Tiffin University in Ohio thinks it’s found a unique niche for online education: a two-year associates degree for people who start out with the intention of transferring to another school to finish a traditional four-year bachelor’s degree. Most associates degree programs online tend to serve adult students who want a particular credential that will help their career. But Tiffin’s program is angled at college-age kids who just aren’t ready to sign on for a four-year degree. The idea isn’t unique in higher education. Students at large universities often do a two-year program, and then make a choice about which direction they will go in to complete their four-year degrees (my older son did this at Boston University, doing two years in the school of general studies and then transferring to the communications school, and my younger son is about to do it at FIT, where almost all art students take a two-year associates degree and then choose a bachelor’s degree to focus on for their last two years of school). But it is a bit of a new idea in online education. Tiffin’s administrators point out that the two year “starter” option online is particularly good for freshmen who aren’t socially developed enough to go into a full-fledged university, and that disabled and home-schooled students may find it helpful as a way to ease themselves gradually into a four-year program.
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Want a hot tip on which online degrees will get you the good jobs? Just take a look at where Capella University, a major Minneapolis-based online school, is adding to their specialized degree programs. The school has just announced new degree specializations  in Gerontology (as part of the school’s Master of Science in Human Services) and Early Childhood Education (under Capella’s Education Master’s program). The reason is simple: there is currently huge demand all across the country for people who know how to care for older adults and teachers who know how to work with pre-kindergarten kids. The education degree can make sense for you if you’re a currently licensed teacher who wants to become specialized in early childhood learning, an area where more and more states are requiring specialized training. Other hot areas that Capella is moving into include Homeland Security and Security Management, a degree for people who want leadership roles in the private security business.

The Distance Learning Interest Group is more for professionals who actually work on e-Learning, but it can provide worthwhile information to students as well. Subscribing to their RSS feed is a good way to keep your ear to the ground about new reports and issues that affect you and the school you may want to study at.
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Companies have paid for their employees to go to school for many years, in order to improve their job skills. But companies also like to save money. It’s little wonder then, that more and more of them are showing a willingness to pay for employees to get their degrees online. One hospital in Florida is teaming up with an online learning company, because A) the hospital is comfortable with the quality of online degrees and B) because they’re getting a discount for their employees’ online degrees. U.S employers are currently spending a whopping $109.2 billion dollars a year on employee training, so it seems likely they’ll try to use e-Learning to keep their costs under control. Besides hospitals, who need to keep raising the certification levels of nurses and other workers, another big user of e-Learning is the FBI.
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Here’s an article from a newspaper in Lafayette, LA, about how Phoenix has gradually grown into a big higher ed force in Louisiana. Most interesting is the fact that the University of Louisiana is having a hard time getting their online courses accepted in the same way, because U of Phoenix has more understanding of what adult learners need. Average student at Phoenix, by the way, is 34 years old.
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OK - this one has nothing to do with online learning, at least not directly. But it’s hard not to be fascinated with a release today, from The Journal of the American Academy of Neurology, stating that a new study shows that having more education cuts your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers in Finland have apparently followed over 1,300 people for more than 21 years, and found that the more highly educated ones have a far lower incidence of dementia in their later lives. One possible explanation is that people with less education have less-healthy lifestyles which may expose them to a greater risk of all diseases, but it appears on the surface that studying may be at least as good for you as taking your vitamins. Read More…

Your first move here should be to talk directly with the financial aid office at the school you’re interested in. They should definitely be able to tell you exactly what their accreditation status is, and which of the top loan programs out there you will be eligible. If you don’t get a clear answer from the school on this, you may want to pull back and reconsider other options. Filling out forms and contacting lenders can involve an amazing amount of hard work, and you don’t want to get involved in it if you’re doomed from the start by the fact that you’re trying to borrow money to go to a non-accredited school.
The Wide Range of College Costs: One of the toughest questions to answer is “how much does a college degree cost.” While distance learning degrees are generally (though not always) a bit lower in cost than traditional ones, the fact is that a four-year undergraduate degree today can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $110,000. Read more…

Little Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio is making headlines with a new requirment that every student take at least one online course on the way to earning his or her undergraduate degree. Interestingly, the reasons offered by administrators are not the usual arguments that e-learning saves space, increases access to more students geographically and keeps the cost of earning a degree down. Northwest State’s administrators say that students need to take online courses, very simply, because they will be expected to engage in online learning once they get out into the business world. Beyond that, they believe that distance learning helps teach students to be more self-motivated in their work in general. As in almost every instance where colleges look to boost online course offerings, faculty at Northwest CC are generally not pleased about the move, and the school is carefully making all kinds of noise about how professors will be deeply involved in all course redesign and execution. Without doubt, one of the most interesting stories under the surface of the distance learning story is the growing conflict between school administrators and students who want more of it, and faculty who don’t. While many professors have raised solid questions about the quality of online learning, the teaching faculty have thusfar not been very successful in making it seem like they’re doing much other than protecting their own interests by standing in opposition to distance learning.
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In yet another example of how far and wide the applications of distance learning can go, Virginia Tech has just announced it will offer a 100% online course of study for a master’s degree in agriculture. It’s already been a virtual requirement that you have at least a BA to go into farming for many years. But because it’s particularly tough for young working farmers to drive long distances to schools to get more advanced degrees, many have had to just stick with their undergrad degrees. In a world where agriculture involves complex predictions (both financial and agricultural) and large-scale operations, master’s degrees have become more important.
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The U.S. Education Department is currently debating a new rule that would prevent colleges from looking closely at the accreditation status of a school before deciding whether or not to accept credits from it. A new government panel on the issue has lots of representatives from for-profit schools, who are pushing for acceptance of this “blind accreditation” rule. Representatives of the traditional major accrediting agencies don’t want to see their quality assessments watered down, and are opposing the new rule. If “blind accreditation” passes, it could make it easier for online students to transfer credits into a traditional college, but could also help create lots of new fake “life experience” schools and diploma mills.
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