I have an excellent career but for reasons of career opportunities I left college early and thus never competed my BS.
I do not need to complete my BS for my career but I would like to for personal reasons, and I would also like to start donating more time towards generic science literacy among the public and I feel that requires a degree to be credible.
However, being in the IT field my job does not allow me to commit to normal class schedule’s required by traditional classes.
I thought that finding an online program in math or physics would be easy, but it appears that they are not offered at the undergraduate level from umm lets say “established brick and mortar” schools.
I have worked through several of the science courses provided by MIT OpenCourseWare and I find it work well but while they are great to learn they do not offer a degree program.
But the concept works.
So I am asking , are my google skills just poor or is there a reason pure science degrees are not offered online at the BS level?
It’s hard to do science labs over the interwebs. I’d recommend you investigate your local public colleges. Many of them will allow you to take a lot of classes online, and offer weekend/night classes for stuff that must be done in person, like labs and whatnot.
I’m in a similar situation to you (full time career, no need for the BS but am doing it anyway) and I take 8-10 credits per semester, usually with only one class in-person and the rest online.
Also, the mentality at universities is that your degree also reflects the fact that you were actually in class, with your peers, interacting, recitations, group projects, etc. The whole “campus experience” enchilada. Some schools go so far as to require (or really encourage via their fee structure) that you live in campus dorms.
So, watching some streaming videos of lectures and taking an exam isn’t the “whole picture” in their mind.
Whether that “campus experience” is actually critical to an education is debatable but you can’t get around the fact that it’s currently ingrained into what a top-tier college education is.
I am not sure that I would agree with that on math and physics, plus those lab functions should possible to complete from a remote setting, they should be repeatable.
And with physics/math you would not be using chemicals that would require supervision.
I have signed up for classes several times, but like I said my career often requires me to work odd hours or drop everything, I work in a very specialized area of the IT field and even when I was working for two of the top 10 internet sites I never had a peer, who could take over those responsibilities. Not because I am special, I am actually quite replaceable but people who do what I do tend to be expensive and thus we are typically under-staffed.
I have plenty of time to do coursework, I do not have the ability to commit to being in class.
I will contact the U of I on their mathematics program, thank you.
I am in my late 30’s so the “campus experience” is something I do not need to repeat
Sometimes, you just can’t have it both ways. Maybe you need to make a decision about keeping your current job vs. committing to school. I’m sure you could find another position with better-defined hours that would make attending class easier. Maybe you’d have to take a pay cut. You need to figure out how much attaining the degree means to you.
I thought about finding a hood that way, but I’d still have to worry about chemical storage and disposal. This is not something an online school will want to encourage students to do. Also, since a properly functioning hood draws about 100 cuft/min, the place put the hood will either be really expensive to heat and cool, or just ambient temperature. I suppose you might be able to turn some hoods off, but many reactions I would do go 24 hours or more.
I can relate, my friend, I can certainly relate. I spent 13 years chasing a four-year degree, and never got the piece of paper. I, too, have been trying to find a “hard science” online degree in engineering, or related field, and they just ain’t there.
The University was totally biased to on-campus students, and, although they heavily promoted their “commuter-friendly” campus, if you were not a dorm resident, you were not getting an engineering degree. I married young and had a child, and was working a full-time job while trying to get my degree, and every semester they would cancel some of the classes I had signed up for, and all the other sections of those classes were already full before I got the notice. They would cancel classes which were prerequisites or co-requisites for other classes, some I had already signed up for that sememster. They would cancel classes I had signed up for, which were only offered in the Fall Semester, so I could not take the other sections which used those as prerequisites in the Spring, and I had to wait over a year before I had the chance to take them again.
The professors and advisors were totally useless to me when I requested help to get a schedule together.
Recently, I have been looking to find an online resource which would allow me to finish my BS in Engineering, but, like you, I’m finding they are not there.
Mine is only really used because my garage is below the house, I live in Seattle where it rains often. I have the hood vented to the outside this way I can do painting/fiberglass and solvent work without having the vapors enter the house. The outside venting cost more then the hood did at auction.
DHMO,
Exactly, the frustrating part is that I was less then 10 credits from graduation with a BS in CS, but due to course offerings that would have required over a year to acquire. Now I would have to establish residency to get a degree which is often 30 credits…I am close to being happy with just learning and not completing because to be honest I will gain nothing from it in my career, but I feel that would be breaking a personal commitment to do it.
I have no desire to spend the to hours to obtain a CS degree at this point in my life, my resume trumps any college degree, any CS/IT/BA degree would just shove me into pure management.
Most schools require about 45 hours to be at that school for their academic residency requirement, I would rather do that in another field.
Thanks for the help though I appreciate everyones input.
Physics still needs physical experiments (no, it’s not a play on words).
UNED, the Spanish long-distance university, offers degrees in Math, Chemistry, Physics and several Engineering disciplines(1) but all of them require going to class for labwork one half-day/week, unlike most of their degrees (which can be studied completely at home).
While you can do math exercises on your own, they view the in-person interaction with the tutors as absolutely necessary in order to make the jump from “doing exercises” (i.e., applying formulas/procedures you’ve been taught) to being able to come up with your own formulas and procedures. If you can’t do this second part, you’re not a scientist.
(1) In Spain the university-level CS degree is more likely to be called Telecommunications Engineering (mostly focused on hardware) or Software Engineering than Computer Science, although there are degrees with this name too.
