Online Graduate Degrees
Worthwhile Online Graduate Degrees
With the surge in online schools, many people are looking towards online graduate degrees as a viable option for continuing education. There are definitely plusses and minuses with online schooling, and those enrolling for their online graduate degrees must be aware that some employers still frown on them. In 2000/2001, a survey of 300 employers found that only 77% would hire graduates holding online degrees or online graduate degrees from major universities. The statistics for lesser-known schools declined sharply.
Things have changed a lot in seven years. Most colleges now do not list if a student attended courses online or on campus. In addition, many people holding online graduate degrees are finding that employers are far more comfortable with online college programs because they’ve proven successful. Online graduate degrees programs are gaining popularity, but there are still employers out there who are critical of online college and university settings. A recent survey by the DETC found that a little less than 70% of all employers feel that an online degree is just as good as a traditional degree. This means that around 30% of all employers still do not see the merit in online bachelor degrees and online graduate degrees.
One of the biggest fears with online graduate degrees is that there is no way to prove a student passed a test on his or her own learning abilities and not because he or she had the textbooks open for the online exams/tests. There is also the question on if a student really did the course work him or herself or had someone else help. Gaining online graduate degrees requires a student to read lesson material, ask questions as needed, watch videos, submit assignments, and take online tests. All of these aspects are easy to fake if a person is less than honest. In fact, one woman from Vermont admits to her friends that because her writing skills are lousy, she had her boss do her writing assignments for her and then she saved them to her own computer and submitted them as her own work. We all know that she is not the only person out there cheating to get online graduate degrees.
