by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: May 22, 2012

Online studies are convenient and are becoming more popular each year.  Yet, the most legitimate online degree programs are those associated with colleges and universities. This gives the student more clout. The best reason for seeking an online education is convenience. Getting an education is increasingly expensive, and even more so for online classes. The whole process is in need of some overhaul where a lot of the frills and unnecessary masquerading needs to be eliminated. No longer can education continue to be seen as elitist's right of passage and a status symbol. It must get along on its own for what it is: learning how to live one's life to the fullest and making the best of one's potential.

It may be it is here in this area of comfort that online education makes it best options. There are many who freeze at the thought of mingling on campus and having to push and shove one's way through the jungle of college campus life. And it is here in this arena where online college fails. Getting through this vast jungle of life demands that we confront our internal and external animalistic natures and deal with them. These are the same people the online or the traditional graduate must face when they land that job they prepare for. Colleges would do well to take a more personal interest in the student and give emotional guidance where needed.

Even with online courses these should coexist with real-life experiences to be effective. There is no way you can read and study about issues and ways and means without confronting the problem head on. Let's say you are studying nursing. Unless you can get some real, live specimens of humanity to work with, how can you put into practice what you have learned? It is from the classroom to the hospital bedside to the agony of real, live patients who have the particular disease you are studying that will make you learn.

The best reason to choose online courses over a traditional college is convenience of time and distance. And here again, even though you have paid out your hard-earned dollars investing in online courses, the acceptability rate is not that of a regular campus experience. You must carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages. The best choice is to do both. Take some classes online and some classes at a nearby college. There is proof that these are more acceptable since you are connected with a traditional university.

Why bother to pay out lots of money to get impressive degrees if these are not accepted by most employers? And no matter what many say - saying the right thing and pleasing the questioner where business is concerned is another flaw of the current educational system, online schools that teach only online are frowned upon by many. It may be wrong to think in this way, but many of us do.

Where online education is concerned, it is chock full of educational opportunities every day. But most of us partaking of them do not expect to be rewarded for our efforts. Education, in its purest form, must remain free and open to everyone. Degrees and shingles are not among these given rights, not even when we throw excessive amounts of money toward them. Yet, for our surgeons, our teachers, our military leaders, we expect proof of their capability.

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