What Inspired me to attend Capella University Online

Posted by Jennifer Buchholz on November 13th, 2008

Online education. When I first enrolled in my online program, I had one thing in mind - convenience! I was working full time, and taught college classes part time at night. I was trying to earn a PhD, but there was no way I could give up my life (and my livelihood) to go to a traditional school full time to do this. So I started looking for alternatives. I settled on Capella University in Minneapolis - just after it transitioned from being The Graduate School of America. I had already selected my degree program - Organization and Management, so I just needed to find out where to go. When selecting a school, I was looking into a number of comparative factors - accreditation, scheduling, cost, residency requirements, quality of instruction and rigor. I didn’t want to just spend money to get a degree and have it be meaningless once I was done. I would suggest that anyone considering online education start with those basic factors (although a residency doesn’t apply to most undergraduate degrees).

Accreditation - there are two levels of accreditation - regional and national. When selecting a school, you should know whether or not it is accredited. Generally, if it is accredited it will advertise this fact on the school’s website. Accreditation means that the school has passed a review (sort of a calibration) to ensure the degree is being earned, not just given. Accrediting bodies do a regular review of the schools to ensure the standards aren’t slipping. Generally, your credits have a stronger chance of transferring to another school when you attend an accredited school.

Scheduling - there are so many factors to scheduling, you will want to learn how each school does their schedule and how that works with your schedule. For example, one school I teach for has online classes that go for 5 weeks and most students take one class at time, while another has classes that go for 10 weeks and most students are taking 2 at a time. It is up to you to find a school that has a schedule that will work best with your learning style and attention span. There are advantages and disadvantages to all the options.

Cost - look at this factor closely. How do you plan to pay for your education? Will you get tuition reimbursement from your employer? Will you get help from financial aid? Do you have the resources yourself to pay for school out-of-pocket. Some schools have fees per class or credit (make sure you know the breakdown of how those fees work so you can compare them fairly). Some schools have feels per semester or term - and you can take as many classes as you wish during that term while paying that flat amount. Knowing how the financials of school will work is essential to your long-term success.

Residency Requirements - this almost always required for PhD studies, but could be required for Master’s degree online programs as well. This is a time when you are required to physically attend a conference in-person. Again, how these work will vary by school, but find this out in advance.

Quality of instruction or rigor - accreditation is the first step to ensuring you will get a quality education. After that, you should do some additional research. Google the school you’re looking into and “review”. Look into news articles about the school. Find out what qualifications the instructors are required to have.

Making the decision to attend college online is a big decision, and often it is done swiftly, over the phone or over the web. Do your research to be sure that the structure of the education is what you want so you stick with it and see it through to graduation. I am still (slowly) finishing my final requirements for the dissertation and I hope graduation will not be far off!

Tags: capella university online, college online, online degree, online learning

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under Student Voices, Why I Considered Online Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.