Getting the Best Online College Education
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir
While there is always a lot of debate as to whether an online
college education is as good as a traditional college education,
the answer is really very simple; there are good institutions
that offer an online college education and there are bad
establishments that offer an online college education. The same
holds true for traditional college degree programs.
So, just as when you are looking for an offline course, you need
to do the same kind of your research when you are looking for
the best place to pursue an online college education.
Of course, you normally won't care where the college is located
unless part of the online program involves off-line meetings.
Usually the physical location just doesn't matter. However, a
lot of the other points that you would consider before attending
a traditional offline college or university should also be
considered before you enroll with any organization offering an
online college education.
The growth in the numbers of people pursuing an online college
education has led to increased competition among institutions to
attract students. The best way to assess the credibility of a
site advertising that they have the best online college
education is to ask about the accreditation of its courses.
Accreditation means that some governing body for a particular
field has endorsed the course. This can be extremely important
in helping you to decide who to trust with your online college
education. If a course is not accredited then you need to find
out why.
There may be a number of courses that have not yet received
accreditation from an appropriate association or governing body
but still offer a good online college education. For example,
the establishment may have applied for accreditation but not yet
been assessed. In that case you can actually check with the
particular accrediting agency to be certain that they actually
are in the process of assessing the application for
accreditation. Another reason may be that there is no
appropriate accrediting body for a course. This is less likely
but, nevertheless, could be a valid reason and doesn't
necessarily indicate that the course offered is not going to be
worth taking to advance your online college education.
If, however, you find that the online college education
institution has been refused accreditation, then they are likely
to try to tell you that accreditation is not important. And that
simply isn't true. An online college education from a
non-accredited institution is not going to be viewed as
positively as one from an accredited establishment. Choose where
you go to get your online college education with care to ensure
that you are not wasting your time and money by having a nearly
worthless qualification.
Another factor related to accreditation has to do with
professions requiring some form of governmental license or
certification. You need to be certain that any college degree or
other course certification will be acceptable to whatever
licensing body has authority over the profession in the location
you live and work in. For example, a course which is accepted in
one state, may not be accepted by the authorities in another
state.
You need to think of the online college education arena as a
marketplace. You are the consumer and as in any marketplace, you
need to check the quality of the product and the 'merchant'
according to the circumstances that apply to you and your area
of study. While this may seem like a lot of work at times, it is
your future, your time and your money that are involved. So take
a little extra time and verify the value of any online college
program (or any type of online learning) that you are
considering.