Online Education Blog

Beat the Clock: Online Higher Education, Speed and Convenience

Louis Conrad — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:29:21 -07:00

The hectic modern life you live means you have precious little time to attend to all of your responsibilities. Some of your duties you try to discharge online in order to save time. You enjoy only mixed results in this, however, because computer technology can often present its own difficulties. It's as if researchers at certain prestigious universities discovered how to add to your obligations while at the same time making you think that you'd actually reduced them - and all through the magic of digital technology. Yet you don't have to have had to attend college to understand that convenience gained by such minute degrees seems ultimately no convenience at all.

The eager search for convenience in which so many people engage makes you wonder if you can actually save time - "save" it in the sense of increasing your store of it. Whether or not you attend to the ticking of the clock, a minute takes a minute, and an hour an hour. Syncing your watch to the U.S. Naval Observatory's atomic clock (which you can do online) can improve the efficiency of your use of time, but it cannot increase time itself. Experts at various universities have made it their vocation to contemplate the nature of time, and have development some pretty complex theories. Yet for those for whom college is a memory as opposed to a place of employment, the degrees to which they comprehend these theories remains an open question.

Suffice it to say that you contend with time as you attend to your life's business. Whether you prefer shopping in big-box stores, in boutiques, or online, the fact remains that you will have to devote time to this activity. Experts at universities can tell us only so much about time, having only an imperfect understanding themselves. Perhaps you have found yourself wondering why certain periods of time seem to have rushed by, while others have simply dragged on. Why did your college days seem to pass in a blink of an eye, but a typical day on the job seems to last a week? You could say that added to time as quantity are degrees of quality that serve to alter the experiential content of the former.

These questions you'd no doubt like to attend to - if only you had the time! Such online search engines as Google, Yahoo! and Bing certainly put the information needed to answer these questions nearer to hand, but they cannot completely resolve them. For resolution you must turn not to the Internet, or even academics at universities, but to the contents of your own experience. The "school of life" can prove quite a rigorous college in its own right. The knowledge you acquire there comes to you not all at once, but rather by degrees.

So it all comes down to how you attend to your quotidian responsibilities. Conveniences like subscription auto-renewal and online banking do shave precious minutes and hours from daily errands. Yet the question remains as to what you're left with at the end of the day. Consider students attending universities: Do they necessarily need to save time? Many of them don't, unless they happen also to work a part-time job. Anyone who has ever gone to college can tell you, however, that students love to steal as much time from their studies as possible. To them degrees figure as very important - but only in the long run. The immediate business at hand for them is getting their party on.

If puzzling over the nature of time doesn't represent your biggest concern, then you must have a more practical turn of mind. And to a practical way of thinking a college degree can do wonders for your career, your income, and your self-esteem. One of the readiest roads to acquiring said degrees lies through the various online degree programs offered by various online universities. "Time is money," the old saying goes. And if you can't do much to save the first, you can do a lot to amass more of the second.

Tech'ed Off: Disruption, the Web and the Future of Higher Education

Sylvia Smith — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:39:21 -07:00

The explosive growth of digital technology over the past few years certainly encourages the formation of strong opinions. For some, the onslaught of new doo-dads signals the beginning of a bold new era of human possibilities. For others, it signals the end of the world.

Extreme opinions on a subject indicate that subject's importance. Technophiles and Luddites array themselves for battle, deploying their arguments for why the public ought to shun or to embrace that latest killer app.

Those who endorse the latest technology praise its power to disrupt existing practices. This virtue corresponds to the principle of "creative destruction" lauded by champions of capitalism. A phrase coined by the 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter, "creative destruction" denotes that tendency of periodic innovation to lay waste to existing capital stock, thus denuding it of value.

Creative destruction serves best those whose capital takes the form of this innovative technology; it serves least -- indeed, serves not at all -- those whose capital consists of the older form of technology. This holds true in a whole host of industries, including higher education.

Over the past decade or so, higher education has experienced some disruption, which comes primarily in the form of digitally-enabled distance learning. Those in favor of seeing this disruption continue point to the current state of play as justification. "Higher education has created confused, multipurpose missions and unsustainable institutions, making universities vulnerable to disruption," reports a recent Edmonton Sun article.

Such confusion and unsustainability has created declining quality and conditions of learning. The Edmonton Sun article goes on to note that "state funding is decreasing while expectations for educated graduates are increasing. Meanwhile technology is changing constantly." The latter, true believers insist, can fetch higher education from its present state.

The vanguard consists primarily of online universities, which exploit the latest Internet technology to deliver instruction remotely to students. The asynchronous, nonlocal character of digital distance higher learning has not only reduce massively overhead, thus increasing profits, it also has forced higher-education consumers and administrators to rethink the possibilities of their industry.

Rethinking these posssibilities, however, cannot proceed in an unconstrained manner; ethics and best practices must guide the effort, lest such infelicities as the one reported by EyewitnessNews.co.za. "Screening company MIE on Wednesday warned that an increasing number of jobseekers were lying about their qualifications," the article informs its readers. "According to the company, desperate applicants were buying fake degrees from online universities."

Though this problem afflicts higher education and the job market directly, but, generally speaking, it resonates with larger economic concerns. Unemployment remains high in many developed countries, making good-paying jobs harder to come by. Desperate jobseekers will apparently resort to the most unscrupulous ways of gaining an edge, including falsifying educational credentials.

If you would like to add academic credentials to your resume, you ought to look into the many online degree programs on offer from the many online universities populating the Web. They can help you to gain a job-market edge in a fair and honest way, while sacrificing none of the expedience and convenience that comes with life online.

Blend with the Trend: Online Degrees Can Mean Big Opportunity

Sylvia Smith — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:59:16 -07:00

So much of your life's business you conduct online that you simply can't do without your 'Net access. The degrees to which the Web has simplified your affairs completely awes you. Such tasks as paying bills, filing tax returns, ordering pizza and buying insurance present no problem at all. If you happen to live near one of the nation's many colleges and universities, you understand the extent to which the Internet has come to dominate our lives; you see students these days carrying laptops and smartphones more frequently than they do textbooks and notebooks. Like an approaching locomotive, which appears first as a dot in the distance that steadily looms closer, the 'Net achieves ever greater centrality in your life and the lives of everyone you know.

Come-ons touting degrees online dot 'Net sites just about everywhere you point your browser. The burgeoning trend in digital distance higher learning suggests a rich new market in the making. Colleges and universities throughout the U.S. have begun to consider expanding - and monetizing - their Web presence, and they've come to the conclusion that instruction delivered electronically promises to deliver big profits.

So now you see what motivates all these come-ons. Shills pushing degrees online dot 'Net sites for one reason: money. Digital distance higher education promises massively reduce overhead, freeing up money that administrators can divert into such other area as instructional improvement and the like. No doubt the nations many colleges and universities find this bottom-line orientation terrifically attractive. After all, nothing gobbles up revenue like physical infrastructure.

Transform that infrastructure into the digital and you have an incredibly mobile, flexible and inexpensive method of offering education. And this education can reach more people than ever before. In this respect digital distance higher learning continues the grand tradition established by brick-and-mortar colleges and universities. This leads you to a fundamental understanding: come-ons touting degrees online dot 'Net sites in order to capitalize on one of the most promising market developments of the early 21st century.

If you'd like to shift your career into high gear in this young 21st century, then one of the many online degree programs offered by online universities puts the gear shifter in your hand. Your one-stop resource for discovering your educational future, DegreesOnline.net helps you get a firm grip on the tiller so that you can steer a course to greater happiness and success.

Rise of the Cyber-Ivies?: Venture Capitalists Seek Creation of Elite Online University

Louis Conrad — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:04:00 -07:00

So greatly do institutions of higher learning feel the Web's pull that some of the most venerable among them have turned their minds to the prospect of taking their acts online. Generally reluctant to dip their toes in the waters of distance learning, some of the top colleges have begun to adjust their policy toward greater receptivity. To a large extent their receptivity owes to the fact that entrepreneurs have gotten into the online game, and they have made some big promises about the quality of instruction their eventually programs will deliver.

Heavy-hitters in the tech sector have their eyes on starting a kind of cyber-Ivy League. "Ben Nelson, a former Silicon Valley CEO, is starting the Minerva Project - a for-profit online university that is intended to rival the quality and academic rigor of Ivy League schools," reports a recent article in The Minnesota Daily. "Benchmark Capital gave Nelson $25 million in seed money to begin developing this online university in the next two years. Supporters of the Minerva Project claim that students will be able to experience the quality of a first-rate education without the skyrocketing cost of tuition in private and public universities throughout the nation."

The prospect of high-value education at low tuition rates will no doubt prove enticing should it ever come to pass. Certain impediments stand in the way of realizing this goal, however. The lack of face-to-face instructor-student interaction perhaps rates chief among these. Of course, this same absence of interaction you find at many giant state universities, which matriculate thousands of students via massive plenary lectures and graduate student--run smaller courses. Where meaningful contact happens in such a context remains an open question.

The issue comes down to how much of a premium you place on physical presence when it comes to learning. Some schools can require that you physically attend courses, but they can no more realistically guarantee that you'll learn as a consequence. Other institutions have made a positive virtue of the necessary evil of physical absence. A recent Reuters article presents Western Governors Universityas exemplary in this respect. "A few online schools have gained widespread praise for creating new models of higher education," it reports. "Western Governors University, founded in the late 1990s, has grown rapidly to 30,000 students nationwide. It allows them to get credits without taking a full course if they prove, through exams, essays or other projects, that they have mastered the given topic."

Familiar players from the brick-and-mortar league have begun to wander onto the online court. The Reuters article goes on to report that "[a]fter attracting 160,000 students from 190 countries to an artificial intelligence class he gave online, computer scientist Sebastian Thrun left his tenured post at Stanford University earlier this year to set up Udacity, a for-profit school offering free college-level classes on topics such as cryptography and Web engineering."

It appears that savvy profs at marquee universities have begun to recognize the opportunity to leverage their position into something potentially far more lucrative. Yet whether this will eventually spell the doom of the institutions thus exploited has not become clear. What has become clear is the fact that seekers of postsecondary education have increasingly come to favor the digital over the material, the virtual over the actual. By getting with the trend you'll put yourself in the vanguard of a bold new generation of learners. And DegreesOnline.net stands ready to help you position yourself in this way.

Thicken, Throb and Squirt: Watch Your Potential Swell with an Online Degree Program

Louis Conrad — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:21:56 -07:00

Did you end up in the career you envisioned for yourself in your earlier days? Do fat paychecks greet you every week? If not, you might find it high time to reconsider your life plan. As you grow older, possibilities begin to ebb away - not all at once, mind you, but by degrees. You nonetheless wake up one day to find certain doors closed to you, doors that stand open only for graduates of colleges and universities. Online research quickly reveals that advancing age and a limited education can significantly impact the latter decades of your life.

It doesn't take top scholars at universities to discover that higher education represents proven means of financial deliverance for both the short and long term. Every autumn young people flood the nation's colleges in the hopes of earning degrees that will advance their careers and enhance their earnings. And they employ a huge variety of strategies for ensuring they persevere. They may form online study groups or they may become fixtures of their professors' office hours.

These strategies suggest that higher education bears hallmarks of a game, one tremendously elaborate and governed by complex rules. How you play the game, then, matters greatly. With a game of such complexity, however, your moves you must unfold by degrees, not all at once. Colleges and universities impose many policies and standards that you can interpret as the rules of the game. Getting an "A" doesn't present so much an intellectual as a strategic problem. This problem you can easily overcome, as any veteran online game player can tell you.

Overcoming this problem involves various degrees of strategic planning. Universities confer degrees - this much you know. The rules for various colleges differ slightly, but they betoken high degrees of consistently (such information you can easily find online). Knowledge of this radically simplifies matters. No time at all you'll find yourself well on your way to academic success.

Academic success cashes out in the form of university degrees that in turn command the sort of salary that you'd like to earn. Colleges serve as handmaidens to business interests. Insinuating yourself in this relay remains altogether necessary, but you need also to do so in a way that best serves your own interests. A lot of adversity stands arrayed against you. Yet without adversity comes no weathering of it, and weathering adversity generally leads to triumph. Look at studies at universities as so many online games and you'll have stepped into the proper state of mind for unqualified academic excellence.

The path to academic excellence begins with researching the various online degree programs offered by various online colleges and universities. DegreesOnline.net recommends itself to you as your one-stop resource to conduct the kind of intelligence that will allow you to increase your intelligence. This site can set you on the path to higher learning, which means also the path to higher earning!

Spring Ahead: An Online University Degree Program Lets Your Mind and Career Flower

Sylvia Smith — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:15:13 -07:00

Shoveling snow in April holds little appeal. Yet in these days of increased climate change, having to clear your driveway of the cold white stuff is a distinct possibility. Knowing this, you monitor the degrees of the thermometer with some apprehension, and you find yourself checking weather forecasts online with regularity. Just as students at the nation's colleges and universities wouldn't wish the spring semester to extend through June, you don't want to see winter last a day longer.

The timely end of winter and the arrival of spring brings delight not only to students of universities and colleges, but just about anyone through whom life runs it course. With the return with fair weather you find yourself spending less time in front of the TV, online, or in shopping malls. By degrees you feel yourself pulled in the direction of natural scenes. You begin to think of softball, picnics, sunbathing, and long walks in the shade of greening trees.

Seeing trees burst by degrees into leaf can lift even the heaviest spirits. At colleges and universities you can learn a lot about nature, but to learn from nature nothing can substitute for the classroom of the great outdoors. A direct encounter therewith no amount of image-searching online can ever replace.

Not that you'd ever want to replace direct contact with nature with images gathered online, anyway. Immediate experience is the best teacher - better, at any rate, than any professor from one of the country's colleges and universities. Nature may confer no degrees, but it does confer tons of wisdom.

Wisdom is certainly what you're after in life. And whether you achieve this wisdom all at once or only by degrees is up to you. Really, it's a matter of effort. The experience of students at colleges and universities everywhere attests to the fact that hard work is amply rewarded, as long as it's directed by earnest intellect. The same can be said about research online - intellect is prerequisite and absolutely indispensable.

Absolutely indispensable these days also are credentials that allow you to advance your career, increase your salary, and boost your happiness. The many online universities offering online degrees can help you to acquire exactly those credentials. You owe it to yourself to take a look at them today.

Coming Attractions: Make Your Summer a Blockbuster with an Online College Degree Program

Louis Conrad — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:53:00 -07:00

The uptick of degrees on the thermometer and the emptying of colleges and universities throughout the country signal to you that summer has arrived. And with the onset of summer comes that decades-old phenomenon, the summer blockbuster movie. One quick glance at listings online gives you a sense of the scope this yearly ritual has achieved.

The growth of the summer blockbuster movie came not explosively but by degrees. Steven Spielberg set the precedent with "Jaws," his thriller about a rampaging man-eating shark, and George Lucas followed a few years later with his space-opera spectacle, "Star Wars." The success of these films signaled to Hollywood execs that the hot months of the years could translate into sizzling box-office take. No doubt they concluded that all those bodies having abandoned the campuses of high schools, colleges, and universities need to go somewhere, so why not coax them into their neighborhood cinemas? Heck, make the flick splashy enough, and they may even be willing to stand on line for hours just to catch a showing.

It's not that they had to endure extreme degrees of coaxing, however. The lure of engrossing spectacle was enough not only to make standing on line for hours tolerable, but even make doing so repeatedly relatively painless. Maybe it was that in the mid-1970s young folks attending colleges and universities were already accustomed to long waits, and seeing maritime bloodshed or epic space battles were certainly a more attractive reward for doing all that waiting than was the wan triumph of getting to register for a desired course.

Among other things, the summer Hollywood blockbuster completely revised the typical ways people beguiled their summer leisure. Whether on vacation from work or on break from various colleges and universities, people began to equate an uptick in degrees with a trip to the local movie house. And why not? The misery of standing on line was amply rewarded with not only sensory stimulation, but heaps of buttery popcorn, cups of cold soda, and ample frosty A/C.

Yes, the Hollywood blockbuster offered Americans one more way of beating the heat. And in the bargain they returned to their jobs or to their colleges and universities with heads filled with Technicolor dreams to sustain them through autumn, fall, and winter. Sometimes you think that nothing these days can replicate that experience - not satellite television or even gaming online. The relative degrees to which these memories remained in the imagination varied from person to person, but it can still be said that entertainment changed with the advent of Hollywood blockbuster.

Finding a blockbuster online degree program can be a tricky thing. There are so many online universities from which to choose that you find your head reeling from the task. DegreesOnline.net aims to help you to make this choice less of a chore. That way, you be well on your way toward having educational and career success fixed firmly between your jaws.

Building the History: Online Universities Gaining in Esteem Among Employers

Sylvia Smith — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:26:31 -07:00

The issue of whether to go brick-and-mortar or go online for your university degree is a burning one. Weighing the relative merits of each against the other can prove difficult, putting you in mind of apples and oranges.

But is the difference as great as that? Do brick-and-mortar universities stand a world apart from their online counterparts? This is a question not only on the minds of current and prospective college students, but on the minds of their prospective employers as well.

What these prospective employers have concluded might surprise you. "As the number of people choosing to pursue an online degree instead of attending classes on a university’s campus continues to rise, employers seem to disagree on whether they would hire applicants with a degree from a brick and mortar university over an applicant with a degree from an online institution," observes a recent article in The Lantern (the student newspaper of Ohio State University).

For these employers the proof is in the pudding. "Gina Valent, a consultant for Randstad, a Columbus recruiting company specializing in manufacturing and logistics, said when it comes to hiring, her company does not consider where applicants graduated from," the Lantern article continues. "Instead, Valent said what matters is that applicants have experience working in the field."

You're tempted to conclude from Valent's remarks that gaining experience is the X factor that puts you over on your competition, making your alma mater, whether it be actual or virtual, considerably less important.

Is this really true? Well, the answer to this question depends on establishing the connection between the university you attend and the position it puts you in to gain relevant experience. This in turn depends on the reputation of the institution in question. Because new on the scene, online universities have had to diligently build this reputation.

If results in Australia are any indication, these efforts at reputation-building are paying off - at least for one institution. A recent article in The Australian reports that Britain's Open University ranked third in "a national survey for student satisfaction last year," a result that has conferred "bragging rights to Martin Bean," one of the school's vice-chancellor.

For his part, Bean regards this result as altogether fitting. "Mr Bean didn't need proof," the article continues. "With 265,000 enrolled fee-paying students and numerous others around the world taking OU units for free, the numbers speak for themselves."

Open University's performance has demonstrated that "teaching and learning online could be done at great depth and breadth and still be informed by research."

Research is of course the mark of university quality. Any university, be it online or in physical space, that earns a reputation for top-flight research is sure to put you in good stead for a plumb postcollegiate profession.

Finding the right online university can take a lot of time and effort unless you find the right resource. DegreesOnline.net exists to ease the trouble of making this decision. On the site you'll find listed dozens of online universities and online degree programs. With such research at your disposal you'll be on the fast-track to higher learning in no time!

Made in the Shade: No Summer's a Bummer with Online Higher Education

Louis Conrad — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:16:38 -07:00

When summer arrives and the thermometer regularly tops 90 degrees, such things as dorms, textbooks, exams and term papers are the furthest things from your mind. During the torrid months of June through August, colleges and universities enter a period of partial dormancy. All in all, the dog days summer are best reserved for activities you can pursue indoors, in the comfort of air conditioning - reading novels, sewing or playing games online.

It may come to pass, however, that summer's heat wears on so long that by degrees you grow bored with reading, sewing, or playing games online. What are you to do in such situations? The fact is, colleges and universities do remain open to you. Of course, activities on campuses to varying degrees go on some sort of hiatus. Yet to many enterprising sorts, this period of abeyance presents an abundance of opportunity.

Just what sort of opportunity can be found at colleges and universities during summer hiatus? Well, though many institutions do scale back operations, they don't suspend them altogether. The uptick in degrees of temperature do generally signal a downtick in the intensity of campus activity, but many summer courses are offered. Generally enrolled in by students desperate to graduate, such courses do contain a minority of folks for whom the subject is a matter of satisfying their curiosity rather than their general-education requirements. With the availability online of many of these courses, the courses become more attractive yet - because it means not having to leave air-conditioned comfort for a trip to campus!

The popularity of online courses, whether offered in summer or during the regular academic year, has grown by degrees. As technology and connectivity have improved, so have colleges and universities' ability to market digital versions of their regular offerings.

Though relatively new on the scene, such online courses have held up to critical scrutiny. Anything that introduces added degrees of ease, flexibility and convenience is certain to be embraced by a wide contingent of institutions, not simply colleges and universities.

If you find that one the degrees on the thermometer have reached an oppressive high, why not cool off in the most intellectually stimulating way possible by enrolling in an online higher-ed course this summer. Resources abound that can help you pick the best from among the many online degrees offered by the many online universities populating the Web. That way you can bring the dog days to heel and get some valuable knowledge for your effort.

No Easy A's: Do "Gut" Courses Spell Career Doom?

Sylvia Smith — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:24:17 -07:00

Earning degrees, whether at brick-and-mortar universities or at online colleges, requires a lot of dedication and fortitude.

This necessity for dedication and fortitude is, for better or worse, baked into the higher-education cake. "What is study?", asks writer William Howard Armstrong in his 1995 book, "Study is Hard Work." Armstrong himself supplies an answer: "Study is, above everything else, hard work."

Indeed, Armstrong doesn't beat around the bush on this issue. "It has always been hard work, and there are no indications at present which hint that science is going to accomplish a vitamin-capsule method of learning that will eliminate study." If you're holding out for a magic pill to swallow to relieve you of your having to hit the books, you're sure to be disappointed.

Armstrong goes on to offer a slightly more technical definition of this dreary but not-soon-to-depart obligation. "Study is the total of all the habits, determined purposes, and enforced practices that the individual uses in order to learn." This is about as sound a definition as you're likely to find.

So if we're talking about habits, purposes and forced practices, then by this we mean activities that are both abiding and frequently engaged in. Is there no way off this treadmill? Is there no way to reduce the frequency or intensity of these necessary repetitions?

One hedge against too many all-nighters are so-called "gut courses." These you can find at just about any college or university, and you can spot them by their distinctive features. "'Gut' or 'bird' courses are referred to as such because they're easy, and you just fly right through them," writes Tracy Maynigo in her 2010 book, "A Girl's Guide to College: Making the Most of the Best Four Years of Your Life."

Maynigo goes on to assess the relative merits of stacking a semester's schedule with gut courses. She observes that on one hand, "taking such pushover courses allows you to concentrate on the other more important classes in your schedule and eke out a little more of a social life." On the other hand, however, there is the whole thing about getting the most postcollegiate bang for your tuition buck. Maynigo asks, "[Y]ou are paying all this money for an education, so why waste time on pointless classes?"

Maynigo poses an important question. Stakes are high in the modern employment market. Workers with university degrees are in increasingly greater demand. At the same time, however, they're in increasingly greater competition. This means that you shouldn't mess around with Mickey Mouse courses simply because you want a full social calendar.

Maynigo makes much the same observation. "Taking and easy class once in a while can't hurt, as long as you are at least moderately interested in the material." If you find that you detest the subject, you're apt to find your prospects for an easy A sunk as the course becomes more slog than breeze.

There's also the consideration that a transcript festooned with gut course grades may prove less than impressive, especially if you cherish hopes of pursuing advanced degrees, say, a master's or a doctorate. As the "Fiske Guide to Finding the Right College" reports, "So-called gut courses taken to fatten a grade average are as easy to spot as cosmetic transcript decoration and equally easy to discount." These are certainly words to think about when it comes time to schedule your courses.

The desire for gut courses is something university administrators also feel, albeit for different reasons than those of students. "There is a great temptation to offer 'gut' courses or meretricious topics that, it is hoped, with fill lecture halls at minimal department expense," observes the 2008 book, "A Companion to the Philosophy of Education," "and to place these courses in the general education program, where they will get the most 'play.'"

It appears that the moral of the story is that gut courses do more harm than good. They address short-term, short-sighted considerations but do so at the expense of long-term benefits. Best, then, to opt for courses with established reputations for rigor and integrity. Such courses may prove harder in the short run, but in the long run you'll be better for having endured them. At any rate, the Web abounds in sites that offer useful tips on how to study more efficiently, which can take some of the pain out of exam prep.