The Ivy league of DL degrees

I was using the search function this morning and I found a thread referencing the Harvard of DL. I laughed but then it brought up a valid question in my mind. I titled my thread the Ivy league of DL degrees because I did not want to reference any specific school. Here is my question. If you were to create a list of the top DL schools in academia which ones would be in your top ten and why? This list would take into account academics and respect in the working world only so they can be either B&M that have full DL programs or fully online schools. I thought this might be a fun thread and open us up to more debate about which schools would be considered top tier in the DL arena. :cheers:

 

Not all of these schools are actually in the Ivy League, but here is my list of top DL schools:

Columbia University
Harvard University
Stanford University
Duke University
John Hopkins University

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Penn State
Drexel
CSU

 

I guess I should have been clearer but thanks for the response. I didn't mean that they have to be true Ivy league like Princeton, Yale, Harvard, etc. This was more of an opinion based question about which schools you think fit in the top tier section of DL degrees based on reputation, academia, and personal opinion. I'll have to look at John Hopkins. I had no idea they had any DL programs at all.

 

I think that the question works better with individual DL programs than with entire schools. It's not easy to answer, since most DL programs don't impress me a great deal. Most of them are servicable enough, but few of them can really compare with the best B&M programs in their subjects.

I think that Michigan State's program in beam physics is pretty cool.

http://www.bt.pa.msu.edu/index_vubeam.htm

This offers some rather high-powered physics DL, ranging from individual classes to at least a portion of a Ph.D. program. It appears to be aimed at people already working at the various particle-accelerator laboratories around the world, where they would presumably pursue their dissertation research. A Michigan State physics Ph.D. combined with work done at someplace like CERN might look pretty good on a cv.

 

Some candidates...

How about:

Boston University
Stevens Institute of Technology
Rochester Institute of Technology

 

It's true that there are some very good schools that offer some very good DL degree programs. However, it's also true that most of these are specialized technical or professional degrees or certificates, most often at the master's level. For example, Stanford and Columbia are noted for DL MS programs in computer science and engineering, and Johns Hopkins is noted for a DL MPH (Master of Public Health) program.

Many of these programs require the cooperation of an employer or other sponsoring institution. The MSU beam physics program, for example, is for people who work at research labs with particle accelerators. That's cool, but it's not DL for the general public with an interest in physics.

If you are looking for general, bachelor's-level DL programs with some element of selectivity or prestige, then I don't think there is much out there. You might as well try to select the "Ivy League" of community colleges.

 

I think that in time, American Military University will be viewed as one of the top DL schools in the country for History.

 

How's about

Southern Methodist University
George Washington University
New York University

 

I would have to say Kennedy-Western...no sorry. I would have to say University of Florida.

 

University of Illinois, Springfield recently won the Sloan-C Award for best institutional DL program. Some of their online degree programs are more selective than their face-to-face programs (which is certainly not the case at most universities).

 

hahahaha!!!!You're funny, Randell.

 

Since we're talking about "distance" education, do we have to restrict our suggestions to US schools?

 

I don't think so. I mean I created the thread simply to discuss what we (as DL students) feel are the top DL schools around based on reputation, academics, and personal experiences.

 

OK then. I nominate the University of London.

http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/

 

As usual, I find myself agreeing with CalDog. But isn't the fact that these aren't programs for the general public part of what boosts them up into the DL ivy-league category? The better programs are selective, concerned both with applicants' backgrounds and with whether or not they have the necessary support, supervision and facilities available at their remote locations.

In that spirit, here's another not-for-the-public nominee for the DL ivy league...

The Naval Postgraduate School. They offer distance learning masters degrees in engineering and management in all kinds of sexy specialities like electronic warfare and nuclear reactors. (RA, ABET and AACSB accredited.) But you have to be an officer in a US or allied military, an employee of a federal alphabet agency (CIA, NSA etc.) or occasionally a civilian contractor. Some classes require serious security clearances and access to secure networks. A whole limited-access floor of the NPS library is devoted to classified material, including classified theses and doctoral dissertations.

I can't think of any either.

Deep Springs College. Hey, it's probably harder to get into than Harvard. (And it's certainly distant education, even if it isn't DL.) It's every Frenchman's nightmare: dusty American college-student cowboys on horseback, wearing Stetsons.

Another member of the community college ivy league would have to be Moorpark College's totally unique associates program in Exotic Animal Management. They operate their own zoo (with lions and tigers and everything!) Graduates are in demand and work in zoos and animal parks all over the country. They even manage the animals in Ringling Brothers circus. Whenever you see unusual animals on television or in the movies, it's usually these people behind the scenes. Just think: 'Animal Planet'. Harvard can't say that.

There's a DL connection too, since they have an articulation arrangement where students do two years at Moorpark College's America's Teaching Zoo, then complete two years by DL from California State University Bakersfield while they are working at an animal park or something, emerging with a bachelors in Environmental Resource Management.

 

From my perspective, Deep Springs does not belong in the "Ivy League of Community Colleges". In terms of selectivity and prestige, yes, Deep Springs is Ivy-caliber. But it's not a "community college".

The term "community college" is often used interchangeably with the term "junior college". But some people (like me) recognize a distinction.

Both terms refer to academic institutions that focus on the first two years of the undergraduate curriculum. However:

- a "community college" is publicly funded, typically at a local level; whereas
- a "junior college" is any such school, whether public or private.

So private 2-year schools like Deep Springs, Valley Forge Military Academy & College, or Bard College at Simon's Rock are junior colleges, but not community colleges (Simon's Rock also offers bachelor's degrees, but most students get associate's degrees and transfer out after 2 years).

So all community colleges are junior colleges, but not all junior colleges are community colleges. However, private junior colleges are now relatively rare, so most people ignore this distinction.

 

It depends on what is actually meant by a term like "DL ivy-league".

Ivy League degrees aren't readily available to the General Public. And it's true that there are some highly-regarded DL degrees that share this quality. But not necessarily for the same reasons.

In the case of most highly-regarded DL degrees, the degrees aren't readily available to the General Public because they are specialized and technical in nature, and/or are only offered to a small potential audience (e.g. employees of particle accelerator labs). These degrees are typically graduate-level, as noted previously.

Ivy degrees, on the other hand, aren't readily available to the General Public because admissions tend to be highly competitive. This includes even introductory, undergraduate-level degree programs in general-interest subjects like history, English, or math.

To me, a "DL Ivy" would be a school with a broad base of undergraduate- and graduate-level DL programs, and a reputation for selectivity, high admissions standards, and academic excellence across all disciplines. The point is that there may not be any DL schools like that.

Alternatively, you could designate schools as "DL Ivies" on the basis of selected high-profile graduate-level DL programs, like the Michigan State MS in beam physics or the Johns Hopkins Master's in Public Health. But the point is that real Ivy League schools didn't build their reputations based solely on a few specialty graduate programs.

 

Don’t forget Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Brandeis.

 

Well, I don't know what soupbone meant when he used the term "DL Ivy League" but what I was thinking about when I answered was that it needed to be a school with a great general reputation, that had been around for quite a while, that had a pretty large spectrum of distance learning degree programs, that delivered exactly what it said it would deliver, etc. I think that you could add the University of South Africa to that list even though they continue to suffer from a bad rep for having a slow bureaucracy. I don't know if that's actually true anymore but the rep remains. Everybody just loves customer service but sometimes I think that Americans have a kinda "driveupwindow mentality" and if they don't get what they want within 20 seconds then they start screaming "bad customer service!" It's really late and I should know better by now than to keep posting when I'm this tired.

 

Hi CalDog. Yeah, it does. I suppose that there's more than one way to look at it.

I'm looking at it in terms of individual programs. What I want to find are DL programs that can make a legitimate case for being among the best at what they do, DL programs that can compete with the better B&M programs in the sme subject. Programs that, as a result, might have some prestige in their field.

I'm interpreting Michigan State's aiming its DL physics program at people already working at accelerator laboratories as a very real kind of selectivity. They favor people who are already working in the field that they are going to be studying.

Not only does that imply that these students already have experience with and sophistication in their major subject (beam physics), perhaps even more importantly, it indicates that they have the kind of sophisticated resources locally available necessary to support their dissertation research.

Stanford University offers a big-time doctoral emphasis in beam-physics through its Applied Physics department. As the page indicates, they have several very sophisticated research activities underway in which graduate students are deeply embedded. That means that many of these graduate students are working about two miles northwest of the main Stanford campus at the massive facilities at SLAC. Students' close involvement in the research being done there is part of what makes Stanford's doctoral program internationally prominent in this subject. I'm interpreting Michigan State as trying to emulate some of that a DL program.

That's why I like the Naval Postgraduate School. If you are going to be studying something in applied physics like underwater acoustics with an eye towards applications in anti-submarine warfare, then what other school offers what NPS does? Who has the US Navy's experience with submarines (ours and theirs) and their access to secret information? None of the ivys do, unless the Navy lets them in on its projects.

Yeah. If we define "DL ivys" as universities that are entirely/primarily DL, or at least offer an entire university-wide range of DL programs as opposed to a small number of specialty programs, then I certainly agree with you. I can't think of any.

Britain's Open University has achieved some international distinction in several research specialties (like earth sciences), but most of those research graduate students are working in Milton Keynes, so that doctoral aspect isn't exactly DL. OU's undergraduate programs aren't traditionally selective either (that's why they call it "Open University"). South Africa's UNISA might be a contender, but I wouldn't consider it an academic/scholarly leader in anything that it teaches. Athabasca has future potential perhaps, depending on what the Canadians do with it, but it isn't there yet. The University of London is one of the strongest B&M research universities (or consortiums of universities, or whatever it is) in the world and it offers an impressive range of external programs. But London doesn't support very much DL research activity, most of their DL undergraduate programs don't look like they are highly selective, and many of them don't even offer any teaching at all, consisting only of exams. That removes them from the topmost "ivy" category in my opinion.

Here in the United States, it's hard to think of any full-range primarily-DL school that comes anywhere close to being a "DL ivy", though some individual DL programs offered by B&M schools could probably make a case for themselves, as I've argued.