US: No job if you only have an online degree

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Abner, May 10, 2009.

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  1. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

  2. Randell1234

    Randell1234 Moderator

  3. sentinel

    sentinel New Member

    From the article, "Today, with previously legitimate universities offering online courses and degrees, it is becoming difficult to separate the diploma mills from the bona fide programmes. That is why the value of the online degree is being questioned by more and more employers."

    Gee, it is rather easy to verify the legitimacy of a post-secondary educational institution and university registrars and employers have been doing it for decades.

    These three quotes are almost amusing if the person(s) making these remarks was/were no completely serious and making sweeping generalizations.

    * "I know of no online degrees that are not considered complete jokes."
    * "I would never consider hiring anyone with an online degree."
    * "Online degrees are a joke. I wish they would get rid of this concept altogether."

    I suppose Harvard Extension and George Washington University, two fairly prominent higher education institutions, better shutdown their online degree programmes immediately before employers start to think of them as third-rate or worse as diploma mills. :confused:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 10, 2009
  4. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Author Shrock: "For several years, the number of vacancy descriptions that state "no online degrees" has been increasing."

    Author Bear: The primary place vacancies in higher education are advertised is the weekly Chronicle of Higher Education. Their 40+ pages of ads are searchable by key words. Number of ads in the current issue: 1,109. Number of ads that mention on-line degrees: zero.

    Shrock also refers to a 2005 Chronicle forum that 'proves' faculty don't like online degrees. It wasn't a typical forum; it was an article by a pseudonymous faculty member on how some of his colleagues at his small midwestern college have reservations about the new technologies. A few readers commented, some agreeing, some disagreeing. And Shrock then leaps to h is absurd conclusion: "So if most university professors are opposed to online degrees..."

    An earlier article by Shrock began, "If you have internet access, search the phrase "no online degrees." For the last several years the number of job vacancy descriptions that state "no online degrees" is increasing."

    So of course I did that search. In Google, it produced 35 hits, not a single one of which was a quote from a help wanted advertisement.

    Shrock is an entomologist who teaches at Emporia State University. I hope his research with bugs has greater accuracy.
     
  5. TCord1964

    TCord1964 New Member

    I'm not sure that professors in traditional programs are the best sources to ask when trying to find out if "online degrees" are reputable. They're trying to protect their jobs. What do you think they are going to say? That would be like asking a GM auto worker if imported cars are a good buy.

    "Toyota? Oh yeah, those cars are great! I have one myself!"
     
  6. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

  7. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    The dude's an entomologist, eh? No wonder he bugs me! :eek:
     
  8. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    I think it was the University of Nebraska that was offering an online master's in entomology, wasn't it? I wonder if this guy now classifies them as a degree mill.
     
  9. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Crit

    The phrase comes to mind, "A Shrock of crit."
     
  10. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member


    Exactly, the reality is that traditional education is in a crisis. Most programs are obsolete and full time professors tend be obsolete and overpaid.

    Students are realizing that many professors just download the publishers material over the internet and just click and repeat the same material in class. With the advent of the internet, many students are realizing that most of the material is nothing more than canned work from publishers.

    A full time professor makes 100K and teaches only 4 to 6 courses a year. They publish work in journals than hardly any person reads. Isn't this model really obsolete?

    The online model makes more sense for many fields, it is far more efficient to have an online business course that has been peer reviewed by many experts than one canned course downloaded from a publisher's web site.

    My only problem with online programs is the fact that most are taught by adjuncts that are non permanent employers with little commitment to the program. In my opinion, it would make more sense to have full time committed individuals with decent salaries rather than poorly paid adjuncts. Full time individuals would need to be evaluated based on teaching skills and research more than students' evaluations (as it is currently done by most online schools).

    Most online programs in Australia and the UK are taught by full time faculty. This is in my opinion makes the program a lot more stronger. Programs taught only by adjuncts that need to inflate grades in order to continue getting work is what gives online education a bad reputation.
     
  11. Griffin

    Griffin Crazy About Psychology

    That about sums it up. If he had just posted it as the opinion piece that it is -- fine, some people don't like distance learning. That wouldn't be a big deal to me. But he took the time to fabricate a bunch of "facts" to support this nonsense and then compares "most universities" to predatory lending and fraudulent degrees.

    He doesn't seem to see the distinction between a degree that you earn and something you print off of your laser printer.

    He reminds me of the IT guy who recently went off on how 'fraudulent' Hardvard ES degrees were -- when he graduated from West New Mexico.

    I think these guys are both insecure and concerned about their own viability as instructors.

    I commented on the article and pretty much broke it down to him:
    ...but then again I was pretty mad. :D
     
  12. raristud

    raristud Member

    He is a commentator for Kansas Public Radio. KPR if operated by the University of Kansas, a provider of courses online.

    "But some observers are warning that the web is a very unreliable storehouse for information. Commentator John Richard Schrock is concerned that the gradual disappearance of journals and other research published online -- part of a phenomenon known as "linkrot" -- could have some serious consequences for the scientific community." What I am curious about is that Schrock uses internet technologies to communicate his disapproval of other internet technologies. He seems to be quite proficient in the use of the internet. Of course, Schrock can object to online degrees all he wants. I wonder if he should give a second thought to his objections.

    http://kansaspublicradio.org/newsstory.php?itemID=2508
    http://educationfrontlines.net/radio/index.htm
    http://www.kabt.org/kpr-commentary-by-john-richard-schock/
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 11, 2009
  13. Griffin

    Griffin Crazy About Psychology

    According to the editor, the piece got a lot of complaints yesterday :D
     
  14. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    While I certainly disagree with Schrock's remarks linked to in the first post, I agree with him on this issue.

    Material published on the internet does seem more fragile and ephemeral than material preserved in old-fashioned books and journals.

    Suppose that there was a nuclear war or some other analogue of the fall of antiquity. Many remote libraries and book collections would probably survive, preserving some fraction of the world's collected knowledge. But material residing on computer servers might just evaporate in a flash and be gone for good.

    That's to say nothing of the ease of rewriting history. If the day ever comes when a company like Google succeeds in creating a gargantuan full-text online research library and universities choose to subscribe to it rather bearing the costs of maintaining libraries of their own, one company might find itself in control of a large amount of the world's scholarly information. Keep in mind that Google has already proven willing to cooperate with China's massive internet content censorship efforts.
     
  15. sentinel

    sentinel New Member

    You raise valid points for the dual storage of journals and papers though a nuclear explosion will vaporize paper as well as magnetic storage media. Perhaps stone tablets stored in a cave is the answer to the preservation of intellectual thought.

    Censorship is a real danger when access to information is controlled by even a small group of organizations.
     
  16. Blagobitch

    Blagobitch New Member

    I think he's referring to the Online only schools.

    I'd agree with him on that front.
     
  17. retake

    retake New Member

    TESC, COSC, and Excelsior are "online only" schools as well.
     
  18. Blagobitch

    Blagobitch New Member

    Exactly, and they aren't held to the same level/esteem as a traditional state or private B&M University.
     
  19. sentinel

    sentinel New Member

    With the exception of research universities the transition to virtual campuses makes economic and academic sense. The debate over non-profit / not for-profit versus for-profit remains as much as it has always existed between publicly-funded and private universities.
     
  20. retake

    retake New Member

    Blagobitch = saiga?
     

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