Should I Get An Online Degree?

Is An Online Degree Worth It? A very real debate rages over the
validity of online education and whether students working
totally online acquire an education equal to one exclusively
acquired from a brick and mortar classroom. Considering that in
a generation most higher education of any consequence to the
general public will be simultaneously or totally offered and
available online, the debate is basically dead. Over the next 30
years the landscape will be completely reversed. The largest and
most sought after universities will be those available
exclusively online, in many languages, worldwide.

Many of today’s mainstream academics, perhaps soon to be known
as the dinosaurs of higher education, continue to offer faulty
and questionable research that allegedly supports their
contention that an online education is neither good or valid,
nor rigorous as that with a traditional teacher in a classroom.
argue that the issue is one of ‘process’ versus ‘content’. In
effect, they believe online courses have no content enrichment
simply because they are offered online. They are in denial and
not unlike the educators in the Middle Ages who thought that the
introduction of the blackboard would destroy higher education.

The value of any education, regardless of where it is acquired,
is ultimately based on the knowledge imparted and learned. It
should be very apparent that the value of how good or well
endowed financially the school or its contacts (network) are
perceived, it can be totally duplicated in an online environment
with few exceptions. 

Perhaps we should actually consider the notion that what really
ought to validate the value of a degree is the nature and
credibility of those teaching the subject not how it is
delivered. In the range of choices of what a student and
professor can do together, online delivery is clearly superior
to the traditional classroom. In effect, a professor’s name and
their credentials ought to be on every university student’s
transcript. This would demonstrate to the whole world the
student has studied under and passed satisfactorily all work
undertaken under this or that academic guru. Who does this? No
one.