How Will an Online Degree Help Your Job Prospects in the Current Economy

By Jane Apple

Despite improved numbers in Wall Street, unemployment rates continue to hurt the economy. While job opportunity does exist, the competition is stiff as thousands of people in every industry imaginable vie for select positions. Its well known that having a college degree will give most candidates an edge over those without. As online college programs gain in popularity due to their convenience and often cost advantage, questions arise concerning how they compare to the traditional university degree. While the U.S. Department of Labor sees a light at the end of the downtrodden economic tunnel, predicting that all seven of the major job categories will expand in terms of job opportunity over the next decade, many future students will ask themselves if their diploma was earned online or at a campus university?

The Trends: While the world wide web has been around for some time now, online colleges and schools have not. And those that were around didn't draw the same number of students as did campus-based schools. In the last 7 years though, those numbers have changed. According to a Sloan Consortium survey of online courses the number of people enrolled in online courses has more than doubled since 2002 and that the number of enrollees increased by more than 12 percent last year to nearly 4 million.

While in the past some employers cast a negative eye towards applicants with online college degrees, the number of good online schools has significantly improved the general perception of degrees from these colleges.

How Grads with Online College Degrees Can Flourish: Employers concerns over an online degree generally stem from whether or not its from an accredited degree program and the teaching methods utilized. Fortunately for students currently looking for accredited online college degree programs, there are a number of resources to assist with the filtering process. A simple online college search of accredited degree programs will deliver a host of results, including resource sites that show provide information on several accredited colleges at once. Sites including the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's maintain databases of more than 7,000 degree-granting and non-degree-granting institutions in addition to 17,000 programs that are accredited by United States accrediting organizations.

Businesses Educate Online: Online training courses have become more commonplace in businesses " especially large corporations. It saves costs as employers don't have to pay for travel or training facilities, and it classes can often be attended a few hours at a time meaning lost time shouldn't be much of an issue. GlobeInvestor.com wrote, Today there's a good chance employees at a large corporation are themselves online students, maybe even the hiring manager. In a 2007 research study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) over 70% of the respondent companies offered tuition reimbursement for online degrees from regionally accredited colleges,.

Its all about the interview. Regardless of whether a degree came from an online college or campus based institution, its important to showcase a person's academic track record and how it pertains to the position applied for. Showing a potential employer the hard copies of transcripts, graded assignments, and research will serve well during the interview showing tangible evidence that highlight an online learning experience.

About the Author:

Finding the right college degree online is easy when you have a resource like DotSchools, which provides a college search for both online schools and campus universities.