How do you feel about your online college?

[dfrecore]

I don't think taking a CLEP/DSST is the "easy" way out. I got A's and B's on my major courses at a private 4-yr university, without spending a ton of time studying for them. But, later, after I needed a few additional business courses, it was very "easy" to take the Intro to Management and Intro to Marketing CLEP's because I'd already learned much of the material. But if you want to compare, I would have been able to go to my local CC and take those courses and pass them "easily". So, I don't know that I did anything special there - it would have been easy either way I did it. I just decided to do it more quickly and cheaply than 16 weeks at the CC.

I think that this will help my career because I've been out of the workforce for 15 years, and plan another 5. So this degree, plus the MBA I plan to pursue next, should help me overcome the hurdles I would face anyway. I have a far larger problem with having my resume be 20 years out-of-date than what school I attended!

I also can't imagine that an employer would know or care that your degree was gotten online, or through non-traditional means, at least for my field. I'm not planning on working in finance, or for some very large firm - I just want to work at a small to medium-sized company that only cares that I can get the job done. Wherever I got the degree from, they shouldn't care (and if they did, I probably wouldn't be interested in working there since that's not something I care about - we would have incompatible values). I also think that most employers only know a few schools. The ivies. The local state schools. But for each state, that's only a handful of schools. For instance, I'm in CA - an employer here will know all the CSU & UC schools. But U of Minnesota or FL State U (I just made those up) - they don't know the reputations of those schools. They can't possibly know the reputation of all 3,000+ colleges in the U.S. And honestly, I don't think they really care much.

As for traditional universities offering their own online courses - they still cost the same as if you were to take them butt-in-seat. And my biggest issue - a 16-week semester. I really, REALLY hate that! I mean, a LOT. I found that I just could not sustain my interest in a course for that length of time. Once I found some schools who had 10-week terms or intensive 4-weekend courses or the 8-week summer term, I did much much better. Mostly A's at that point. My GPA on non-16-week terms was 3.6, while my GPA for 16-week terms was 2.8.

Just my personal experience. But hope it helps.