Are online college degree programs helpful to your career?

Yes

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by Jayden Harlow

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While online college degree programs have certainly taken some knocks in the court of public opinion over the past few years, I believe that a college degree obtained online can be helpful to a career if approached strategically. Such a degree is most beneficial to a student already working in his or her chosen field, who needs an associate's or bachelor's degree in order to advance. Although it is possible to obtain a master's degree online, doing so is of questionable value at the present time.

To understand how an online degree can and can't help you, it's important to understand how degrees in general are valued in the business world. I think we can all appreciate that a Harvard business degree is held in higher esteem than one from UCLA, and the UCLA degree in turn would be more well regarded than one obtained at a lesser known school, and so on down the line. But why is this? Essentially, it is because over time businesses have come to see that the Harvard graduates they hired generally did work of a higher quality than a UCLA graduate, who generally did better work than a graduate from another school, and so on. This is partly due to the quality of the students the school admits and partly due to the education provided and the graduation standards that are set. A good school is one that consistently turns out valuable employees, and the university's reputation builds with each successful hire.

Unfortunately, the opposite can also be true, and this is the snare online programs have fallen into. If a company hires a candidate with an online degree and that candidate does not do well, the company will be hesitant to hire another graduate from the same school again. If the company hires a number of candidates with online degrees and none of the hires are particularly successful, the company is unlikely to want to hire anyone with that type of degree. While it may seem at first glance that the negative reputation online programs currently have in the business world must be purely a result of poor quality teaching in these programs, the reality is not quite so simple. Just as Harvard has developed its reputation in part on the quality of student it accepts, online programs have grown their reputations on a similar foundation. Many online programs will enroll any student with a high school diploma or GED, and therein lies part of the problem. An open door policy may seem attractive when you are first choosing a program, but it can harm you once you've graduated.

While online programs originally attracted only dedicated students who otherwise could not attend college (working parents, military, traveling businesspeople, etc.), the convenience of such programs has attracted a whole new category of students: those who are seeking a degree with less effort than would be required in a traditional program. Such students had often previously attended more traditional schools but found the discipline of college life to be unappealing. It's not uncommon for a student to switch to online study when a traditional school is affordable and just up the road from his or her home. This influx of less dedicated students has damaged the credibility of online programs in a number of different ways. These students often put as little work into their studies as possible, and they don't worry about retaining knowledge after the class has finished. Then, armed with a degree, they go out into the world with the same problematic work ethic that drew them to the perceived ease of online education, and little of the expertise they should have been building up during their studies. With each new job that they enter, they lower the business world's perception of their alma mater, and the online education community as a whole.

If the public perception of online education is so low, how then can such a degree retain any benefit? Fortunately, a savvy, dedicated student can still make online education work. First, it's important to ensure that the degree is simply one part of a personal package that is appealing to companies. This is why I stated earlier that I believe an online degree is most beneficial to someone already working in his or her chosen field. An online degree in isolation may do little, but an online degree supported by years of strong work and steady advancement rounds out a candidate nicely and minimizes the importance of the school the degree was obtained from. Students can maximize the benefits of such a degree by seeking advancement within their present company. Such internal advancement should be more straightforward than moving to a new company, since the student is already presumably a strong candidate for promotion but was only lacking a required degree. With a few post-degree promotions under his or her belt, the individual can consider changing companies with the online degree fully incorporated into a robust resume.

The choice of online programs is also crucial for success. Given that online education is not highly valued at the moment, a potential student would do well to identify online programs that are attached to more established, well respected "brick and mortar" schools. Such programs often have some sort of requirement that students be "in residence" at the school for a certain number of weeks per year, which is one reason they are not as popular with students who value convenience over everything else. However, once students graduate from a distance branch of a traditional school, they can identify themselves as alumni of that school, and the fact that they attended school online is no longer a particular issue. The name of the school is the reputation that will precede them, not the fact that it was an online program.

I indicated earlier that I don't believe that online master's programs are a sound investment, and I want to address that now. There are two reasons that online master's programs are unlikely to be valuable to career advancement. First, most online master's programs maintain the same open-door policy as their undergraduate counterparts: any student with a bachelor's degree who applies is accepted. Higher education is essentially a narrowing process. As the study becomes more advanced, the programs become more competitive, and a university will generally accept far fewer students into its master's programs than it will into undergraduate studies. The result of this reduced field is that only the higher achievers amongst undergraduates will be able to continue on to study at the graduate level, and future employers can expect that a holder of a master's degree represents this level of achievement. However, if an online program accepts "C" students as readily as it accepts "A" students, then the quality of the graduate pool has been diluted substantially from the start, devaluing the degree.

The second reason online master's programs are unlikely to compare with a traditional program rests in the very nature of graduate study. Master's programs are generally more intense and less rigidly structured, and a significant portion of the learning process takes place outside the traditional classroom, through visiting speakers, opportunities to socialize with professors and researchers, and private conversations with faculty. This atmosphere simply can't be replicated in the online environment, and a student who graduates from an online master's program will be lacking the sense of immersion in the material that a traditional graduate student develops.

Ultimately, online associate's and bachelor's programs can be valuable if approached in a thoughtful, strategic way. The student must be aware that such a degree may not be as readily accepted in the business world as a traditional degree would, and make choices that will enhance employment opportunities in the future. This may, and likely will, mean choosing a program that is somewhat less convenient than some of the online options out there. As a student, you should choose the best university that is financially and logistically feasible for you to attend, and be prepared to make sacrifices to get the education you need to move forward in your career.

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