Future of DL?

I did a quick search for banking jobs and saw only 1 that "required" an MBA, some that mentioned MBA preferred, a few that required a certification of some type, and most didn't require one but required a lengthy amount of experience. Most of these positions were VP and Director positions. However, I do admit this was a very quick search and I wasn't planning on digging much further because I have no desire to go into banking. To give you credit though I did find one required and those that say MBA preferred is the same in my book. So thanks for opening my eyes to that. Up until now I thought people were just getting their MBA's for the sole purpose of padding their resume not out of absolute necessity.

 

Yes! Here are a few examples:

• Librarian (Master of Library Science)
• Physical Therapist (new graduates must earn a doctorate)
• Occupational Therapist (Masters in Occupational Therapy)
• Public Health Worker (many, but not all positions require at least a Master of Public Health or similar degree)

 

Ok, ok, you got me .

 

Most of the positions to which I am referring are internal postings that are only posted to current employees... it is typical for large banks to try to hire management positions from within...

 

I think for a position like I am speaking of, an MBA from an APU/AMU or UofP is not going to make that much of a difference than one from a more known and respected school. In fact, in many cases, the interviewer never even sees where you got the MBA from. They have an HR rep that just checks the box and then passes it on to the interviewer. Not to say that the "where did you get your MBA from?" question might not pop up during the interview, but for someone that has a history with the company and is looking to advance further, work history is going to take precedence over the elite status of the MBA.

However, the achievement of the MBA gets you the interview...

 

This is my experience, as well. The people in the business world with whom I interface wouldn't even ask where you got your degree from. They merely recognize the fact that you have it and then move on. I'm not sure that the majority of the HR people know or even care where the degree is from, as long as you have the degree. I'm sure there are some exceptions.

 

I wasn't thinking of part-time programs so much as B&M classes and programs (P/T or F/T) that incorporate DL elements. Many B&M classes have online quizzes, worked exam problems, readings, supplementary material and illustrations, lecture notes, discussion fora and all kinds of things. Many on-campus students already include a few completely DL classes in their programs because of scheduling conflicts and what-not. My prediction is that's going to become increasing common and probably the norm, and that the distinction between DL and B&M classes and programs is going to start to blur. 100% DL and 100% in-classroom might end up as the ends of the blended-education spectrum.

Yeah, it's true. I did my DL degree while located here in Silicon Valley, surrounded by B&M schools. I liked CSUDH's interdisciplinary humanities and independent study focus mostly, which kind of matches where I'm at intellectually, but the time-flexibility was a big selling point too. It would have been an ongoing hassle to schedule physical B&M classroom attendence every semester.

But I do think that DL is an absolute god-send to rural communities and might help contribute to their revitalization. Living in a remote location need no longer suggest intellectual isolation or lack of sophistication.

I think that this is one of the most exciting aspects of DL. It's very very cool.

Hopefully somebody somewhere will notice and be interested in pursuing degree subjects where foreign universities have unique strengths. The U. of Wales at Lampeter is actually quite strong in various aspects of Celtic Studies. You can study things like medieval Welsh literature that might not even be available at more than 10 or 12 'top-tier' American universities, total.

I'm interested in Asian religious philosophy and there are a number of English-medium DL programs in stuff like Buddhist Studies and Sanskrit beginning to emerge from schools in places like India and Thailand. If I ever enroll in another DL degree program, it's likely to something like that. (I'm already modestly engaged in non-degree study.)

I agree. The 'GAAP' idea was/is kind of a seat-of-the-pants stop-gap, but in many cases it's academically meaningless. The mill-proprietors are always looking for the laxest jurisdiction that will get their name into the UNESCO Handbook, the biggest loopholes and the lowest-common-denominators. As international cross-border DL becomes more prevalent, this problem is only going to get worse. Everyone's aware of the problem (even UNESCO) and there have been international conferences and stuff, but it's still a work in progress.

I can't understand why they aren't. Hundreds of universities in the US alone offer DL degree programs Some of them have made big capital investments in the medium. But it's only student oriented boards like Degreeinfo that seem to have any interest at all in the mill problem. The administrators' conferences are filled with vague edu-speak while the professors are obsessed with the adjunct threat and with their own labor issues, and nobody who works in the field even seems to care that their brand, investments and professions are being devalued in the public perception, where "internet university" is increasingly synonymous with "joke".

There's periodic talk about follow-on degrees to the doctorate. But apart from professional students, I don't see much future in the idea. At some point, people have to stop preparing to do something and actually do it. If their degree is a professionl degree, then practice the profession. If it's a reearch degree, become a damn researcher. Don't just stay in school forever, accumulating ever-"higher" degrees. It becomes pointless after a while.

Maybe. I've always perceived that doctorate as the pinnacle of higher education, the degree that not only puts somebody at the cutting edge, but engages them in creatively expanding it.

There's a question of how many jobs really demand a doctor. I can easily understand it in the biotech industry, where corporations are engaged in tremendously sophisticated biomedical research, typically at or beyond the current frontiers of scientific knowledge and medical techinique. R&D in many tech fields is like that.

But yeah, there is a huge and rapidly growing market for continuing education. The day is gone when somebody can graduate from university at 21 and think that their schooling is over for the rest of their lives. People have to be continually trained in new developments and techniques, throughout their careers. And after a while, people develop a sense of entitlement. They aren't satisfied with a dumb certification when they could have a degree. So there's a natural impetus towards graduate degrees.

This whole 'flexible labor force' thing makes it even worse. Employers' demand for labor is increasingly temporary, depending on conditions, and people are hired and laid-off on whims. The whole idea of a lifetime career is receding into ancient history. Publications like the 'Economist' sniff, and blandly tell workers that they will just have to retrain for several careers over the course of their lives and that if they aren't ready for abrupt changes of direction, it's their fault. They are an inferior workforce.

That's obviously going to stress the whole post-secondary education system. How can workers prepare for abrupt changes in career direction when doing so takes many years of full-time university study? The labor market isn't as flexible as all that. Is everyone supposed to start again at the beginning as if they were 18 and earn new bachelors degrees? Or will people look for quickie job-change degrees and hope to add them on top of their existing degrees, even if the new degree is in an entirely different subject? This is a big reason why we are seeing a rapidly swelling demand for quick introductory "masters" degrees, as cheap and quick as possible. It just devalues higher education in my opinion, but my prediction is that we will be seing more of it.

I'm thinking of the collision between, on one hand, the degenerative tendency that I just described for university career preparation to become truncated in time and content while adopting ever "higher" degree titles, and a counter-tendency that I see illustrated in the biotech industry where employers seek the most sophisticated technical expertise imaginable.

Genentech and employers like that don't just hire people because they have advanced degrees with a particular accreditation. It's not just a check-the-box with them. They interview candidates intensely, the interviewers being scientists themselves, laboratory directors and stuff, and interrogate them about their thinking on and approach towards the kind of technical problems in question, their previous research experience in those areas, who they worked with, and so on. That was one of my implied messages when I posted about the NY Regents schools. If programs can hold up to that kind of scrutiny, then demanding employers are unlikely to pay very much attention to whether they are RA, foreign or even DL. The differentiator will be the program's scholarly prominence.

 

I think that some of that cost is inflated so as to support DL administrators and software providers. A university could offer a very effective DL class using the same kind of software that Chip uses here for Degreeinfo, without a great deal of modification.

But that wasn't really my point. Faculty costs are the biggest expense at almost every university. Paying the professors. Universities can't afford to pay a whole department full of professors in low-demand subjects. When budgets are tight (like in the current recession) it's the low-demand degree subjects that are eliminated to reduce costs.

I was thinking about very obscure subjects. Imagine ancient languages like Assyrian or Pali for instance. Even bigtime research universities like UCLA might only have one or two professors able to teach those subjects at the graduate level and only a small handful of students interested in studying them. Most of them are interested in the language as a research tool for some other interest, archaeology or religious studies or something, and aren't really interested in majoring in it. It just isn't cost-effective to offer an entire doctoral degree program to serve one or two major students.

But imagine how many people are interested in studying these things, and how many people are already actively researching and publishing about them, if we expand our scope to take in the whole planet. There might suddenly be a critical mass, enough professors to staff a very strong department (conceivably the best department in the world) in just about any subject, and enough graduate students to justify doing it. One here, two there, it adds up quicky, even if there isn't enough interest most places to justify a local B&M program. That's my idea. There's no end of DL potential in that direction. It wouldn't cost a whole lot to accomplish, especially when the costs are spread across a group of institutional participants, and it could enable universities to affix their names to a world-class research program, raising their own prestige at very little expense.

It's a win-win. Low demand subjects get taught that wouldn't be taught otherwise. Professors get to teach their research specialties. Universities raise their profiles at little expense to themselves. (They would typically be paying their participating professor(s) already, in another department.) Students would get additional program opportunities. International collaboration takes place, scholarly work is done and learning advances.

 

That's more or less what I thought. I think the word needs to get out that there is life beyond the top 20 schools.

BTW, its nice to see an Excelsior alumn doing well in the buisness world. I wish you the best on finishing your MBA.

 

Another article suggesting that a college degree isn't worth it: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967580,00.html?xid=huffpo-direct

 

According to a close friend with a bachelors from Villanova and an MBA from Wharton (UPenn), employers looking to hire for 200K+ jobs in finance and investment banking are looking for an impressive resume in both work experience and an MBA from a "name" school, something he guesses would include the top 20% of all AACSB schools, amounting to 100 or so.

He also said that most jobs are not listed in the typical locations but are either posted internally or on the Bloomberg Career Center. I had never heard of it and for good reasons. It is accessible only through a Bloomberg terminal which apparently is some type of intranet terminal for stock quotes and other business related subjects. This is also something I had never heard of or seen. I do have a Bloomberg channel on my cable service but it seems to be just another business channel.

Bloomberg Career Center

 

I can put a specific financial measure on my M.A.. I immediately made $7000 more per year and ultimately about 12,000 more per year. I can also put a specific financial count on my Ed.D.. On average I have made 35,000 more per year since I earned it. 9 years times $35,000 to date equals $315,000. My investment in the MA was less than 5,000 back in the 80's and my investment in my Ed.D. was less than 10,000. I would say both were worth every penny!

 

That's very encouraging. Thanks for the post. Of course I'm sure that you would say to everyone "your results may vary".