Dr." all the time, and still didn't do anything of substance.

Everyone knew his degree was a shame and no one had any respect. But management couldn't do anything about it because he was a minority.

As in many things, education is largely what you make of it. That being said, there are things you can learn just by reading. There are other things you learn by being taught. Or by watching. Or by doing. There are other things you learn by collaboration and discussion (for example, in writing software, you may do it someway based on what you've read, your instructor may do it differently, and then there are probably many other ways with each person you talk to. You learn different ways to do the same thing by seeing how other people do it - this leads to exposure to optimizations - the best way to do something).

I would not knock the Harvard or Stanford method. Nor would I knock an online method. It depends on ones needs and ones diligence to supplement as needed. I would just generally believe that the more and varied exposure one has to a given subject, the more learned one tends to be. All are neither sufficient or insufficient depending on one's needs and objectives. They are just starting points. It's important to know the limitations of any method and strive to address them through other complementary means if needed.

Education is just a corner stone upon which to build expertise. Education doesn't provide expertise, that's where experience comes in.

I did both my grad and post-grad courses in the seat. I started the courses at 42 yrs of age and with some experience. What I found with the face-to-face courses was the ability to question/challenge the instructor on the subject matter.

Having experience, I was able to offer a differing opinion on what was presented in the book vs. what was actually working in real life. This fostered vigorous debates in the classroom, with the instructor agreeing that theory sometimes is invalidated by what is going on.

This type of give-and-take would not be possible on-line. I could be wrong!

quote:

Originally posted by odin:
I did both my grad and post-grad courses in the seat. I started the courses at 42 yrs of age and with some experience. What I found with the face-to-face courses was the ability to question/challenge the instructor on the subject matter.

Having experience, I was able to offer a differing opinion on what was presented in the book vs. what was actually working in real life. This fostered vigorous debates in the classroom, with the instructor agreeing that theory sometimes is invalidated by what is going on.

This type of give-and-take would not be possible on-line. I could be wrong!

It is entirely possible online and the professors in my MBA program remarked that the quality of discussion and debate of case studies was BETTER than in-person class. Why? In person you get a few people with strong personalities that dominate the discussion. We used discussion forums similar to this one instead, so everyone had a chance to post comments, responses, and we could do it asynchronously because we had people all over the world. Now you could do audio or video conferencing, but back then it wasn't an option due to bandwidth and available technology.

Most large companies have found over the past two years that office workers can work remotely and get things accomplished pretty well. Yes, it's different, but more or less, it has not caused major issues. That doesn't mean people are doing assignments alone at home with zero interaction - there are tons of virtual meetings where everything is discussed.

My degree is from excelsior college in NY. I had tons of time in the seat. Each college wanted me to take their class. More money. I rolled it all up and had to take a 1 credit class. 500.00 with fees.

It was good enough to get into medical school and anesthesia residency after that. So anyone who doesn’t believe they are equal is fooling themselves.

Brightest guy I worked with knew how smart someone was by asking 5 questions. It varied from person to person. He would ask a difficult one and the a normal one, less difficult and harder than normal……. He bracketed their intelligence did not care where they went to school.

If it is a regionally accredited college treat it like any other brick and mortar school. Most brick and mortar schools have online programs now.

I'm a Chief Human Resources Officer and a retired Navy Veteran. I attended a brick and mortar school for my graduate degree but know others that got the exact same degree as mine but completed theirs online at the same institution.

Speaking from my personal experience, every one of my exams for my ABET accredited online ME degree was required to be proctored. I had more scrutiny when I took exams then people in the traditional classroom because typically there were three proctors to maybe 3-5 test takers.

As others have said look at the accreditation of the school. My degree was just a rigorous as the in person students, in fact it was essentially identical since we watched lectures filmed by teachers who lectured to in person students. We also had to do all the same in person labs as well. I would even argue that the online degree is tougher, as a bunch of in person students couldn't hack it when we switched to online learning for the last half of the spring semester last year.

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Originally posted by cas:

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
If Covid has proven anything, it is that online "learning" is as weak and ineffective...

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Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Online classes are the same as in person education...

I recently watched five college girls take a test. It was one girl's test, but there were five of them in the room all collaborating on the answers.

I am one of the people who took distributed learning from Virginia Tech via satellite TV in the late 1980s.

We had to go to a classroom to watch and occasionally interact with the professor.

My first class was solid and hazardous waste management. It was demanding.

The next one I signed up for as Radiation Health Physics. I’m not kidding, in the first three chapters of the text I recognized one thing: F = m * a. I dropped it. For giggles I sat through other lectures on other topics. The class on how to design synthetic aperture radar was so far beyond me, I can’t even begin to describe what I encountered.

My point is just because classes are not your butt in a seat in a classroom format doesn’t mean they aren’t ball busters.

I looked less at where the candidate’s degree was from, and more at what else did they do in school.

The candidate who worked and went to school at the same time went to the top of the pile. It could be flipping burgers. Work full time and go to school full time made you the top of the pile.

Candidates that did nothing but school ended near the bottom.

A lot of Massachusetts colleges brick and mortar schools have gone back to online teaching again due to Covid.

Check the schools accreditation and the faculty in the field you want to study.

Also check the graduation rates of the college.and the hiring rate after graduation.

Those two numbers say a lot about the quality of the school.

I’ve taken on line classes, although most of my college education was in person. A bad teacher will make a class suck no matter if in person or online. A really good one will rock whether online or in person. But online classes are harder than in person, just because of the interactions with the instructor and other students are part of the education, and that synergy is harder and slower than in person. I found hybrid classes the best, actually.

If I were evaluating online degrees, I’d first look at the college involved and see how they are regarded both in person and online. I’d look at reviews of their program. I’d consider how long they have been doing online programs (for example, U of IL Champaign was a pioneer in computer aided education). The type of degree would also factor in, as “hands on” lab intensive type of degrees don’t translate well into online.