Distance Learning and Your Location

All,

Yesterday I had a job interview (undisclosed company); the interviewer who had a Ph.D in Chemistry from Northwestern University, but he is an IT director of the company. He asked me to tell him about my Troy University studies in term of location while I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, San Diego, California. This is the first civilian job interview being asked about it. I told him that I completed some classes online, some military training, and some from local universities at the Marine Corps Base. I am not sure if he satisfied with my answer or not, but then he asked me about my degree at Georgetown University.

This is the first civilian job interview that people care about my college degree credentials. Others, just a check mark for them...especially in the Information Technology field.

So, this is the reason why I recommend people stay with schools that closer to their location as possible.

 

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. So the interviewer is an IT Director and he's asking about the locations of where you earned your degrees with respect to where you live(d)? Given accreditation and quality concerns, I thought IT folks would be much more open to online learning.

 

It's happened to me, too. I interviewed for an accounting position last year and two guys were interviewing me at once. They were hitting me with questions in rapid fire succession. Anyway, one of the guys asked me about earning my accounting degree online. I explained to him how it worked and that PSC was one of Nebraska's state college and told him I did all the work that the on-campus students did. He responded in a very snarky tone of voice... "except you weren't there."

I didn't get the job.

Yes, there are definitely some people who are biased against DL degrees. Eventually the bias will go away...but not until the old guard either dies off or retires.

 

For me, I hope I get the job because the paid is decent, and supper benefit package.

 

There are a lot of jerks out there. Probably, the biases they reveal in the interview are just the tip of the iceberg. So (without sounding like sour grapes) it's probably better to not work with these people, since you would probably clash with them in many ways in the long run.

 

Late 50's, I'm guessing.

 

When interviewing people I would ask questions about their degrees and if they earned them online I would ask some follow up questions about the "quality" of online degrees. Taking the position of "online degrees are subpar" just to see how they would handle it. I would see if they held their position with confidence, or if they back pedaled, or if they started to feed me a line to mask the online experience.

I would, of course, later disclose that I earned my degrees online to ensure they realized there was not a discrimination angle in the event they did not get the job.

 

Maybe it's just me, but at that point I would have said, "Really? And when did you figure that out? Didn't I just tell you I earned my degree online? What school did YOU go to because I'm not impressed." (Yes, and I would have gotten up and left.)

The reality is that EVERYTHING is going online. Have you guys heard of webinars? That's online training. Government is using more webinars now as a low cost option. Private sector companies have been doing the same as they have outsourced many US jobs abroad. Why isn't online education accepted in the same way? It's a hypocrisy.

I know, I'm preaching to the choir on this forum.

 

I was recently hired as adjunct at a local community college; and was upfront about my online degree. The chair stated, "that is probably going to be a plus, most of what we do, even for in-seat students, is on Blackboard. All assignments are on Blackboard, we don't do hand-outs (a green school), we post it to Blackboard, we don't hand back graded papers we post the grades on Blackboard. So, in-seat or a distance, technology is the norm in today's colleges and universities.

 

TEKMAN - perhaps he was just curious.

 

It's interesting that there are very positive attitudes and some decidedly negative attitudes about online learning. I love to hear about the experience you have had. I believe that online learning will someday become mainstream, where almost everyone has attitudes like you experienced, but that day is still a long way away. Prejudice dies hard.

 

Academic snobbery will always exist in some form.

 

I completely agree... It's definitely a huge concern of mine: To work with a manager I respect and who will respect me.

 

I did my undergrad as distance and am working on my grad degree via distance. I have been in a lot of interviews and was always honest with my education. It never really seemed like an issue. I did have experience outside of school however. Funny enough, I just started working as full time staff in IT at a state university. During the interview the director seemed excited since our school is expanding online programs. A few weeks into the job I did have a coworker say he heard a rumor I never went to college; I politely clarified and stated that it was a funny rumor since the job required a degree . Just remain positive I suppose.

 

This is exactly right. If YOU believe you earned a sub-par credential, anyone with a speck of intuition will read it all over your face. I think anyone doing anything non-traditionally should expect questions (even out of curiosity) and have answers prepared ahead of time. In fact, it's probably a good idea to rehearse a lot of different types of interview questions ahead of time lol.

 

I want to be respected for the degree that I have, along with the university that it's from -- and not for who I really am. :ugh:

My degree defines who I really am. :fing02:

 

Yeah.....hmm......

 

Personally I've found the training I've done online to be far better quality than programs I've done in a physical location. As I'm still a student, I don't know what it'll mean for my job prospects but I enjoy doing my schooling online In this economy, we don't all have the freedom to stop everything and attend full time classes online, I find online classes help keep my schedule flexible.