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In a 2012 poll of U.S. employers, respondents were asked which types of colleges they preferred to hire from. The results were unambiguous: Company executives and hiring managers considered online colleges inferior to every type of on-campus college. They even preferred for-profit colleges to online colleges, despite the [shady track record](https:\/\/billmoyers.com\/story\/the-for-profit-college-scam-that-these-students-are-still-paying-for\/) of many for-profit schools.<\/p>\n
The curious thing about the survey is not the result, but the way the question was posed. Executives were asked to evaluate a variety of on-campus programs\u2014\u201cflagship public,\u201d \u201cprivate non-profit,\u201d and so on. In contrast, only one choice was given for digital education: online. The unstated assumption is that [online learning](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/online-learning) comes in just one flavor\u2014plain vanilla\u2014while on-campus offerings are far richer\u2014caramel fudge swirl, mint chocolate chip, rum raisin, take your pick. Instead of teasing out insightful responses, the question encouraged respondents to fall back on bias.<\/p>\n
The creators of that 2012 survey, the _Chronicle of Higher Education_ and the public radio program _Marketplace_, never followed up with another one. But let\u2019s suppose they did and that in their next survey, the pollsters posed questions as nuanced for online degrees as for on campus. Companies would then be asked to select among online options that reflect the way virtual education is actually offered, with a list of categories comparable to that for on-campus programs\u2014flagship public, private nonprofit, and so on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSociety has not quite accepted the legitimacy of virtual learning… But over the longer term, when a younger generation fills positions at companies, they will be more receptive\u201d<\/p>\n
Even then, the poll would still be missing one critically important mode of delivering education: blended learning\u2014the pairing of online and in-class approaches within the same program. It\u2019s hard to find a conventional classroom these days that does not have a digital or Web component.\u00a0It could be\u00a0a flipped classroom, in which lectures are typically online, and\u00a0face-to-face discussion is reserved for homework review and projects; online interactions with instructors and classmates;\u00a0social media;\u00a0or dozens of other computer- and Web-mediated activities.<\/p>\n
That means it\u2019s highly likely that a student graduating this year will have had some sort of virtual experience in pursuit of his or her degree. And so while the employer survey suggested that \u201conline\u201d and \u201con campus\u201d are distinct from one another, in fact that dichotomy has not existed for at least a decade.<\/p>\n
Indeed, for students who receive their diplomas at the most selective schools, the distinction between online and on campus vanishes entirely. Andy DiPaolo, executive director emeritus of [Stanford](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/stanford) University\u2019s Center for Professional Development, told me:\u00a0\u201cWe never made a distinction between online and on campus. Your degree doesn\u2019t say you earned it online. Students have the option of going online or on campus or taking a blended degree. It\u2019s a Stanford degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Likewise, a degree earned from [NYU](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/nyu), University of Michigan, and a number of other schools do not indicate whether it was earned online or on campus. An engineering student who completes her master\u2019s degree online through one of these programs will have the same chances finding a job, getting a raise, or being promoted as she would had she earned her degree on campus. Data from the latest online graduating class at NYU\u2019s Tandon School of Engineering show that nearly three quarters received a promotion or a raise after earning their degree, and all of them were employed six months after graduation.<\/p>\n
These results suggest that employers now are more likely to accept job applicants who\u2019ve had an [online education](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/online-education). But there are still some hold outs. \u201cWe\u2019re in an era of educational transition,\u201d says [Amy Lui Abel](https:\/\/www.conference-board.org\/bio\/index.cfm?bioid=1343), managing director of human capital at The Conference Board, a business consulting firm. \u201cSociety has not quite accepted the legitimacy of virtual learning. There is still a lot of suspicion. But over the longer term, when a younger generation fills positions at companies, they will be more receptive, unlike older managers who have little familiarity with digital education.\u201d<\/p>\n
One 2013 study that looked at the market value of online degrees confirms Abel\u2019s insight. It concluded that an employer\u2019s attitude toward online education tends to be more positive if he or she has had some personal experience with online learning. \u201cAs more people attend online schools over time and the number of graduates sitting on the hiring side of the desk increases, we can anticipate more favorable treatment of online university graduates,\u201d the study\u2019s authors noted.<\/p>\n
And so in comparing and contrasting online to on-campus degrees, it\u2019s important to tease out and appreciate the differences. The results shown in the graph above are suspect, because they do not reflect the real world of higher education today. Imagine if the survey respondents had been asked instead:\u00a0\u201cWould you prefer to hire graduates who earned their degrees online at Stanford or on campus at Fly-By-Night University?\u201d In this absurd choice, online would of course beat on campus hands down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
_About the Author:_<\/p>\n
_Robert Ubell is Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning at_ [_NYU\u2019s Tandon School of Engineering_](https:\/\/engineering.nyu.edu\/)_. A collection of his essays on digital education_, [Going Online: Perspectives on Digital Learning](https:\/\/www.routledge.com\/Going-Online-Perspectives-on-Digital-Learning\/Ubell\/p\/book\/9781138025325)_, was recently published by Routledge. He can be reached at_ [_bobubell@gmail.com_](mailto:bobubell@gmail.com)_._\u00a0_This is the third in a series on [MOOCs and online learning](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/moocs)._<\/p>\n
Original URL: https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/at-work\/education\/what-do-employers-really-think-about-online-degrees<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[  ](https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tag\/moocs) In a 2012 poll of U.S. employers, respondents were asked which types of colleges they preferred to hire from. The results were unambiguous: Company executives and hiring managers considered online colleges inferior to every type of on-campus college. They even preferred for-profit … Continue reading What Do Employers Really Think About Online Degrees?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobubell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}