Will Getting A Degree Online Change Traditional Colleges?

Despite the explosion of publicity that has grown up around the newly popular cyber studies format, many educational authorities continue to wonder whether or not the online Bachelor's degree programs offered by an increasing number of colleges and universities should be judged as an unmitigated success. The internet has sparked so many changes to the world, rendering areas of life from home entertainment to the gathering of information utterly unrecognizable within a generation, that it's perfectly understandable for media commentators to spin fantasies about the potential of the medium. Yes, the online Bachelor's degree will be substantially more cost effective than even the cheapest brick and mortar alternatives, the malleability of the scheduling that cyber studies provide could not possibly be matched by the traditional pillars of academia, but let's not get carried away.

The story of James Callie, a marketing professional who left the University of Vermont shortly after his sophomore year with sixty eight transferable credit hours (and who later earned his online Bachelor's degree in a little over a year and a half for a pittance), has been the norm for lifestyle journalists trying to elaborate a larger meaning. Although Callie ended up getting a degree online for literally hundreds of dollars -- thanks to the immense amount of credits that he brought to the table -- his story is far from typical. Not only must students weighing their options treat such tales of immediate cost-free satisfaction with all due suspicion, the media should caution curious pupils to do their own voyage of discovery before automatically presuming that the internet academia option would be equally beneficial.

Furthermore, the news coverage of cyber studies tends to gloss over the extreme differences that separate the online Associate's degree -- a tried and true alternative that has indeed allowed countless Americans to accelerate their career improvements and successfully pass such bureaucratic hurdles as, say, the Certified Professional Accountant's exam without ever missing a day's work -- from the far more rarefied realm of the online Master's degree. Some of the virtual campuses hiding around the World Wide Web specifically advertise their course load as part of a business plan, and, by doing so, neatly fashion a runaround from charges of operating an unaccredited institution of higher learning. Still, uninitiated prospective students who aren't entirely familiar with the technicalities of the educational establishment may end up wasting their time and money (however relatively little of each, compared to the demands of an actual university).

While it would be foolish to suggest that all or even most of the students getting a degree online would be making a mistake by trusting a cyber studies provider, there are undeniable worries that must still be addressed before, as a society, we can so easily push the online Bachelor's degree as the logical conclusion of academic trends post-information revolution. Computers have without a doubt aided the acquisition of knowledge for Americans of all demographics, and, following the inevitably bumpy steps to maturation as administrators and faculty further comprehend the dynamics of the digitized curriculum, teaching over the internet shall sooner or later outgrow the early kinks: even, yes, for the online Master's degree (in certain subjects, at least). At the same, time, though we should not seek to downplay the dangers inherent in leaping forward too quickly to incorporate novelty for the sake of novelty.

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