Will online degrees ever reach high status in the US? 11

[EngineerDave]

Will the online degree replace the traditional university degree with regards to engineering? There are several online degrees available now from places, including engineering masters degrees.

Here is what I see as the limitations of such a degree now:

1) Lack of hands-on classes, such as labs
2) Lack of name recognition bias (would you hire a grad of an online university or an established brick and mortar university)
3) Exam proctoring. Would all the exams now be open book?
4) Accreditation issues.

On the plus side, this would help many working professionals continue their education.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I personally have some with the videotape masters program that a company I work with offered. But I found that to be a watered down degree to serve the purposes of the automotive company I worked for.

 

[rhodie]

This is a great question.

I think that the legitamacy of "online" degrees will always be questioned. Even the larger organizations (i.e. University of Phoenix online) have vague name recognition.

How many e-mail offers do you receive a week suggesting that you "get your diploma, now!" from prestigious "Kennedy-Williams University" or some non-accredited university? (or some moron printing sheepskin in his garage...) I get at least 5 of these offers a week. How many of the people I know have purchased these things? If I see ".com" or "online" after the name of any college, I am gonna be pretty skeptical.

On the topic of online exam proctoring: How can a college be certain that the student enrolled in the course is even the one taking the tests?

I took several online classes in college, and the only thing that I can say with certainty is that they are a joke. With the lack of face-to-face, verbal student to teacher input, the course work is greatly supplemented by "busy work" (as opposed to value added instruction). I read and wrote much more than necessary on a scope of topics much more limited and narrow than a traditional course would have offered.

Thankfully, none of my engineering classes were offered as online sections, or I might have made the stupid mistake of enrolling in them. Nothing replaces classroom and lab experience.

 

[Focht3]

They will make some inroads - and we will see the traditional classroom change over time. Exam proctoring will likely be done by third parties (at local facilities) under contract with the universities, and paid for by the students themselves.

Labs are a different story. I can see these compressed into intensive one to two week "vacation courses" to allow students to work while attending school. This might turn out to be a benefit for companies, who pay their employees during this time as a "perk."

Accreditation is a thorny issue; I would expect that ABET may have to develop "exit exams" that cover core competency. Schools with a low percentage of "passing" grades could lose their accreditation. (This would, unfortunately, lead to universities "teaching to the test.&quot

Major universities will offer these alternative class formats - for purely economic reasons. (They can actually charge more - while providing less.) I don't think prestige will be an issue in the long run.

But don't expect this to happen any time soon. After all, we engineers are a pretty conservative lot!

 

[corus]

Online degree courses are recognized by companies though only if the organization is well known. As a Professor in Enginologistics from the accredited University of WillaWonga.com, some qualifications from online courses are obviously dubious. In the UK the government sponsors the Open University whose purpose is to allow people who neither have the entry qualifications nor the time to enrol in a full time University. These courses do have periods spent on campus for more practical tuition, but can take years to complete. I would doubt that the final degree is viewed as highly as those from other prestigious Universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, or WillaWonga though.

Prof.

 

[rhodie]

O' stoic WillaWonga...
My alma mater true!

Her bountiful, capacious knowledge tree
blossoms for we few.

With earned distinction, we may ask:
Oxford? Cambridge?... Who?

 

[FrenchCAD]

Those diplomas are really doubtfull to me

Cyril Guichard
Mechanical Engineer

 

[electricpete]

I obtained my MSEE through Georgia Tech via a "distance learning program". Never set foot on campus but viewed videotapes of the actual lectures and did same homework and took same exam as on-campus students.

IMHO any program such as this deserves recognition. But obviously I am biased and it is not my opinion that matters.

I think that name recognition of the university should go a long way. Georgia Tech - 6th best graduate EE program per US News and World Report, and a good football team. I can claim it as my alma mater the same as any on campus student.

I think employers also will rightly take account of the fact that a degree earned while working full time shows some extra effort.

 

[ssdpe]

EngineerDave,

I guess that to be really "academically intelligent" you don't need to go to college to obtain a degree. In fact, a great percentage of people that go to college are not that intelligent in their field. The question was whether or not an online degree will ever reach high status in the US. I will say never.

The general concensus is that an online degree leave you ill-equipped. It is up to those who pay money to get this education to prove this wrong. Many companies that receive resumes from non-credited schools or online degrees end up in the garbage can upon arrival. Does a State Board allow a person with an online degree to sit for the EIT or the PE? Does a person with an online degree can obtain a job with MIT, NASA or the ARMY Corps of Engineers? I think not.

 

[QCE]

On-line degree - are you kidding

To be an engineer in Canada you need to go to an accreditted university. I'm quit sure that no online course would be accreditted. Therefore you are not an engineer. So why waste your time!

Nepe - Nice post

 

[georgy]

I agree that an online degree does have its limitations and will never compare to the quality education obtained from an attending an accredited university. However, I do believe such a degree can be worthwhile in certain situations.

Electricpete's post was a good example of a worthwhile online degree. For those of us who have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university and are practicing engineers, an online master’s degree can make sense. There are many well known engineering schools out there now that offer online masters degrees. For those who cannot return to school full time to obtain a masters, this can be a great alternative.

 

[BobPE]

electripete:

GaTech has some awsome distance learning programs. I dont think they [distance programs] will substitute for the traditional BS program, but will become more mainstream for post graduate....

BobPE

 

[EngineerDave]

I do agree and I think Georgia Tech in the name would be an advantage over a Phoenix or Kennedy Western.

Alas, all my degrees will be from brick and mortar onsite universities. But I"m not opposed towards using an online place for continuing education.

 

[Focht3]

I can see on line studies for continuing education, but not for advanced degrees. A big part of getting a master's or PhD is the opportunity for the interpersonal relationship with the faculty. This would be lost on line - after all, it would be pretty hard to catch your faculty advisor at the elevator for a quick lunch together, a beer at the local pub, etc. And you would miss out on the interaction with your fellow students.



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[Rich2001]

One must be careful of online degrees - due to accreditation issues, it some states it is illegal use and unaccredited degree on your resume, job application etc. A good source to find out about accrediation, degree mills, etc is the Orgeon State Office of Degree Authorization
webpage

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/index.html

How does a school ensure that the quality of education is the same between an on-campus face-to-face course and one offered on-line?

I grant that a good course on the Blackboard or Web-CT system with video, audio , lecture notes, etc. by a professor that has the time, desire and fortitude to develop and maintain the course material is great. However, many institue of higher education use underpaid part-time faculty to develop a course then run it for years without changing or improving the content. Every education institute is now looking for ways to incorporate on-line courses, they see it as a "cash-cow." Little or no faculty involvement, having a large enrollment of students at any time. For the foremention reasons I expect to see many on-line programs fail (have little or no value to industryor students).

 

[zdas04]

As a resident of a small town in New Mexico (which is a long way from a traditional campus) with aspirations of getting a PhD one day I've been watching the evolution of Distance Learning for several years.

Five years ago, the field was limited to TV Guide "Correspondance Courses" and a Google search for "distance learning" came back with one page. Three years ago there were a couple of big-name universities offering Engineering PhD programs (and the Google search results were in the thousands). Now every university has a "Distance Learning" section of their web page and there are millions of hits for it in Google. My guess is that 5 years from now the online courses and the brick-and-mortar classes will be indistingushable from each other on a resume.

The folks that say "an on-line engineering degree will never be acceptable to employeers, licensing boards and regulators" are in the same boat as the folks in 1900 who said "physics research will stop in the first decade of the 20th century because everything that can be learned in physics has been learned". "Never" is just too long a time. I see the Distance Learning train gathering momentum and pretty much unstopable at this point.

Schools are finding inventive solutions to the very real proctoring, lab, and face time issues and I think that the solutions will get more and more mainstream in the next few years.

David

 

[Focht3]

I see the Distance Learning train gathering momentum and pretty much unstopable at this point.

Hmmm,

You might be right, but I don't think so. At least not in my field. I also remember the days when personal computers were fairly new, and many believed that they would lead to a "paperless" office. It didn't happen. (I thought it was a stupid position then - and still feel that way.)

I don't see distance learning making much of a dent in engineering education, at least not with respect to advanced degrees. The reason is pretty simple: you don't get the economy of scale that you do with business classes and the like; when was the last time you saw thousands of students taking any post-graduate engineering course?

And the smaller the class size, the less attractive is a distance learning setup. After all, one of the real advantages of a class of ten students is the ability to see one another and converse in non-verbal ways that are impossible to "get" with a distance learning setup. It might be feasible in two or three decades when VR becomes feasible. Second thought - nah, not even then.

I think this whole distance learning thing is a bit of a fad right now, and while aspects of it are here to stay, it will fade in importance over time.



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[stel8]

I believe that the time will come when the academic and professional status will separate completely. It will be a test/exam to define who is allowed to practice engineering without exception. And if one has the knowledge to pass this test will be an engineer, regardless of his/her academic degree.

With the growing cost of education at all levels and the fantastic growth of technology, most of education will be online. The primary school offered by radio and later on internet for the children of sparsely populated Australia regions is one good example of online education which is not questioned at all - it has been the only way to educate those kids for decades.

There are already classes with more than 800 engineering students, where the teacher is wired and he delivers a lecture integrated in a video/light/sound show in more than one amphiteater. Teaching assistants move around to explain obscure points to the audience. How far is this from the way I was taught?!

 

[GregLocock]

I think there is a great danger that you are concentrating overmuch on the lectures. Frankly by my third year I had given up going to most lectures, the library was a much better source of learning.

On the other hand I was doing 4 afternoons a week of labs - how can an online course give you that depth of experimental work?

Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[stel8]

You are right about labs - no lecture can replace them. But labs are expensive; hardware and software need updating faster and faster. Unfortunately they will be the first to go. There are already virtual dissection and lots of simulation/animation in several disciplines. Lego robots or experimental kits. It's just a matter of time.

 

[rdstone]

It sounds as if there are a lot of people that think this type of learning is something new... something of the computer generation. I was in vietnam getting combat pay and kept up with my schooling. -- when I got back home it only took me 1 year to complete my degree because a Military school is widely accepted. Most of my classes were done through tapes or when possible in class on base. The concept has been around for a long time. Just not like it is now -- "On-Line" --- I don't think this type of degree will ever be accepted in the work place for professionals.

JMO ---