The Most Popular Degrees
According to national surveys taken from The Sloan Consortium's Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States 2006, "nearly 3.2 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2005 term, a substantial 35 percent increase over the 2.3 million reported the previous year."
Clearly, you are not alone in considering the benefits of earning your Bachelors degree online. No matter if you are interested in nursing degrees, health care education, business schools, or even a career in construction management, online education makes sense for a variety of reasons for a variety of people. Perhaps you already have employment and family responsibilities or, maybe the thought of attending a traditional college institution doesn't appeal to you. For these reasons, every year more and more people choose to earn their degree online. Online schools give you the flexibility and affordability to quickly earn the degree you have always wanted. This site is designed to give you the tools to find the right online school for quickly reaching your goal of earning an online degree.
Online Education Facts and Statistics
Online schools are monitored by The Sloan Consortium – an association of institutions and organizations that promotes quality online education through the sharing of knowledge to both program providers and students. The following statistics outline recent trends in online education based on enrollment numbers, teaching information, and growth predictions for online degrees. These statistics are taken from one of their latest publications, Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States 2005:
"Overall online enrollment increased from 1.98 million in 2003 to 2.35 million in 2004. The online enrollment growth rate is over ten times that projected by the National Center for Education Statistics for the general postsecondary student population."
"Sixty-five percent of higher education institutions report that they are using primarily core faculty to teach their online courses compared to 62% that report they are using primarily core faculty to teach their face-to-face courses."
"Public institutions continue to express a strong belief that online education is key to their long-term strategy (67% in 2003, 66% in 2004, and 74% in 2005). However, Private, nonprofit schools which make this part of their long-term strategy are still in the minority, but the percentage continues to increase from 35% in 2003 to 37% in 2004 to 41% in 2005."
"Although online education continues to penetrate into all types of institutions, a relatively stable minority of Chief Academic Officers (28% in 2003 compared with 31% in 2005) continue to believe that their faculty fully accept the value and legitimacy of online education."
It is evident that more students are taking the distance education route to earn their bachelor's degree, but the question remains are online degrees accepted by potential employers? One of the largest online career management services, Vault Inc., conducted an online survey in which 85% of employers feel that online degrees are more acceptable today than they were just five years ago.
Benefits of Distance Education
A College education online has many obvious advantages, but there are probably some benefits to distance education that you may not have thought through. First of all, with an online college course, you can work at your own pace at any time of any day. This allows you to learn in your own way and take ownership of how quickly you earn your online bachelors degree. Secondly, the student anonymity of online schools fosters more participation due to the lack of intimidation based on physical attributes. This also makes online college professors and instructors more approachable. Third, online education embraces the use of new technologies. We are in a world where technology is in constant growth and employers look for people who welcome this growth and are knowledgeable with new technologies. All of these reasons support the viability for you to earn a bachelor degree online with the ability to carry out your daily activities and commitments.
Using the Bachelors Degree Online Site
Bachelors Degree Online is designed to help you find and receive information on online schools, distance education and more specifically online bachelor degrees. To aid you in the process of making an educated decision on whether an online degree is right for you, we have outlined recent statistics, benefits, and tips in finding the right online college degree programs on the opening page. We have also included a series of articles highlighting topics related to online education located along the bottom footer. A search of the internal pages will provide specific online college degree descriptions according to the categories listed on the left. Just click on the category of your choice to research online degree options in that area of study. On both this opening page and remaining pages, you will find online schools that offer a variety of online college degree programs (more degree specific on remaining pages). To research a specific online school, just click on the online college of your choice listed in the left column.
Life After College
- Considering Graduate School
- Finding a Job
- Navigating Your First Job
- Post-Graduate Expenses
- Where to Go After College
Beyond Your Bachelor's Degree
Frequently Asked Questions
- Do traditional universities offer online bachelor's degrees?
- Do you get national holidays and breaks in online school?
- Does every class last as long as a regular school semester?
- How many online courses can I take at one time?
- More Frequently Asked Questions »
