Online College Question

My Brother-in Law is in the same field as your husband. He just completed this year Univ. of Phoenix. He loved the flexibility, but I must warn you, the online programs for ANY Univ. are usually very expensive. You pay for the flexibility. Make sure he is registering with an accredited school. My sis worked in HR for years and said employers DO NOT look at online credit or course work/degrees any differently. If anything, it shows great initiative and the ability to juggle and muti-task!

Good Luck:)

I took 2 classes at University of Phoenix (online) and I didn't like it at all. People were blatently cheating...and the teachers seemed to give every single assignment an A...(I'm not that perfect)...so I looked into other schools and I found University of Massachussetts (I always spell that wrong) at Lowell which offers an IT degree which is what I'm going there for. The classes are online and they are much better than the university of phoenix. University of Masachussetts is a public school (brick and Mortar)and they are almost half of what University of Phoenix is. check them out at www.uml.edu
So, far my experience there has been very nic and realistic (grading seems to be what I expected...meaning I'm not paying just for an A, I'm paying for an education). I asked an advisor and she said that there will be no indication on the degree that I obtained it online. Their online (continuing studies program) is accredited and I believe it has won some awards.

THere are some absolutely fabulous online Universities and there are those that are fly by night organizations. You have to look at their accredittion to ensure you are getting a degree from a regionally accredited school. I would not go to a Nationally accreditated school as it is not as high of a honor as regional. I would also not rely on programmatic accreditation (something specific to that program) as that means their program is recognized but their school may or may not be.

Different schools work their online programs differently and each one caters to a certain type of learner. UofPhoenix requries you to be online a certain number of times each week and occassionally at specific times. This may defeat the purpose of the learner as they may need more flexibility. Others (such as AIU Online) require you to turn in homework on certain dates but don't care how many times and when you log in. This is not always good for someone who needs more structure.

As a person who did career coaching at an Online University, I always suggested their resume not state they went online. We would just recommend the college name and that is it. Online is just the mode I received my degree and not necessary the focus on my education. Getting a degree from UofI Springfield versus UofI Champaign is the same...just different locations. Same as Online versus Brick and Mortar.

Their are companies that do not fully understand online programs and believe they are fly by night. If I ran into that with one of my students, we printed out our accreditation information along with other known schools with the same accreditation and brought it to the employers. This helped educate them on the type of education the student received.

You have received wonderful insight from many people here. I just wanted to put in some additional information from another perspective. Good luck.

Thank you Erica W. for that insight. It just confirms what I've been feeling about these types of "colleges" I've looked into these courses and got the feeling that they are not the types of classes you want to take. The stigma is becoming stronger about these on-line type of colleges (if we should call them that) We are very fortunate to have so many different universities in our area. It's best to look into them and see what they offer for busy working adults. I'm sure that all if not most of our State colleges/universities offer these types of programs where you can commute half of the time and take the courses by telecommuting the others.

Hi Nancy:

I just wanted to comment but I must say you have received some good advice thus far from the other mammas here. I am currently attending Kaplan University and it is on-line. I have one more year to go for my bachelors and I love it. I do bust my behind for my grades, it is extremely hard. There is nothing easy about it. I am not sure if they have programming classes you might want to check. They are accredited and if you look them up or call them up I am sure you'll be pleased. They will give your husband a test before entering. There standards are very high. I have heard horror stories about other universities mentioned here so I stood away. Kaplan actually has there office downtown Chicago where you can visit. If you need any info. just email back and good luck.

I would look into an actual university with an online option. That will be looked upon more highly than a school that is only online.

A few previous posters mentioned University of Phoenix. Just as a note of caution it is extremely expensive- much more than any other online schools I have looked at. I took a few online classses at Troy State University (Alabama) towards my Masters prior to starting at UIC and I found them affordable and user friendly. Also easy to transfer since they are a regionally accredited brick and mortar school. Good luck.

To be quite honest with you, I have an insider's point of view - my husband's godmother is an HR executive for a larger company, and his mother also works in HR and they have both told me that the resume from someone with an on-line college degrees get looked over. I wanted to do this myself because I don't have time to commute back and forth to finish my bachelor's degree, but after being told that I decided not to - it was going to be a waste of my money! Just so you know, though, a lot of colleges near you offer courses at night or on-line, so he can still get a degree from a reputable college and take courses on-line.

There are a lot of online programs that are run by bricks-and-mortar schools now. That's what I would look at instead of something like University of Phoenix online, just because there is a certain stigma - although I also think that's going away and times are changing.

I have a couple of good friends who have Masters degrees from online programs. (University of Illinois was one of the earliest to get on board with really strong programs, although I don't know about programming classes. My other friend went to Athabasca in Canada, which is exclusively online. She then landed her dream job running a distance learning program for a corporation.)

Did you know that some states (Michigan, for example) are now requiring kids to take an online class in high school in order to have the experience? And companies, like mine, are really pushing people to do that sort of training instead of classroom learning for ongoing training.

It's only a matter of time. And with something like programming, it's a skill you can prove you have pretty easily, and I would expect IT people to be out in front on anything technology-related. He already has a traditional degree, which is a huge advantage. I think he should start researching schools and talk to people who have the job he wants and find out where their degrees came from.