Online Degrees: Who Would Hire an Online Grad?

Online Degrees:  Who Would Hire an Online Grad?

by Jennifer Mulrean Tags: Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, Phoenix University, Sloan Consortium, Vault, Columbia University, Columbia Video Network

We know. You're naturally curious, committed to lifelong learning, and generally ambitious. Those are great reasons to pursue an education. But with the high price of college, it's safe to bet that you're also hoping that degree will pay off in more practical terms--with a first job, a promotion, or a job change, perhaps.

The good news is, it probably will. In simple terms of dollars and cents, a college degree can be worth millions in income over the course of your life. According to the most recent United States Census Bureau survey, people holding bachelor's degrees are expected to earn $2.1 million over the course of their working lifetime--almost $1 million more than the $1.2 million in lifetime earnings for people who hold high school diplomas only.

But before you pile up those riches, you first have to get through the door of the human resources department. As a current or prospective online student, it's important to consider how an online degree will measure up against those earned at traditional brick-and-mortar programs.

Attitudes in flux¿
When asked directly, well-known Fortune 500 companies such as Intel and Wal-Mart said they'd accept online degrees, provided they come from regionally accredited programs.

The last time the question seems to have been put to human resources departments on a broad scale, however, was in late 2000, when Vault, a job-search service and publisher, surveyed almost 300 hiring managers. At the time, 77 percent of respondents said online degrees earned from well-known schools--the Stanford Universities of the world--were more valuable than those from online-only institutions.

A lot has changed since then, including the number of people enrolled in online courses. A 2004 Sloan Consortium report estimated that more than 2.6 million people logged on to at least one online class in the fall of 2004.

Support from employers¿
If you're attending a school that offers both campus-based and online courses, chances are your diploma won't distinguish whether you logged on or sat in a traditional classroom to earn it. At Columbia University, for example, online students can earn various graduate engineering degrees through Columbia Video Network (CVN). There's no need to distinguish the degrees as having been earned online because they're identical to the courses delivered at the physical campus.

"The degree (CVN students) earn is identical to what the offline students are getting," says Evan Jacobs, marketing manager for CVN. "The modality is secondary; the content is what's important and it's exactly the same."

Many of the CVN students are adults with full-time jobs, and as such, Jacobs estimates that 80 to 90 percent have their tuition reimbursed by their employer. The University of Phoenix estimates that a similar percentage of its own student body also has their tuition reimbursed by their employer.
 
"They have the full support of their companies," Jacobs says. "The fact that the employers are reimbursing them for their tuition is really a validation of our program and of distance learning."

"We've heard from a lot of students that they didn't feel they'd have been able to get that promotion or that next job without the skills and knowledge we provide," he says. And as the number of online students¿ increases, attitudes toward online degrees should continue to open up even further.

The bottom line¿
Randy Miller, CEO and founder of ReadyMinds, which offers distance career counseling to everyone from students in college to adult learners, says that just in the last two years, human resources departments have become more comfortable with online degrees.

"They're realizing a lot of quality applicants are going the nontraditional route--if you can still call it that--and they don't want to miss out on this quality applicant pool," he says.

Of course there will always be people--recruiters included--who are have reservations about new kinds of learning. But for some perspective, consider a survey by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) that found that almost 70 percent of corporate supervisors rated the value of a distance degree as "just as valuable" or "more valuable" than resident-school degrees in the same field. The survey pool, however, was comprised of managers with at least one employee who had earned a degree through a DETC-accredited distance program, suggesting that familiarity breeds acceptance for quality programs.

In the end, Miller says, job seekers of all types have many of the same challenges. "It really comes down to the individual--they still have to distinguish themselves," he says.

About the Author

Jennifer Mulrean is a writer on MSN Money. She has written articles for the Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, and In Style magazine. She lives in Seattle.

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House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

Tags: Pell Grant, Scholarships, Department of Education, accreditation processGrant Programs Eligible for ENOCIS Students Await New Legislation in Congress observes University...

House Panel Moves to Raise Pell Grant and Block Accreditation Changes

By KELLY FIELD

Washington

A Congressional panel has moved to block the Education Department from making changes in the accreditation process, approving a spending measure that would cut off funds for such changes.

The bill, which would finance most higher-education programs for the 2008 fiscal year, would also raise the maximum Pell Grant by $390, the largest increase since the end of the Clinton administration, and provide $750-million in additional money for the National Institutes of Health.

An appropriations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill this month, one week after Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, warned Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings that he would seek to stop her department from using its regulatory authority to transform the way colleges are accredited. The department is considering regulations that would introduce new measures of "student-learning outcomes" into accreditation and prohibit colleges from denying the transfer of academic credits solely on the basis of the sending college's type of accreditation.

In a floor speech late last month, Mr. Alexander, who served as education secretary during the administration of President Bush's father, said he would offer an amendment to legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act that would prohibit the department from issuing any final regulations on accreditation until after Congress passes the much-delayed reauthorization bill. The Senate is expected to take that bill up later this month.

"Congress needs to legislate first," Senator Alexander said. "Then the department can regulate."

Cheryl Smith, an aide to Rep. David R. Obey, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, said the spending limitation in the education appropriations measure was also meant to signal that the department should wait for Congress to act. Mr. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, added the spending restriction to the bill at the request of college lobbyists and presidents.

The measure still needs the approval of the full Committee on Appropriations before heading to the House floor for debate.

Outspending the President

Over all, the subcommittee's bill would provide $151.5-billion for federal labor, health, and education programs, an increase of nearly 5 percent over this year's spending levels and $10.6-billion more than President Bush proposed. The largest single increase in the bill would go to the Pell Grant program, which would receive $2-billion — or 14.6 percent — more in the 2008 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

The proposed $390 jump in the maximum Pell Grant would come on top of a $260 increase enacted this year. Combined, they bring the maximum Pell Grant to $4,700, $100 more than President Bush proposed in his most recent budget, released in February.

The bill would also restore funds for several education programs that the president had sought to eliminate, including the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program, or LEAP, which matches each dollar that states commit to need-based aid, and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which augment Pell Grants for needy students. Another campus-based program, Federal Work-Study, would see a gain of $138,000, to $980.5-million.

The federal TRIO college-preparation programs, which the president has proposed abolishing in the past, and for which he proposed level funds in his latest proposal, would get $40-million more under the House panel's bill, rising to $868.2-million. Gear Up, another college-preparation program for which the president proposed no increase, would get $20-million more, or $323.4-million.

Hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities would both receive an increase of almost 5 percent — $4.6-million and $11.4-million more, respectively.

Standing Pat With Perkins

Lobbyists for higher-education institutions said they were relieved that the House panel's proposal would increase the maximum Pell Grant without raiding other programs. President Bush's budget would have paid for the Pell Grant increase by slashing subsidies to student-loan companies and killing the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and the LEAP programs.

"This is the direction we need to be going in," said Stephanie Giesecke, director of budget and appropriations for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "We hope the Senate will at least match it."

The bill did not appear to provide any new money for "capital contributions" to the Perkins Loan program. Such contributions — along with institutional matching funds and proceeds from repaid loans — go into a pool of revolving funds from which colleges make new Perkins Loans to students from low- and middle-income families.

However, the bill would provide $65.5-million for Perkins Loans forgiveness, the same as in the current fiscal year. President Bush had proposed abolishing that program.

For the National Institutes of Health, the House's bill includes $29.65-billion, $1-billion more than the president's request, and a 2.6-percent increase over the current fiscal year. Mr. Obey called that the largest increase in four years, saying it would allow the agency to finance 545 more grants than it did this year. The NIH is the largest single source of funds for academic research.

The Association of American Universities, which represents leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada, said it was pleased that the committee had proposed a second straight increase for the agency after three years of flat federal support levels and despite the administration's proposed $511-million cut. "We need to restore momentum to NIH," said Robert M. Berdahl, the association's president.

But the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which has called on Congress to increase spending on the agency by 6.7 percent in each of the next three years, expressed disappointment that the proposed increase was below the rate of inflation. "The flat funding we have experienced over the past several years has had a devastating effect on the scientific enterprise," said Leo T. Furcht, the federation's president.

The bill rejects the president's plan to all but eliminate funds for the Health Professions program, which trains students from minority groups and disadvantaged backgrounds to be physicians, dentists, and other health professionals and encourages them to work in poor and rural areas. Instead it would provide a 24-percent increase for the program, to $228.3-million.That money would help offset a deep cut passed two years ago, when the program's budget was halved, to $145.2-million.

The panel also approved an 11-percent increase for a related program that supports nursing education, which Mr. Bush proposed reducing in 2008.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Government & Politics
Volume 53, Issue 42, Page A21

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The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) Appoints Admission Officers in Latin America and the Caribbean

Tags: Ministerio de Educacion, Martin Torrijos, TOEFL, universal languageThe Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) Appoints Admission Officers in Latin America and the Caribbean

The launching of the ENOCIS Basic English program for Spanish speaking students has attracted such an influx of students that the Enoch Olinga College has found it necessary to establish Admissions Representatives in 21 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. ENOCIS hopes that this more personal attention to its student body will create a higher level of student satisfaction with the program through more personal attention to students’ needs. Previously, ENOCIS used a centralized office in the United States to address the requests of students around the world. One of the directors, David W Morris, commented, “I hope this more personal attention in each student’s native language and culture will improve the educational experience,” adding, “It is evident that one universal language needs to be developed around the world to decrease misunderstanding and confusion between diverse races and cultures.”

The Enoch Olinga College of Intercultural Studies, Inc. is an online institute of higher education whose purpose is to provide the equivalent of a four-year college degree to international students who, for various reasons, have trouble physically attending an accredited college or university. There is a great demand for higher education in many parts of the world that cannot be met locally, due to limited resources, lack of qualified faculty, or the expense of attending traditional brick-and-mortar institutions. The expensive option of traveling to a foreign country for higher education is not available to more than a few people.

Education and access to opportunity is what separates technologically “developed” from “developing” nations. There should not be such a binding relationship between excellence, the capability of serving one’s community, and the financial resources to educate children to technologically advance their nations.

“The objective is to realize a massive transformation of the curriculum, a proposal that intends to improve the quality of education, to benefit the students and the development of our own country.”-Dr Miguel A Canizales, Ministro de Educación de Panamá

“The only way we are goig to break this vicious cycle of poverty, is to educate and improve the quality of life of our children.”-Presidente de Panama Martín Torrijos, 7 de Abril, 2006

The Enoch Olinga College is a project developed with the assistance of the Sons of David Foundation and with the cooperative guidance of the Ministry of Government and Justice of the office of Political Indigenista in Panama.  ENOCIS is designed to offer educational opportunities to the underserved peoples of the world. For more information on the ENOCIS project, please visit the web site www.enocis.org. Education: the tool to break the chains of poverty.  

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