I’m a single dad to a (nearly) 3 year old. I never went to college because I had a good job right out of high school. Now I’m completely over it and would like to get an education and do something more interesting. So I have two questions.
What financial assistance is available to a single parent? I don’t think I could pay my own way right now. I see some federal grants for high schoolers, what about a 30 year old?
I work 8am-5pm and the only free time I have is when my daughter goes to bed (9pm) until I go to bed (1am), so that pretty much rules out attending a school in ‘meatspace’. Does an employer take an online degree seriously or will my application get chucked? I know we had a thread about University of Phoenix Online, but the one I am looking at is Strayer University which looks pretty legit, plus they have a campus nearby (if that makes a difference.) Any people who do hiring care to comment on how you would treat an application that said they went to that online college?
I have no answer to your question, but I do know that someone who might will first need to know what country, state/province, and probably even country/city you reside in.
I have never been in a position to evaluate job applications, so I’ll leave that question to others, apart from saying that you should, of course, check the school’s accreditation. (IIRC, Strayer and other for-profit colleges often have problems in that regard.) Anyway, here are a few thoughts from a prof’s perspective:
– What are you interested in studying, and why? (Some subjects work better as online degrees than others. Some are just not the same without the give and take of the classroom – and this includes some of the core courses that all students have to take.) A college that offers both face-to-face and online classes might be a good compromise, especially if they have a high population of older, working students and lots of classes scheduled at times that meet these students’ needs. (Are Saturday classes an option? How about getting a babysitter one night a week? If you can do either or both of these things, you may be able to find face-to-face classes that fit your schedule.)
– Is there any way you can get a job with shorter and / or more flexible work hours? In my experience, students who try to work full time and go to school full time nearly always end up shortchanging themselves – you can’t do both of these things well at the same time. (Note that a three-credit college course typically involves nine hours or more of study per week.) If reducing your work hours is not an option, going to school part time (1-2 classes a semester) might be your best bet.
– How good are you at learning things in an entirely text-based format? Online classes work better for people with some learning styles than others.
– Who is teaching the online classes? What’s the enrollment cap? Administrators at some schools try to pack as many students into these sections as possible, on the principle that they don’t have to worry about finding chairs and classroom space, and foist them off on overworked adjuncts. You don’t want to have 40 people in your freshman comp class, especially if the instructor has no job security and gets paid $1,500 a section.
Spain has had “long distance university” (UNED) for a long time; their diplomas are equivalent to any run-of-the-mill university and many employers consider it a plus that someone was so motivated that they went through UNED while employed or raising the kids. Both at the same time, wow. The USA doesn’t have this kind of history, though, I don’t know how employers there will look at these.
My cousin got her law degree (traditionally a subject matter considered, in Spain, a matter of “cramming the book during the last month”) through a newer long-distance institution and her courses involved movies of lectures as well as transcripts and chat facilities.
I took a couple of courses from UNED and they came with videotapes. This was a bit of a problem, as it was at a time when pretty much nobody I knew had a VCR any more - I was able to borrow the use of one from my high school. They do send movies by CD or let you download them, now (still can’t view them directly online, like my cousin would).
This op-ed piece from InsideHigherEd gives a good overview of some of the potential drawbacks and tradeoffs of online education (and some of the comments provide a rosier view).
Since you never went to college, I would check out the local community college. The one around here has many core courses online and that would help you through the first couple of years, are fully transferrable, and it would still leave your options open if in a couple of years you could take some evening classes, or continue with an online education.
But as others have said, be sure you check the accredidation of the school throughly. Nothing is worse than investing time and money into an education that is worth zilch…
Have you looked into whether any of your nearby “meatspace” colleges offer subsidized child care for students? Both my undergrad (public) and law school (private) offered on-campus all-day or part-day child care.
As someone who regularly review resumes for military personnel, I will tell you that distance learning/online program degrees are quite common for folks who do not have a BA/BS.
As far as hiring them goes, at our company, having the degree from a (real) online university will not get you eliminated from a job if it requires a BA/BS in our world, but if we’ve never heard of the school, you can bet I’ll look it up to see if it is a real school versus a diploma mill. Incidentally, this applies for Master’s degrees too. I’d say that having a degree from an online university like University of Phoenix, National University, or St. Leo’s (ones I see a lot) makes me scrutinize the rest of their resume closer than I would with someone with a degree from Harvard, but that’s about the only thing I do. To be honest, we also use it to our advantage because the guy/gal from University of Phoenix generally wants a lower salary than the Havard grad. If the two grads have the same skills and credentials, but the customer is price sensitive, the University of Phoenix person may actually have an advantage…
Professors also have to be good at teaching online. Being taught by a professor who can’t or won’t adjust to the Internet is a waste of time and money.
If you are serious about doing this, check out the University of Maryland’s University College. They’re entirely legit and this is what they’ve been doing, so they’re used to working adults with families. They can also help with aid since they’re public.