Getting hired w/ an online degree

Hi, I am currently a student at UMUC, University of Maryland, University College. I originally attended a prestigious traditional college in Ohio and transferred due to a decline in grades after the death of a parent. I have been scanning this site for awhile to see what everyone thought of UMUC and I am quite terrified now about my future.

While many people say that their graduate degrees from UMUC have been helpful, I have yet to see/read success stories from those who earned an undergraduate degree from UMUC.

I am wondering a few things. Will I get hired when employers see I earned my bachelors degree from UMUC? How does this school look to grad schools? Am I wasting my time?

Im already 23, I would've been a 2009 graduate from my first school. I am terrified that I am going to graduate in December and that anyone I interview with will pass me over for someone that graduated from a traditional, more prestigious school.

Any input from those that graduated from UMUC or that are HR professionals would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Actually, I would appreciate any input from anyone. Do others who are about to graduate with other online degrees have the same fears?

 

Honestly, if you're not in the mid-Atlantic region, I think most Human Resource generalist will just see the University of Maryland and not give the University College designation much thought. Once you're in an interview it is much more about who you are than where your degree came from.
The University of Maryland wouldn't diminish their brand by turning out sub-par degrees. You may not land interviews with top tier consulting firms or investment banks, but other than that you should be fine.

 

AUtiger00 and Maniac Craniac, thanks so much for your input, you have definitely lessened my fear. I just sorta freaked when I found this website and saw how many people looked down on UMUC. I will have to check to see if those credits will transfer back to my school in Ohio. Question, what is CLEP?

I guess entering the world is really scary. I have done some great internships and I think I have a lot of great qualities, but I have been told by some of my friends that where you went to school will help you get interviews. I just fear that an employer will automatically overlook me because my degree is not from UVA, Vanderbilt, Michigan, ect.

Thanks again for all the input!

 

My wife graduated from UMUC in 2005 with a B.A. in Humanities. She knocked it out through UMUC-Europe while we were in England and took classes in-residence at the local extended campus on evening/weekends, completed week long field studies at other locations, and took online classes.

She hasn't had any real difficulty moving on to a decent job (state government and several teaching positions) and grad school (local state university) after we returned to the States in 2006.

 

This is my opinion - unless you are applying for a top banking/investment job on Wall Street or a management trainee program with a company like GE (which I hate) fresh out of school, it is more about what you have done then the degree you have. Online degrees have become commonplace and more accepted. Unless it is from University of Phoenix (which just suffers from a bad reputation due to marketing) I don't think anyone will think much of it.

If it does come up you can always point out the motivation, self-direction and dicipline it takes to earn a degree online because you control the time and effort put in without the structure of going to class on Monday and Wednesday from 10:10 to 11:30.

I earned all of my degrees online and have earned several promotions and tripled my salary in the past 10 years. I don't think people look down on degrees earned online unless you make it suspect by hiding it. Again, this is just one persons opinion.

 

I can't speak about UMUC, since I have no experience with them.

However, my Masters was done totally online (University of West Alabama) and I am teaching full time at a community college, as well as adjunct online for several other institutions.

I have never visited the campus of UWA, in fact.

An online degree has not hampered my career in any way. In fact, it made it possible.

 

Thank you all for your responses. You all have definitely made me feel better. I feel like I am being challenged just as much as a traditional student, but in different ways, at UMUC. Any employer should be happy to have a hard working, motivated employee, no matter where there undergraduate degree came from. To be honest, I think I am doing more work for my degree than some of my friends did at their traditional colleges/universities.

Not to say that online grad programs are bad, but has anyone gone on to study at a traditional grad school with an online degree?

 

Yes. See my earlier post about my wife. She went from the humanities degree from UMUC to a traditional master's program in forensic science at one of the local state universities.

 

Yes - I got accepted simultaneously at two grad schools with my distance degree from Excelsior (then it was callec Regents). I did my two grad degrees sequentially both at B&M universities.

I have interviewed and hired engineers - where their degree was from was not a big concern to me (more a "check the box" type of thing) - their experience (even if it was a part time job during college or a hobby) and ability to do the job was the biggest factor in hiring along with their dispostion.

 

Marylandgal,

I earned my undergrad from UMUC. I am also in their pool of adjunct faculty (although I haven't taught a course with them yet since I just finished the training). I actually had similar concerns to you when I finished my undergrad with UMUC. Let me tell you a few things that might ease your concerns.

1. UMUC is not an online school. It is one of the colleges within the University System of Maryland. The school is state funded (at least partially). Maybe you just happened to take all your courses online, but you did not earn an "online degree". You most likely had the option, with a few exceptions, to take your courses online or on campus (at one of UMUC's hundred something campuses). Now, maybe you took all online courses due to schedule, proximity to school, etc., but your degree is a degree from a state funded brick and mortar school; not an online for profit school. I'm not making statements about the rigor of one over the other. Your concerns seem to be coming from potential employers' reactions to you getting an "online degree." My point is this: Your concerns are unfounded because you earned a degree from a state funded school.

2. I mentioned before that I am one of the faculty members at UMUC. I will tell you right now that my fellow faculty members have SIGNIFICANT education and experience. These people could, for the most part, teach at darn near any school they wanted (excluding Harvard, etc.). Apparently UMUC has its pick of instructors, which kind of makes me wonder how I got my foot in the door. That said, you are in good hands and the quality of instructors you had exposure to is upper middle to top notch.

3. Flat out, UMUC is as good as any of those smaller state schools out there (you know, all the schools that you have never heard of). I have no doubts about that.

4. You asked about graduate degrees after attending UMUC. I was accepted into Webster University after UMUC. I was also accepted into Jacksonville State University. Both of these schools have pretty highly regarded graduate programs and both are bricks and mortar/non-profit. I was also accepted into Northeastern University's Doctorate of Education program. Disclaimor: Doctorate acceptance hinges more on graduate work than undergrad unless you go straight into a doctorate program from your undergrad. Anyway, my point is that I got into two legit, well respected programs after UMUC AND a top tier research university for my doctorate.

I would not expect you to have any issues with acceptance of your UMUC degree. I had no problems what-so-ever.

 

I'd just like to echo not4profit's great UMUC analysis. I attended several undergrad classes (all over the place) and two graduate classes (in the math building on College Park) with UMUC face to face before I ever took an online class with them. They are a B&M school which just specializes in the non-traditional student; those who can't go to a B&M full-time during the day. So it isn't just an "online" school (not that there is anything wrong with solely "online" schools in my opinion!). UMUC isn't Harvard, but it isn't a school to be ashamed of either. I've met and worked with plenty of people in the Baltimore/DC corridor with degrees and certificates from UMUC who are doing just fine. Good luck!

 

I got my undergrad from University of Phoenix (yikes!) before they went off the deep end with their marketing tactics and other garbage that sullied their name (and frankly back when there we a LOT less options for DL), and I was accepted into the MBA program at UMass-Lowell. They have a traditional campus and supplement their campus offerings with online courses, but the degree can be earned 100% online (which is my plan since I'm a 10 hour drive from Massachusetts....)

 

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+1

How did you feel BEFORE you came to this site? Clearly you felt good enough to enroll in the program. Why are you questioning it now? What made you come here to see what other people think? Is there some part of you that is afraid to have your degree completed and enter the world of work?

Transferring will, of course, probably set you back (again) and delay entry into the work world (again). The delay means borrowing another year's worth of money too. So, part of questioning is that it = delay. But what does delay =?
Just something to ask yourself.

 

For your first question, I still wasn't sure about the school when I came to the website. I was about to update my resume again and realized I had been writing only "University of Maryland" under education. I wanted to check if I was being dishonest by doing so. I now know that it IS dishonest for me to solely write that and I have corrected my resume. After reading that initial thread on here (the one about if UMUC was U of Maryland or not) I searched for more about the school. I always had reservations about my school prior to coming to this site, but none of them had been confirmed.

Maybe it is wrong of me to say this, but I ended up at UMUC because I could not get my act together academically after my old school and I went separate ways for a variety of reasons. I was weary of the school at first because I could attend with my less than stellar academic performance from the year before. I had come from an institution that turned me down for A's at a community college and now I was attending a school that accepted me even after I failed a class at that same school. Some of posting I read made me regret the path I had created for myself more than anything.

As for entering the "real" world, I could not be more ready for that. All of my college and high school friends are already there and I am still scheduling my life around class. I am so ready to move on and can't wait to do so.

I could transfer to University of Maryland, College Park, but I do not know if they would accept me. I would also be 25 by the time I graduated from undergraduate and I really could not handle that. At this point, with all of the wonderful feedback everyone on this site has given me, I am hoping to graduate from UMUC in December. Work for a year, maybe take some classes at College Park to show I can work at that level, then apply to grad school. Like I said before, I have nothing against online grad schools, and I may even end up at one. I would ideally want to attend a traditional grad school (but I think that is for my ego more than anything). I haven't experienced that where you went does not matter as much as what you bring to the table, and until I do, I think I will still struggle with the fact that I did not graduate from a ranked liberal arts school.

I just want to repeat, I am grateful for all of your responses because I definitely have developed some pride for UMUC as a result of hearing about everyone's experiences there and with other DL programs.

 

Food For Thought

I am also enrolled in UMUC. Here's a bit about my experience: I am in the military stationed overseas, and right now its one of my very few options. I can tell you that since working on my associates with an empasis in Mathematics, that it is still a challenging program. I spent an average of 25hours/week in both calculus 1 and 2 to make sure I get A's. The homework is just like any other school I've been to, just do it. But its still graded, and submitted, through one of Pearson's online portals. Then there are quizzes each week, and a take home final. It is open book, but I've also never been in a math class (trig or above) that didn't allow you a note card with the "important formulas" or a graphinc calculator that doesn't get checked for if you store the formulas in it. It was way more time intensive to get an A in calc 2 than any other class I've ever been in, and I'm pretty good at math. I had Calc AB in high school (10 years ago) and re-took them to get a level of mastery, though I would have gotten credit. And it was still tough.

I've found that in order to get A's, you have to work hard. In order to pass, you just have to work a bit, which is the same experience I hade when I went to Wayne State University before I joined the military. But my experience has been far from a 'degree mill'. I don't know how employers will look at that, but an interview is a sales pitch anyway.

And something else that I just found out this week:
Both Stanford and Harvard are offering online degree programs now. Its a branch of Stanford (Stanford Center for Professional Development), and a branch of Harvard (something about extension studies), but its still Stanford, and its still Harvard (not like the UMUC vs. UofMD confusion). This tells me that online degrees are being taken more and more seriously every year. This just puts you on the leading edge of the future of education.

 

UMUC is not an "online school." Neither is a degree earned there an "online degree." When we use "online degree" in this forum, we mean degrees earned from schools that are online-only, with no physical campus with sit-in classrooms (examples include Capella University, Walden University, Northcentral University, Trident University International, Excelsior College, Jones International University, American Military/Public University, and a host of other ones). So, your degree will be earned using online medium from a traditional brick and mortar school with a campus that happens to offer some of their degree programs through distance education modality, in which the internet/online is one of them. In that light, upon graduation, present your degree with confidence, as you would have presented one earned from the school you withdrew from in Ohio. At this point, focus more on graduating ASAP, and on other things like: getting into a good graduate program (if that is part of your future plan) or what work experience you'd have by the time you graduate, as that will play a much bigger role in actually getting or landing a good job (in this economy). Again, focus less on the fact that you earned your degree online, as that is a non-issue with your UMUC degree. Goodluck.

 

Umuc

When I was in the military, I constantly heard people down-grade UMUC... and refer to it as a "fake U of Maryland" or that it was perceived as an "easy" school, etc. Often students. The reality is, it IS University of Maryland just as much as the College Park campus. Both are branches of the UM system... just different universities. Similar to UMASS Boston... which is not the more well-known UMASS-Amherst, but still UMASS.

If anyone feels embarrassed or not as smart for attending UMUC over UM, College Park... you have my sympathy. Graduate programs and jobs should not discriminate against a degree earned from UMUC. Your experience, knowledge, GPA, and test scores (if required) will take you where you need to go. I really feel that taking classes at College Park after you graduate, just to prove that you can, would be a waste of your time and money.