I almost have my associates in business administration, and would like to finish my associates and bachelors degree online. What are the easiest but still accepted and accredited schools for this?
I have been doing some research on finding the best online school, but I haven’t been able to find a lot of information. I have been reading about University of Phoenix and I have decided this is definitely not the school for me. I would like to attend an online school that is not advertised on TV daily, so that my future employer will not automatically assume that my degree was obtained online.
Open to all suggestions at this time(other than UoP).
Thanks
It seems to me you’re trying to eat the cake and have it, which usually doesn’t end well. It starts with aiming for an online degree. You are fully aware, I suppose, that online degrees, per se, make most employers suspicious. Then you want as easy an online degree as possible. On the other hand, you want an online degree that’s still “accepted and accredited”. Reconciling these conflicting goals is really not easy: While not every online school is a diploma mill, there’s a lot of diploma mills, and the line between ´"diploma mill" and “genuine, but easy and not very prestigous online university” is a fine one that can get blurry at times.
Or, to put it differently: What you aks for is an online university that has a reputation for being easy. Do you really think such a degree is going to help you a lot? Wouldn’t it be preferable to spend the extra time and effort to get a degree from a university that’s beyond doubt?
You can always buy a diploma from a company that will have an actual physical address and appear to all the world as if it is a bona fide college or university. If they’re not going to check on your degree, they aren’t going to check on accreditation - and they probably won’t check. Although with the tougher job market and more people trying to inflate their skill set, maybe companies have actually taken to doing their due diligence.
Naaaahhhhhh.
TANSTAAFL.
Really. It’s true. Learn it, live it, love it.
Considering South University, which can be attended completely on campus as well. The diploma would not state that it was received online, so would this look normal(as in fine) to a potential employer?
Most employers will ask you about your degree, especially if this will be a first job after obtaining a degree. They will want to see a transcript of your grades, inquire about classes, etc. Unless you intend to be dishonest about the manner in which you obtained your degree, it will become apparent in an interview that you obtained your degree online.
Obtaining an online degree is not a bad thing. Being shady about it, is.
I’ve merged two similar threads with basically the same question. Since the OP is looking for advice, I’ve also moved this from GQ to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
According to Wikipedia, South University is a for-profit school, as is the University of Phoenix, which you rejected because it’s advertised so heavily. I have a strong preference for traditional not-for-profit private or public universities. It’s somewhat irrational, but the for-profit schools are notorious for overpromising the employment opportunities to prospective students, being more expensive than traditional schools and leaving students with lots of student loan debt without good career prospects. See this article from the New York Times, for instance.
I’d recommend exploring the online offerings of the public colleges and universities in your state. They’re likely to be less expensive and the programs will be more prestigious. (Also see this article about how traditional schools are expanding online course offerings because the number of students is exploding but the classroom facilities are limited.)
I got my MBA from a local well-respected school to counter the negative perception of the accelerated program (both live and online) BA. How much work do you really want to do? Taking the perceived fast/easy route doesn’t always work out so well.
I took an online course at Ivy Tech when I was attending Purdue University. It was a senior (400) level class (technical writing) and it was the easiest class I ever took in my 4 years there.
Of course the school has “tech” in the title so I don’t know if that would detract from its appeal. They also have real campuses, though.
In my opinion, the very fact that they don’t mention the online teaching character of the degree makes this shady. If it’s a good university setting up a serious online program with requirements comparable to a brick-and-mortar course - that’s fine, but then why would you have to hide that fact?
I’ve never heard of a brick and mortar school that advertises that you took online classes on the degree.
YMMV depending on whether you took a course that was taught entirely online, or whether you were enrolled in a course that was, overall, brick and mortar but had some online components to it. In the latter case, most universities would probably not bother indicating so on the degree certificate, but in the former case some do (and in my opinion rightly so - it’s a question of honesty for the student and of preserving reputation for the school).
My alma mater Oxford, for instance, offers online courses; and while I have never personally seen a degree certificate earnt on the basis of an online course, my academic transcripts do mention that the mode of teaching was “attendance”; so I suspect that either they do mention the correspondence teaching mode on transcripts for students in these programmes, or at least that the lack of the “attendance” label on correspondence degree certificates would signal to anybody familiar with Oxford degrees that the course was taken online.
South University would not impress me one whit more than University of Pheonix.
Why? Because I’ve never heard of it.
So I’d turn to Google, and before I even finished typing the words “South University”, I’ve got ads telling me about it’s online nature.
Count me generally with those that say that “easy to get a degree from” and “has a good reputation” are often incompatable.
A lot of state universities offer degrees online. I got about half of my bachelors on line out of the Minnesota State College and University System (which isn’t the University of Minnesota - its State Cloud State, Metropolitan State, Winona State, Mankato State - i.e. the colleges no one outside Minnesota or maybe Wisconsin and the Dakotas have heard of). Ones in state to you are usually cheaper.
All this talk about South University, well, I’m actually in school there right now, though, it is their Pharmacy School, not the business school. South is not a “diploma mill”, though they are a little expensive. The degree is legit though.
I know some people who did the business school online, it wasn’t “easy”, so don’t think that South will be easy just because it is for-profit and online.
I was in a position many years ago to be the first interviewer for many seeking a position with the company I was with. It was an IT company that was looking for an addition to the tech department.
I would say that 75% of the applicants had a reference to a degree to a local IT computer training “university.” In fact, IIRC, only one did not have a 4.0 average, that poor guy had something like a 3.89. Their educational achievement meant absolutely nothing. Needless to say, people who interview aren’t blind about that sort of thing.
Shortcuts look like shortcuts to employers.
UoP is a good university; you shouldn’t dismiss it simply because it advertises on
TV. So do DeVry and a bunch of others.
This issue is this: the school needs to be accredited by one of the regional associations of colleges and schools, which UoP is. If the school isn’t accredited. don’t waste your time and money.