A couple of decades ago, the only brand of online education in existence was guerilla-marketed by a familiar set of online universities. The names of a couple of these institutions are like indelible watermarks in the fabric of online education. Smarmy, their business may well have been at one point. But all of them have come a long way, by hook or by crook, and as grittily as they have pulled themselves up by the educational bootstraps, so they have done with online education as a whole.
The pool of online degree providers is filling quickly; with some you’d be surprised to see paddling about. The odd assortment of educational pirates and pioneers mark the “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” era in distance learning. There are small-town colleges with distance learning courses and elite universities, such as Harvard and Penn State, with impressive online environments.
You Need a College Degree
Benefits of online degree education have increased exponentially. Distance learning engages adult learners in a way that no other form of higher education has managed to do. Programs offer convenience, 24/7 access, self-pacing formats, and enough interactive technology to keep one interested. But as easy and convenient as it may sound, online degrees are not designed for everyone. Most are very challenging, demand participants work steadily toward a degree within a particular timeframe, and ultimately require that students possess a serious degree of self-motivation.
Working Adults Drive Higher Education Reformation
There is no shortage of the types of online degrees, either. Students may choose from standalone courses, Associates, Bachelors, Masters, and PhD degrees, baccalaureate completion programs, continuing education courses, and professional certificates. Online education has experienced unchecked growth: micro-specialized degrees have been spawned from more general fields of study, perhaps in large part to the career demands of adult professionals-turned-students. Higher education modification from this demographic is uncharted. It’s likely in the future that further reformation will take place, as changes occur within industry and business.
Online Degrees Become Legit
Legitimacy of online education has been reinforced, indirectly by the swarm of reputable colleges and universities that have built congruent, distance learning models, and through the urgency of online accreditation. Even financial aid has crossed over to embrace online degree-seekers. Sources in higher education now emphasize that there is little division in learning outcomes between online and traditional curriculums.
The combination of these factors has worked greatly to place online education in the same academic territory as brick and mortar institutions; severing, once and for all, any imposed ties to the world of illegitimate degree mills.
Online education has come of age, almost overnight. The virtual college is truly available to almost anyone hungry for a degree, and the menu of majors and course topics is endless.
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We used the official Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey to estimate lifetime salaries for each of several hundred jobs and occupations. Since the primary purpose of the exercise was comparisons between degrees rather than exact predictions for individuals, we used a simplified model of career progression, in which holders of all jobs start near the lower end of the salary distribution for their occupation and receive raises in a steady fashion over the course of their working career. To reduce this salary curve to a single number, we used a net present value calculation with an assumed discount rate of 5%.
We solicited freelancers for their opinions on what degrees someone in each job likely had, and connected degrees to jobs when there was substantial agreement between our freelancers. To assign jobs to degree levels (such as associates' degrees, bachelors' degrees, masters degrees', and doctorates) we relied on BLS data, with a handful of corrections for data errors.
For comparisons between degrees, we used a weighted average of salaries for occupations with the highest degree of agreement among the pairings suggested by our freelancers. The BLS data includes many categories for managers: average salaries for these were calculated but are not included in the degree comparisons to avoid biasing the results based on whether the BLS had broken out a managerial category for a specific career or not.
Online Nursing Degrees
One of the fastest growing areas of online education is the nursing field. To accomidated demand we have created Online Nursing Degrees, a new site dedicated to the nursing field.
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