Ask HN: What is your opinion on online degrees these days? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your opinion on online degrees these days?

13 pointsnon-entity9 comments

Just curious. I'm mainly asking in reference to both online undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees, primarily in STEM subjects (mostly CS, engineering, mathematics, sciences like physics or chemistry).

Online schools have a negative legacy, supposedly because the first institutions to offer them were for-profit schools providing basically scams. Today, many respected private and public schools offer at least a few degrees fully online and with the recent COVID-19 crisis, many traditional students have been quickly and sloppily forced online, and in my experience, this has led to a lot of these students having much disdain towards online education, at least the process. Online education in all forms also gets touted as inferior due to lack of or reduced support and the loss of many labs which are too expensive or just not possible to replicate in home. Many argue the content delivery is worse, often old and that the program from an online degree is low quality in general. But what about credentialing? Most degrees from a legitimate school of course, won't have any explicit indication it was done online, however there are a handful of cases, where I imagine it could be deduced.

I'd prefer this not become a thread on whether university education is good or bad in general, or derail too much into something about alternative online education such as MOOCs (although there are a handful of schools offering degrees on large MOOC platforms, which is an interesting angle to discuss).

Basically, online schools lack credibility. There is no real way to know the quality of graduates the online schools are producing.

We've had correspondent schools forever. Also, anyone, that wants to, can go to a library and learn whatever they want. Right now, online schools are just a different flavor of those.

I think online schools need to follow some of the qualifications regular universities follow. 1) there should be an accreditation body that accredits online schools

2) Tests and projects need to be proctored

3) There also needs to be a way for students to get to know each other

4) Also, having someone to help you understand what you are doing wrong is very important.

Online schools are a great way to continue your education, once you have graduated, but as the primary way to get educated citizens they have a long way to go.

I think in time there will not be 2 different methods of learning but a hybrid of the two. Ultimately, having a combination of regular school and online education will produce a better quality graduate.

> There is no real way to know the quality of graduates the online schools are producing.

That can be said for any higher education. The only way to clearly address that is to measure the performance of graduates over 5-10 years compared to a pseudo-random mix of graduates from the same programs of other schools over the same time interval.

Traditional education is at least partially a signalling mechanism. Some of that is necessarily created by limited physical space, which enforces enrollment caps.

Online education has the possibility to be effectively free at scale, but in the process it loses its value for signalling. For an online degree to be truly viewed as equivalent to a traditional university degree, supply will have to be limited, enrollment hurdles will need to be raised, and cost increased. This is a tragedy, but I don't see a reasonable other alternative if employers continue to value the signalling piece.

Online schools/courses will have to adapt to the Open University(OU) model. Here I am describing the Indian OU because I am aware of the workings of one of them(Maharashtra Open University). India has many OUs, all funded by governments(central and state level). This is because not everyone in India can afford expensive education, most poor people work and study at the same time so OUs help them with managing both, and the population is huge as well(which are the same goals of MOOCs such as edX and Coursera). So how do they manage this? Well, the Indian OUs have local chapters, they hire locals to conduct "explanation sessions" for students, conduct exams etc (it is a public-private partnership model). A place and time is fixed on when and where students will get support. Almost all study is self-study. But if a student wants to talk to someone then they have the option to go to the local chapter for help. This is managed at a massive scale, and I am just talking about a local state-level OU. Here is their link: https://www.ycmou.ac.in Another well-known Indian OU is run by the central government. This is even bigger in scale with TV channels etc, as they have to cater to the whole country. Their link is here: http://www.ignou.ac.in

One thing to note here is that the OUs cater to the demands of the grassroots. They have a massive feedback system(mostly offline) to adapt to the changing demands quickly.

MOOC will have to do something similar in the long-run. But then again, they won't be any different than OUs, except at the global scale.

Edit: typos and some additional information.

The difference between a school and a self taught environment will show those capable of self-learning (auto-didacticicism)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism. Some can do it, some can not - they lack some combination of self study compulsion as well as some aspect of basic intellect ~~IQ. The other problem is detection of exam cheats - how to invigilate the tests? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exam_invigilator

As we have seen complex processes have emerged whereby people cheat on tests. Radio WiFi in calculators has been found, hearing aid 2-way radios, often with morse signals.

Unless an online school can find a way to defeat all the cheat-modes they will not be able to verify the quality of their graduates. Grads who cheated are soon found out in the job when they fail at the implementation level. In addition, the lab work needs to be addressed. The U of U-tube is a possibility for watched lab work, but the ability for someone to titrate, or weigh etc etc, is not well taught at the U of U-tube. That is not to say it is impossible, ways to deal with these aspects are needed before those who hire will accept a graduate for the job. Perhaps detailed interviews with lab work real-time tests will do the job? However MIT et al grads are hired on the basis of their actual learning. Cheaters will not prosper, nor will their schools...

Online programs that have been online for at least several years can be very high quality. They have worked out their curriculum and how to communicate content and assignments to students.

Schools that are used to a lot of in-person interaction between teachers and students are probably having the roughest time with distance learning. I therefore expect private schools to not fare well over the next year.

There are probably very few degrees in which access to physical materials and labs is necessary. For every other degree being able to complete the degree remotely probably shows more drive and determination.

I should preface this by saying that I don't have any hiring power.

I think online degrees are fine, especially if the school has an in-person presence. The hiring process should rely less on OCR keywords and stereotyping, and more on the candidate's skill and experience.

I personally would be skeptical of someone with an online education. Even many of the online degrees offered by state schools tend to be lower quality than the equivalent on-campus programs.

On the other hand seeing someone complete an online degree shows a lot of grit and determinism. Especially if they are balancing it with work and family commitments. Most people can't even complete a single MOOC, the dropout rate is enormous.

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