A Online College

Online College Interviews, Resources and Breaking News

Western Governors University has received a 1.2 million investment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study how online college programs can boost college completion rates for low income students.

This initiative is part of the larger initiative of the Gates foundation to increase college completion rates for low income students.

“College enrollment rates have grown rapidly over the last 40 years, but completion rates have not kept pace” according to an article at the gates foundation website.

This will be an interesting study.  Especially if Western Governors University can find data that proves that online college education helps to boost completion rates for low income students.  That would be a major shot in the arm for the future of online colleges in my opinion and perhaps open the door to further grants from good charitable organizations like the Gates Foundation.

It makes sense to me that an online college can help lower income students.  A lot of, if not most low income students need to maintain some sort of job at the same time that they are taking classes.  So if they can have more flexibility in their ability to complete their college education, it only makes sense that it would increase completion rates. 

That is my own unscientific understanding of the advantage of online college programs for students.

It sure will be interesting to find out what the results of this study are after WGU completes it.  According to them, it will focus on :

• The effectiveness of the WGU academic model for low-income students ages 18-26;
• Interventions that improve the success and graduation rates for these students; and
• Federal and state advocacy efforts that address issues surrounding technology-delivered, competency-based education

There is a good article from the sentinelsource.com that talks about how online college degrees are becoming more accepted by employers.

Nearly 4 million people took a college course online in fall 2007, according to a survey of 2,500 colleges and universities by the Babson Survey Research Group, the College Board and the Sloan Consortium, a group of universities and colleges and suppliers of services, equipment and tools.

That is quite a large number of people taking online college classes, although I am not sure why their data is from 2007, that is quite a long time ago.  I am going to have to find some more recent statistics on the acceptance of online college degrees or its growing popularity to see where we stand right now if at all possible.

Here is a little tool that might help us gauge how popular online college education is becoming. 

This is a graphical representation of the total number of times that the word online college has either appeared in text printed sources or electronic online type sources. Now I am a little bit confused how the term online college would even be showing up previous to 1994.  But nevertheless it is quite clear from the chart that there has been an explosion in popularity of this term. Scientific results here? Well not necessarily but good enough for me.

Anyway, the article I referenced in the beginning of this post goes on to say about how important accreditation is and there is another good quote which I like:

“I think it’s becoming commonplace,” she said. “If a person has acquired a degree through online education I think it’s appreciated … It shows great motivation on the applicant’s part. We can’t all just drop out for four years.”

Great point!  I really think it should be appreciated if someone goes through the hard work and effort to get an online college degree.  A student taking on the task of any type of higher education should be applauded in my opinion, whether it is an online college education or not is a mute point. It is still a lot of hard work and effort with a lot of good intentions.

Pretty soon I am going to start sending out interview questions to several online colleges and start profiling them here right at AOnlineCollege dot com.  I want to do this because I think it is a good way of getting a bit more color on the online college choices available out there.

The online colleges I will interview will be accredited online colleges and will be scattered throughout the entire United States.  And after all why not?  That is by definition one of the primary selling points of any online college, that distance is an non factor.  So I am hoping to get a good sample to choose from.

More specifically all of the online colleges I interview at least for this first phase of interviews will be accredited by the DETC Accrediting Commission which is listed by the US Department of Education as the “nationally recognized accrediting agency” for distance education institutions. What that means in plain english is that the online colleges I interview will all have a accreditation from one of the most respected agencies in the United States.

The interview questions will cover just some basics of their approach to online college education and what they offer in terms of support and services to students.

Over time it will be interesting to see the variety of answers we get from the various online colleges I interview and hopefully you will gain something from the information and visit their sites if you find you want more information.  Feel free to use the search feature on this site to find info about specifics you may be looking for.

I just think this is a good way to start getting some information on some of the leading online colleges out there today. 

If you have any additional questions you want me to ask then please use the relevant ‘submit a question form’ at the very top of the site and I will be sure to include those questions as well.

I am excited about this project !  I think it will be fun to learn more about what popular online colleges are doing out there and what they have to offer. I hope this will be a good base to start with in terms of hunting for a good online college education.

Thanks for listening

Since this is the first posting here at a online college I thought it makes sense to talk a little bit about trying to answer the question “Should I go to an online college or not?”.

To me, the answer to this question is pretty much the same as “Should I go to college or not?” Because in both cases what we are talking about is higher education.  It just so happens that the online college form of education is slightly different, but still in the end achieves the same results.  I mean in both cases you are applying yourself towards higher learning, learning a skill, trade or profession that ultimately down the road will benefit you in terms of earning power and personal growth and societal contribution.

Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely think there are some differences between a regular college and an online college, but for the purposes of determining whether one should go to college or not they are basically the same.

So should you go to college or not?

Well, everyone is different and has different goals in life and outlook. 

I think the answer depends in large part on what your definite chief aim in life is.  Some of you may have heard that term before but it comes from a book by Napolean Hill called Think and Grow Rich. It is a great book actually and I highly recommend it to everyone who is starting out and trying to figure out what they want to do with the rest of their life. 

By the way, I think that other book that came out a while ago, The Secret copies the original ideas founded by Napolean Hill.  In fact there are probably a lot of other philosophers who have copied his ideas.  But anyway I didnt want to get into a tangent or rant about that.  Just know that Napolean Hill is the original founding father of the concept of controlling your thoughts to get what you want in life.

So what on earth does a definite chief aim have to do with going to an online college or not?

It is important because I think people really need to have a definite chief aim in their lives and try to decide this early on, because then everything else will flow from that and you will have success.  If you do not take the time to decide on a definite chief aim in your life, then your direction thereafter may be somewhat haphazard and confused and you may not get as much out of life as you want.

Take it from me! I am talking from first hand experience.  I went to a regular offline college when I was starting out and I have to tell you I was confused about what I wanted to do with my life and I was not sure about my real interests.  I wish someone would have told me at the time that I really need to decide what my definite chief aim in life is and then to go with it and never let go.

So you get my point. Before deciding on whether to go to an online college, try to figure out what your definite chief aim is.

Now maybe you already know what you want to study or learn as a college student. If that is the case, and you have been thinking about attending an online college then there are definitely specific factors to consider as you compare an online college to an offline college.  I am going to try to get into the plusses and minuses of both in a future posting.

What I wanted to emphasize in this post though is for the people out there who have been thinking about going to an online college but have not really even decided what their definite chief aim in life is.  So that was the point here. Decide what your definite chief aim is! and then worry about Online College versus offline college later.  And if you need some inspiration on figuring out what that is then go ahead and get the book Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill.