Is DL moving forward or backward?

Is DL moving forard or backward?

Please register your opinion in the poll above.

POLL CONCEPT: We have all been telling ourselves that online education is moving forward towards becoming accepted as equal to traditional university education. We are seeing evidence of progress especially in the fact that top B&M universities are offering more and more DL options.

The problem is public perception. We see the investigations into Uop, Everest and the others that revealed some pretty ugly practices. Then you have the anti-online jesting that we have seen on Glee, SNL, Comedy Central and a few others (I suspect that these messages are more powerful than we know). We have the CNN report that highlights the huge debt and questionable value of for-profit education which is heavily online. We have the inability of many to distinguish degree mills from quality online schools. Moreover, there are other negative public perception issues on the horizon.

It seems that we might be currently moving backward. Hopefully, it's a momentary setback, but who knows? What do you think? Please reply to the poll above.

 

Online learning will weather these storms. Unless the internet itself becomes passe, internet-based education is here to stay.

 

B&M Grads are the ones setting us back. It seems they must feel pressure from the new influx of degree holders in this bad market for jobs. Colbert does not write his jokes, writers do, and it’s the same for SNL. It's mainly ignorance, if half the naysayers of DL knew that their school offered a DL program they would stop talking smack. What DL education needs is a coalition that raises money and runs AD’s that show how progressive DL education is. I mean if people saw an AD that asks where the best education could be obtained and ran names by the screen like Harvard, Stanford, Penn etc. Then mentioned the fact that all these schools provided distance education it would change some minds.

Btw….Colbert is a Northwestern drop out. He has no degree, so how can he make fun of an online degree when he has none of his own. That and Northwestern has an online program…..Northwestern University - Online Colleges and Online Universities - eLearners.com

 

I agree. Also, none of these guys have an actual agenda against online schools. They are just looking for the next new joke, and online schools right now are a convenient target.

 

The DegreeInfo Semantics Police are coming to get you. Lock your doors.

 

I don't think the perception is aimed at DL education, as much as it is for -profit education. The fact that a good percentage of taxpayer money is granted to these students who in turn either drop out, or do graduate without landing a half-way decent paying job in their field with a mountain of non-dischargeable debt is cause for alarm. Then when the main lobbyist on for-profit education is confronted with the dilemma of these students and graduates saddled with debt and no job prospects, his best response was to point at the government to make the debt dis-chargeable. On top of this, the bad publicity brought to for-profit education is feeding the stereotype among employers and hiring managers to circle file any resume or job application with a name under educational background like UoP, Devry, ITT Tech, etc..Its hard enough in this economy for individuals like me with degrees from public community colleges and universities to find decent paying jobs, without the stigma of a potential employer scrutinizing your degree. I really feel sorry for some of these students that have fell for the predatory practices of for-profit education. But at the same time, the world has had little sympathy for me when I've made bad, non-researched purchasing decisions, even for individuals in the name of bettering ones-self. Its almost as if for-profit graduates might be better off leaving their educational background from their resume with a for-profit diploma?

 

There are three or four guys on this board that pretend they never went to U of P.

 

This is also know as the appeal to accomplishment fallacy. You're factually incorrect. Northwestern identifies Mr. Colbert as an alumnus.

 

Nice use of critical arguing terminology. He himself said he did not finish school on a previous episode...

 

I think graduate level education via distance is already quite acceptable with the exception of the MBA, and even that can be overcome if the distance MBA program is from an elite school such as Duke or Georgetown or even schools a tier below that such as the University of Florida, etc. Terminal degrees are in a similar position, but again, an institution with a strong reputation can overcome the stigma of having earned the degree via distance in a lot of cases.
Distance education at the undergraduate level still has a negative connotation. I know administrators at several Boston area schools that talk about the poor quality of undergraduate distance education including the programs offered at their own institutions. I have to say, I agree with them to a point. I think a BA or BS via distance for a non-traditional students who has been working for some time can be a great thing, but would never recommend it to a student straight out of high school unless it was a last resort.

 

I got my AA from UoP but don't list it on my resume/CV anymore. The repuation is just so bad. I took three classes there- one for my AA degree and the rest were transfered. I then took 2 classes to transfer to COSC for my BS.

 

I feel that DL was moving forward and making progress until a few "bad seeds" in the DL game decided to make some unflattering noise and get caught in some uncompromising situations.

If it wasn't for that, DL would have been much better off as the majority were making strides and moving forward.

 

I agree. It seems like online education has gotten a bloody nose from all of the current bad press. I don't think it will have a lasting effect, but I think it has hurt our cause somewhat in the short run.

 

I actually never thought DL would get as "big" as it already has. I always thought it would be reserved for the most determined, independent learners and that it would not catch on as much as it has for the masses. I sought distance learning opportunities back in the late 80's and early 90's and they were there, and actually more plentiful than many realize, from fully accredited, respected colleges. I got a good portion of my credit from distance learning options, even back then. My BS degree was comprised of partially traditional classes from several colleges local to me, and from a good variety of correspondence courses. There was never any question that if I could, in fact stick with the independent learning course, my learning and credits would be equally respected as any other type of learning, and there was no designation on any of my transcripts to indicate which courses were by distance learning and which were not.


If anything, I was even more proud to explain how I found unconventional ways to earn my degree under circumstances that would seem impossible for most. I was a young, single mother with three kids at the time, with little or no resources, family help, babysitters, or money. But I had a brain and I used it. Even now, there are a variety of opinions. A lot of people say to me "I could never take a class online. I need to be in a classroom with people, and I need direct contact with my professor." I know that is a perception they have in their head rather than any specific reality, but I don't see any disrespect for DL in such statements. In fact, I see it that the person thinks you'd have to have more self-discipline than they have to succeed, and they could be right about that.

The way those old correspondence courses were organized though, I knew that people would not flock to take them, and many who started would drop without finishing. There was not enough interaction. I did not anticipate the Internet, or how it would affect so many things in life as we know it, not so many years later. Even when I saw online programs growing and growing, I thought it would grow to a point and stop and then we would have a healthy mix of options. I guess I don't really see why it is so important that DL moves forward, depending on what is meant by moving forward. I would like to see DL programs become highly respected as some B & M programs are, but I don't really see it as necessary that there are continually more offerings or that DL takes over and takes the place of traditional institutions. I don't see why we can't have both. I like having choices. DL is actually huge right now and I don't see that it needs to be any bigger, but it certainly should not fall backwards. It also needs to be more respected because recent news coverage has been very damaging in my opinion.

Yes, the respect issue is starting to get to me a little bit. I have seen more worry about the "utility" of degrees on forums like this than out there in the real world. At least in my region nobody talks about that, and if your degree is legitimate and RA not too many in my little corner of the world ask any further questions, which I personally think is as it should be. For example, if you are going to be a teacher or a nurse, or even a psychologist, as long as your degree program leads to the proper licensing and your state (and you have to do your homework before selecting the program to help you meet your goals) then it just does not matter where the degree comes from. I think part of the problem is many who earned their degrees by DL are defensive and ASSUME someone is going to think less of it so they over-explain, and bring up issues the person they are talking to might never have thought about otherwise.

One reason people don't ask in my area is because it is a poor area. There are few or no large companies where they are looking for new executives with a degree from a highly acclaimed college. Some jobs (like those I mentioned) require accredited degrees and people get those from a large variety of schools. I think we need to really get a few points out to the nay-sayers and the news media: A huge number of non-profit and B&M schools offer Distance learning/online courses. Virginia Tech offers an online Master's Degree. I have a daughter that got her Master’s and Ph.D. from VT (the traditional way). My second daughter graduated from Princeton so I'm no stranger to "established, respectable" schools. Princeton has not jumped on the online bandwagon much yet but I would be surprised if they don't at some point. They do offer non-credit online courses for Princeton parents though.  Most here know that Harvard does offer an online program. I just don't see how people can put down all online learning into a lump and consider it inferior. If they do, they are not just snobs, but also ignorant and closed-minded.

I think the bigger problem is really the words "for profit." I work for a for-profit school and I got my Ph.D. from one. My BS and MAT were from non-profits.

There are some issues with the for-profit model and I think we all know that. There is the question of whether quality will be sacrificed for the bottom line, getting more students and making more money. Of course I think that non-profits do this too even though the incentive for getting and keeping more students is structured a little differently perhaps with a little less obvious greed from someone at the top.

One thing is for sure, we need to try to let the public know that the process of obtaining regional accreditation is not easy and that no mill or a school with ridiculously low standards is going to achieve, nor be able to maintain this. I also think NA schools are respectable but I will mostly refer to RA schools since all of my degrees are RA and they have to be in my field (education).

The issue is muddled because of the recent attention to marketing degrees that may not bring the student all they were hoping for, and the student may have trouble paying it off, or may default on their loans, most of which are backed by Federal Funds. I do not support any school marketing in this way and I hope they are starting to realize they have harmed the entire world of DL including themselves, by doing what they have done.
As for me, I would always do my "own homework" to figure out if the degree I was getting would be worth my ROI, or at least a good risk in that direction. Certainly, I'd make sure it would lead to the professional licensing that I desired. I think the aggressive marketers did target suggestible people who relied on the marketer's words regarding how much success the degree would bring them. I think any school with open admission to anyone is going to get students that are not really good risks to succeed in any college. I personally would not have a problem with these schools having some kind of lower cut off based on a test, a writing test or SAT scores or something. I have always felt that not everyone is college material and I still feel that way, though I think many believe you "must have a college education" to succeed. It is false and this notion necessarily causes all of our colleges to "dumb down" so that the lower end students can also get their degree because they "must."
I think that we need to get our message out that if our school is RA then it is as good or better than at least the B&M schools that are not too selective and easy to get into. I have heard snobbish comments about local state schools too, but it doesn’t matter. Snobs are just snobs. I know a lot of people who graduate from them are very successful. Their degree is just one component of their profile. They have to prove themselves by showing what they have done in the work world, and explain logically what they can do for a potential company. My oldest daughter got her BS from a State School but now she is working at MIT. She is probably one to talk down her own state school, but on the other hand, she knows deep down, because she did well at that school, it DID meet the requirement for admission at a better graduate school, and now look where she is. I don’t want to keep going off on too many tangents, but she was also offered a very lucrative career directly upon graduating with a BS from the State school. She chose not to accept it because she wanted to continue on to grad. school.

And we also need to clarify for the media, the issue is the questionable marketing of SOME for profit schools, not the quality of the programs they offer. And yes, I think we all agree this issue does need to be addressed and remedied. But that issue is separate from the quality of the actual education and degrees a learner gets from those schools. If we are careful how we explain this, I think we can show the world that DL is everywhere and probably at the school they graduated from themselves. This makes it harder to dismiss and blatantly disrespect all online learning. Next, they need to understand the recent issues are related to the marketing practices of some for-profit schools, not to the quality of education and degrees they offer.

 

I think that while we at DI know and are consciously aware of the difference between correspondence, online, B&M and for profit the general public just has a vague idea of what it is they think is inferior. I believe it is correct to say that for-profit is the culprit and the primary target of negative press; however, it is DL in general that gets a bad rap because it is vaguely associated with the questionable entities.

That said, DL is unstoppable and I think it's only going to get stronger. Consider me unconcerned.

 

I agree. It's "for profit" that is causing the biggest negative influence even though there are many great, for-profit schools. This is one of the main reasons that I left a very good, for-profit doctorate program. I didn't want to go to all of the trouble and expense and have a question mark hanging over my degree. I'm in another doctorate program at a non-profit B&M that is blended. Hopefully this format should mitigate some of the problems. I plan to do about half of my classes in person, just to avoid as many issues as possible.