this is gonna be more of a rant thread for me but i would like to know your opinions on online education to see if im the only one who thinks its totally bogus.   one of my "good" friends quit high school after sophomore year to go to cyber school.  so i thought ok whatever, thats his choice.  then he commuted to a college that was only 15-20 miles away but quit after one semester because "gas cost too much"  meanwhile he can afford to go on 2 vacations each summer and his wife have two brand new 2010/2011 cars.  anyway, now his wife (they got married when they were 18 ugh) is bragging how he got a 3.9 this semester and got a fulltime job at NReas? im not sure what kind of company they are.  well anyway, he only has to go to school for a maximum of 3 hours a day and hes a business major i believe, so its nothing too difficult but not too easy either.  i think the name of the online school is university of phoenix, not entirely sure.  well anyway, my thing is, when an employer sees his school to someone who went to a traditional 4-year school who has say, idk a 3.6ish gpa and holds a part-time job, who is that employer going to hire?  it just seems quite ridiculous to me.  there are certain cases where online education would be a good idea.  for example, say someone already has a degree and maybe wants to get a minor or something on the side while he/she works, then i say go for online education, but to base your entire career on an online source with no real human interaction just seems a little crazy to me.  anyway, dont bust my chops too much for that rant, most of it is out of being disgusted, and dont say i could be jealous either cuz im an eet major (electrical engineer technology) with a 3.6 gpa with an internship at cnx gas this summer. anyway, what do you think about online education.

My older brother is doing it right now.

He is the "Guinnea Pig" whose results will affect my decision.

It's a fucking joke.  They're only offering Japanese III online next semester here at UNO, and I'm incredibly annoyed.  Japanese I/II consisted of two things:  1. a strong in class component consisting of the teacher explaining each chapter and the class working through verbal and written exrecises together to better understand what was being taught, and 2. weekly online tests.    If you remove the in class portion, then you're left with basic tests re-asking you all the questions that are in the book.  What's the point?  I could just be teaching myself.  Actually, I AM teaching myself, meanwhile I'm paying the same price as I would be paying if I were actually going to a physical classroom and interacting with a teacher.

It's a fucking joke.  They're only offering Japanese III online next semester here at UNO, and I'm incredibly annoyed.  Japanese I/II consisted of two things:  1. a strong in class component consisting of the teacher explaining each chapter and the class working through verbal and written exrecises together to better understand what was being taught, and 2. weekly online tests.    If you remove the in class portion, then you're left with basic tests re-asking you all the questions that are in the book.  What's the point?  I could just be teaching myself.  Actually, I AM teaching myself, meanwhile I'm paying the same price as I would be paying if I were actually going to a physical classroom and interacting with a teacher.

I was thinking about doing this,but I have doubts. I was thinking about some kind of socialology thing,as that kind of stuff fascinates me.

I have no issue with it, if you're out in the middle of nowhere or you don't have the time to commit fine. But if given the choice I think it would be a shame to miss proper university. You get to meet many new people and lecturers etc who you can interact with directly and get to know them, network etc. You get access to great resources aswell. Its not something that a person should willingly give up if they have the chance in my opinion

However I certainly would prefer a person do an internet course then do nothing at all.

To be honest it's the employers who will make the decision on the worth of an online degree.

I wouldn't view it quite as high, but you can still get a very good education over the internet if you apply yourself.  This is based on me taking a couple courses online at my university so I didn't have to spend quite as much time at school, and had the freedom of participating in a class when I had the time. 

The first class I took was Astronomy 106, and I thought it was a complete and total joke.  We had a lab book that we had to do, and could choose out 10 of them.  It turned out that there were 10 of them you could do that involved never once going in and getting hands on experience with a telescope or anything of that sort.  The online homework was easy, and the proctored exams were easy. 

The second was Econ 206 (Microeconomics).  I also took Econ 195 and 205 at my school, and I will say that I learned more through the online course than I did through the courses at the school.  We used a program called Aplia for homework, which was also used in Econ 205, so in that aspect, both those classes were the same.  Each week, we also had to participate in online discussions on a school forum with our classmates and answer economic questions and our thoughts about them and how our current chapter applies to them.  The teacher committed some serious time towards these forums, and would respond to what we said, put forth his own thoughts, etc.  The proctored tests for this course were just as difficult as a test I would have in a course I take on campus.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that it really matters on the teacher and/or methods of teaching, as well as how much effort you actually want to put towards it.  Personally, I would say a 3.9 gpa, even for online courses, is pretty damned good.

I find it hard to understand what their costs are. Doing a quick search for university of pheonix, their tuition is about 10k a year. That's about as much as my local state university and way more than my local state community college. With no campus, no labratories, no clubs what the hell is all that money going to?

But as for the question, I've always heard that you get out of them what you put into them. I had a friend do an online course in .net programming, got a job making 25 dollars an hour as soon as he graduated, and was fired six months later because he clearly had no idea what the hell he was doing. He passed the tests, got his diplomas but apparently when put into an actual working environment he didn't know anything about what it is he had actually just done in online tests. Being able to be on campus, make connections and there is the social pressure to actually succeed, and know what the hell you're doing. At least if you care about going to school and not just drinking and being stupid. I could picture taking a purely online course as essentially devolving into a game where all I have to do is complete the quiz, and as long as I test well it doesn't matter if I understand what the hell I'm doing or not. But I guess that can be true on a campus. Hmmm, I think it might just be too early to tell. Online universities are fairly new, ultimately the job market with dictate whether they are worth it. I still feel intuitively like it's better to actually be in a class interacting with students and proffessors though.

Yes, it can become a "game" to just do as little as possible, but the exact same can be said about going to school on campus.  As accountants, my parents have seen 100's of applicants for accounting jobs where the people have 4 year (on campus) degrees.  They don't have the faintest clue what the hell they are doing in regards to accounting.  Simply being at a school shouldn't mean anything more in regards to whether or not somebody can apply it.  Having a good teacher and applying yourself during school is what teaches you these things.  And as I mentioned in my post, I had an online teacher in Econ 206 that did an extremely good job, and I learned a TON in the class because of the way he taught.