| SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Online Degrees
Is An Online
Degree Program For Me?
Getting
an Online Degree: Pros and Cons
Just like any other venture in life, earning
a degree online will have its pros and cons.
Many students will have legitimate reasons for wanting to
pursue a degree online as opposed to attending a physical college.
Perhaps personal circumstances make it impossible for a person
to attend a school at certain hours. Maybe the student must
work in addition to employment, or be available for his or
her family. Whatever the case, online schools were set up for
the convenience of the student seeking higher education. They
were never meant to replace traditional schooling by offering
quick and easy diplomas for sale.
Earning an online degree will have its pros and cons, but
if you thoroughly research your school and work hard, it can
be a reputable and recognized alternative to traditional college.
Pros
1 & 2: Online education offers students
the chance to learn according to their own personal schedule.
The private
and intensive schooling might help students better grasp the
information. Students can also speed through assignments they
understand, and take a little bit more time on challenging
ones, so that the learning process becomes more individualized.
Cons
1 & 2: Only students that are highly
motivated and organized will truly excel at online education.
For those who
are easily distracted or who do not work well without direct
supervision, the cons of having no one-on-one tutoring will
be noticeable. While at home, it’s so easy to get distracted
with other projects when you should be learning. Even a highly
motivated person might find it difficult to concentrate unless
very well organized.
Pros
3 & 4: Online colleges, for the most
part, are easier to get into. While some online schools require
a high school
diploma, test scores, transcripts and letters of recommendation,
many others do not and may only require a high school diploma
and application essay. They are usually more affordable than
traditional schools. By all evidence, earning a degree online
is easier and cheaper than graduating from a physical college.
Cons
3 & 4: Online degrees are often times
considered inferior to degrees earned in traditional colleges.
This is
not because the course is any less intelligent or challenging;
it’s because “diploma mills” or phony universities have been
tarnishing the image of an online degree. Diploma mills, unlike
legitimate online courses, offer degrees for sale: associate’s
degrees, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees even PhDs. Some
companies offer quick courses with degrees without verifying
the knowledge of the student, while others merely offer to
sell degrees based on what the individual professes to already
know by work experience. Not only are these schools giving
online degrees a bad name, they are also scamming individuals
out of thousands of dollars; the individual soon discovers
that a phony degree is not valid in the real business world.
Pros
5 & 6: Less social distractions. College
campuses are very social places, whether for making friends
or enemies.
Making new friends, meeting new romantic interests, not to
mention the danger of over-drinking or drugs, can all be very
distracting for a person trying to master a subject for a serious
career. Online schooling, provided the student follows a set
schedule and is organized, places the emphasis back on the
schooling and not the college campus lifestyle. Furthermore,
problems involving difficult teachers are naturally eliminated
since in online schooling it’s all about the student reading
and absorbing the words.
Cons:
5 & 6: However, with private education
also comes a disadvantage. Not all schools offer personalized,
hands-on
coursework and experience in the field you are studying. While
book smarts are essential in finding a prosperous career, without
any case studies to go along with those book smarts, the student
will always be lacking. To earn a degree in a traditional school
means plenty of hours studying and observing real life cases
in real time for your evaluation and subsequent review. Most
likely, an online school will never have that option. Also,
the lack of a class discussion could be a drawback. Reading
words off a screen or a book is educational, but an interactive
group discussion can be very enlightening to a student who
wishes to fully understand the subject beyond the written word.
Obviously, online education cannot guarantee this feature either.
There are many pros and cons to earning an online degree.
They are to be considered carefully and taken seriously. Education
is a thousand-dollar investment and a student wants to be sure
that the degree he earned through great effort and expense
is universally recognized. # # # # #
SolveYourProblem.com
: 2007
> Home > Online
Degrees: Main Page
|