employers and online degrees

Research studies have shown again and again that online degrees have gradually become more respected by employers. But the truth is that most hiring managers have a mix of positive and negative feelings about them. It helps to understand what kind questions you’re likely to get and which aspects of your degree you may have to defend. Here are five things employers love about online degrees, and five things they may not take seriously about them. Click To List Of Schools Specialized in Online Degrees

Why Employers accept online degrees:

1. Teamwork: Online degrees often involved a lot of teamwork done through web-based workflow applications. This closely mirrors the way projects are generally done in the business world. Being comfortable with project management and communication with team members in a digital environment is a key skill that can make you stand out, partly because some graduates of traditional classroom-based schools don’t have it.
2. Discipline/ Work Ethic: Completing a full degree program online takes a strong work ethic and a focus on achieving a goal. To be able to finish all your classes and projects from home, balancing your schoolwork with life commitments, it’s absolutely necessary to have self-discipline, something that’s highly valued in the corporate world.
   According to National Center for Education Statistics, only about sixty percent of American college students who start a bachelor’s degree finish it – and that’s within six years, at residential or online schools. If you were able to complete a degree online, it shows you have a good deal of self-discipline.
3. Technology Skills: You may not even realize the level of tech skills you’ve acquired during your online degree program. Working with online forums, communicating with professors and submitting coursework online, watching and possibly posting video and generally dealing with tech glitches are all abilities that are expected in almost any business today. Having an online degree should brand you as being tech-savvy.
4. Ability To Manage Work vs. Life: Studying online can be tough when there’s no classroom bell to define the hours you will be in class and you’re in your home where friends and family can interrupt you on a regular basis. Your online degree should provide some solid proof that you can manage your work hours versus your life commitments effectively.
5. A Job-Focused Degree: Employers see lots of candidates with degrees in English, Sociology and other specialties that are, well, a bit “soft.” If you’re like most online degree holders, you probably studied something that directly relates to a career goal. The odds are that you paid for much of your degree program yourself. That kind of focus can set you apart from many college grads who got a degree because they didn’t really know what else to do after finishing high school.

Why Some Employers Think Online Degrees Look Bad:

1. Is an online degree too easy? This is a question an employer may not ask directly, even though he or she may have it in the back of their mind. But you should be well qualified to deal with this issue. After all, you learned in classrooms during high school and may have taken some classroom-based college courses before starting your online program. You can compare your own experiences of online and traditional learning and let the employer know that you feel your online degree program was rigorous and taught you what you need to succeed in the job world.
2. University of what? Never heard of that school. Your chances of employment will almost certainly be affected by whether or not a hiring manager has heard of the school you got your degree from. Old line universities usually have the most name recognition. But nowadays, large online schools like Ashford, SNHU and others have become more well known, partly due to their large advertising campaigns. Additionally, there are now online degree programs offered at very well-known old schools lie Georgetown University and Arizona State.
3. Shaky accreditation. Accreditation matters with employers – big time. In fact, accreditation may be the #1 key to employer acceptance of your online degree. It’s importance was underlined by a comment from Beth Sears, a staffing professional at Robert Half, one of the biggest and best known recruiting firms in the world, who told Business Finance in 2018 that “In our experience, degrees that are earned online can work in the job seeker’s favor. As long as the programs are accredited, earning a degree online can speak to the work ethic and dedication of the individual.”
4. “Life experience” degrees. Many high quality schools today give credit for the knowledge you have gained in another school or in the workplace. But don’t even go near a school that will sell you a degree with no real academic study. It’s probably a diploma mill that’s a complete waste of money.
5. For-profit schools. Undoubtedly, some employers still look at for-profit schools as less credible than state or private colleges. But that attitude is far from universal. In fact, many companies now have partnerships with for-profit schools to do training for their own employees. The best way to deal with this issue is to be ready to talk to the employer about the quality of your degree program and discuss, in very specific terms, the skills it taught you.

Jobs Where Online Degrees Are Most Valued

Some career categories seem clearly more friendly to online degree holders. Nursing, for example, is an are where there is a tremendous shortage of qualified bachelor degree holders. As a result, even the more prestigious hospitals seem open to hiring nurses with non-traditional degrees. Technology departments have long been willing to hire candidates who learn coding or some other aspect of IT through a coding academy, online school or even through a few courses that may not add up to a degree. Accountants and other financial professionals are often hired with either an online diploma or specialty certificate. Teaching has also become a popular area for online study. Although teachers need to do actual classroom work in order to be certified to teach in most areas, they’re frequently hired with an online bachelors or masters degree

Are Online Master’s Degrees Worth It?

A recent article in Inside Higher Ed noted that enrollment in online master’s degrees is growing strongly, with over 31% of all post grad program students now taking 100% online degree programs. A chart in the article illustrates the grown in pure online grad degrees:

A “Job Outlook” study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers in 2017 showed that many of the key skills employers want to see on a resume could result from either online vs traditional education.

1. 59.8% of employers wanted applicants with “Technical Skills”
2. 67.5% wanted to hire those with “Analytical/Quantitative Skills”
3. 82.9% wanted to see “Problem-Solving Skills”
4. 80.3% wanted applicants with “Written Communication Skills”

That Tech Advantage In Your Online Degree

Companies are constantly complaining about the lack of job applicants who have strong technology skills. It’s worth keeping in mind that you’re probably ahead of the curve in that department if you went to college over the internet. The connection between online learning a crucial digital skills was highlighted as a Barcelona, Spain conference hosted by Devex in January, 2020, where University of Southern California Professor Dora Vertenten said online degrees are perhaps even better than a regular degree because students get a strong technology experience in addition to learning the subject they are mastering in: “You’re learning the curriculum of the program but also learning how to use the platforms by submitting homework assignments and giving feedback online.” She went on to say online learning is a great teacher of digital teamwork, which is key in almost all businesses today, and that online courses tend to introduce students into a very diverse group of other students, adding:

That ability to develop a cultural competency — the sense of working in diverse environments with diverse people — is a really critical benefit that the online program offers that most campus-based undergraduate and graduate educations can’t offer.”

The Society for Human Resource Management (SRHM) found in a survey as far back as 2009 that employers were showing that online degree holders were gradually being more respected:
– Human Resource executives say they’re warming to online degrees. Over 50% of the 573 HR professionals surveyed told SRHM that they felt courses taken online were about equal in quality to courses in traditional classroom schools.
– 76% of those surveyed said “online degrees are viewed more favorably” than they were five years earlier.

The sheer numbers of students taking courses or full degree programs online has continued to swell. Numbers from the Center for Education Statistics show that in 2017, the most recent year measured:

• There were a whopping 6,651,536 students enrolled in college distance education courses.
• From this number, more than 2.7 million were taking all of their courses online.
• For-profit schools played a relatively small role in the overall picture. 4.6 million of all online learners were studying at state or other public universities, 1.1 million were at private schools, while less than 800,000 students were studying at for-profit universities.

Click To List Of Schools Specialized in Online Degrees

How To Do A Fast Check On Any School’s Accreditation

Here’s how to quickly check the accreditation status of a school, before you sign up for a program. You can get a quick overview of an American school’s accreditation status by going to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Database for Accredited Postsecondary Institutions & Programs” page. You can search this database by entering the name of a school you’re interested in, by searching for all schools in a state or by finding schools that have been approved by a specific accreditation agency.

Be aware that some schools may be accredited for specific programs only.

The key accreditation agencies you need to know about are:

• The New England Commission of Higher Education
• The Middle States Commission on Higher Education
• The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
• The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges
• The Higher Learning Commission
• WASC Senior College and University Commission
• Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges

Accreditation isn’t always easy to understand for you, the student. You need to remember that regional accreditation is generally the top standard, not national accreditation. That may sound backwards, but it’s how the very old-world system of accrediting American colleges and universities still works. There are, however, just a few exceptions. If you take a very career-specific degree in an area like nursing, your school is going to need accreditation from a professional group in that specialty (although some nursing schools are nationally accredited, most get their credentialing from one of two national groups – the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) or the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). Online nursing master’s degrees and BSNs tend to be well accepted by healthcare employers. But these types of companies – hospitals, clinics and other types of care centers – are very knowledgeable about accreditation. If you don’t have a degree from a school that’s properly accredited, it’s unlikely that you’ll get hired. (More accreditation resources here)

Do Employers Verify Education?

You are generally under no obligation to tell an employer on a job application or a cover letter that you got your degree online. But if it comes up, it’s important to realize that you can make a big difference in an employer’s perception of your degree if you learn to talk about your school, your motivation and your career goals in a way that makes you look like a smart candidate.

First and foremost, an employer will confirm that your degree has a basic value based on whether or not your school has good quality accreditation and on the general reputation and name recognition of your school. But employers today are doing deeper and deeper background checks on people before they are willing to hire them. It’s possible that a hiring manager may simply contact your school to get a copy of your diploma or transcript. But some employers actually use third party services to do educational background checks on job candidates. Either way, it’s likely that your potential employer will see your grades, which courses you took and how long it took you to complete your degree. That’s why nowadays more than ever, it’s a very bad idea to misrepresent anything about your education on a job application or in an interview. You’re very likely to get caught.

Develop a “pitch” to tell them why you believed that an online degree was an excellent choice and the unique skills it’s given you.

Are Online MBA Programs Credible?

If you have been working since you finished your bachelor’s degree, you may not really have a choice on whether to take your MBA online or in a classroom. The online approach is the only real option for many working adults who can’t afford to stop working to live and study at a business school for two years,

It’s probably not realistic to think you’ll end up working for Goldman Sachs with an online degree. The big Wall Street firms tend to still bring on grads from Harvard, Wharton and other famous schools, most of which still don’t offer fully online MBAs. But there are many, many employers out there who either have a positive attitude toward an online business degree or simply don’t care which format you did your learning in.

Whether or not your online MBA will be taken seriously is likely to hinge on two key factors: 1) the reputation and accreditation of the school you attended and 2) your ability to talk about the high quality of your courses, professors and overall learning experience. It’s best to go into a job interview expecting to encounter at least some skepticism about your online graduate degree. That way you’ll be ready to talk about it without getting flustered during your interview.

A good tip: Choosing an online MBA program at a school that also offers traditional campus-based grad degrees can be a good choice, since the school’s traditional degree programs may enjoy a positive reputation with hiring companies.

What Is A Kaplan Degree’s Credibility?

It’s no longer possible to get a degree from Kaplan because the school was purchased in 2018 by Purdue University, a respected public research university that’s been in Indiana since 1874. All of the Kaplan programs were taken over by a new entity called Purdue University Global. Kaplan had seen a number of bad publicity incidents based on student complaints, giving the school a negative or perhaps even worthless image in the eyes of some. Purdue Global continues to deliver adult career-focused programs, and almost certainly benefits from the reputation of this very old school. Other large for-profit schools like Capella and University of Phoenix have evolved significantly in the past 10 years, in some cases working directly with large companies to train graduates to fill specific positions. They have continued to flourish largely because of their strong focus on career-oriented degrees.

Figuring The True Cost Of Your Degree

A great way to determine what the cost of your degree is going to be is to use FinAid’s tool to determine what your actual net fees will be after all discounts and grant awards. It’s a bit complex to use, but it gives you a chance to do a very careful comparison of how various schools will stack up against each other on price. See FinAid’s Calculator Here
Another tool that allows you to compare more in-depth quality information as well as cost of one college versus others is available here from The College Board

Further Reading
All You Need To Know About Accreditation.
What Employers Really Think About Your Online Degree
Liberty Street study of bachelor degrees value