Book review: Get Your Degree Online

by Helm and Helm, recently published by McGraw-Hill.

What a strange big book this is -- which belies McGraw-Hill's usual sensible editing procedures (at least as Tom Head, Mariah, and I experienced it with our book for them).

This purports to be the definitive book on on-line degrees, however the priorities seem very odd to me:

1. It devotes 36 pages (nearly 10% of the book) to Capella, 1 1/2 pages to Edison, and zero pages to Excelsior and Charter Oak.

2. It devotes 17 pages to the University of Illinois, but does not mention many other state university programs, at least as relevant.

3. 20 pages on Athabasca, and an small number of (very few) pages to Walden, Nova Southeastern, and the American Institute of Computer Sciences. More space devoted to Cerro Cose Community College than any of the above.

4. No mention whatever of the only on-line regionally accredited doctorate, Touro.

5. 26 times as much space on Baker College (13 pages) than on The Union Institute (half a page).

6. And so on. One wonders what the authors had in mind. And the above, combined with no table of contents, no index at all, and more than a few listings that do not offer degrees but only certificates, makes this a less-than-wonderful volume.

John Bear, who has written good things
about quite a few worthy competitors
over the years (such as Marci Thorson's
excellent books) -- but this is not
one of them.

 

Wasn't Matt Helm also a less-than-wonderful spy spoof from the sixties?

John, I just noticed that no one has posted a review yet of the book on Amazon. Why don't you post yours? Amazon's editorial description makes the book seem very much more-than-wonderful.

Scott

 

These are the Helms involved in genealogy. See http://www.onlinegenealogy.com/

Here is a biographical snippet that April published in GENEALOGICAL COMPUTING (of which she and Matthew are co-editors):

"...Matthew is a history buff and computer aficionado. His master’s degree is in Library and Information Science and his specialty is information systems architecture. I am a writer and editor at heart. My professional experiences have been in higher education and my master’s is in higher education administration. So guess what I write or edit when I’m not busy being a mommy or writing and editing genealogical things?"

So maybe that explains this book?

 

It devotes 17 pages to the University of Illinois, but does not mention many other state university programs, at least as relevant.

Both the Helms were full-time employees of University of Illinois (and also both were grad students there).

 

I believe that the difference between Dr. Bear posting here and at Amazon.com is that here we know John much better and will readily accept his review at face value. Over on Amazon.com the review could easily be interpretted by people that don't know Dr. Bear as being a selfish slam on a competitor.

 

Point taken, however, because of John's review, it's not likely many degreeinfo.com readers will go buy or read the book. Without reading the book, it would be unethical to post a book review on Amazon. Catch 22?

Scott

 

If you want to see an example of "market research" taken to extremes, take a look at "Distance Degrees" by Mark Somebody-or-another. I think the site is www.distancedegrees.com.

In the edition I have, Mark plagiarized, nearly word-for-word, several chapters of Bears' Guide. Steve Levicoff also reported that there were numerous errors in the book... and it's supposedly on something like the 10th edition.

So... one needs extensive research, even *more* extensive proofreading and fact checking, and a lot of independent readers willing to offer criticism to produce a high-quality book. The Helm and Helm book would seem to be lacking in all of these.