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.
