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Comment by mnky9800n | Hacker News Reader

What's wild is Georgia tech has a very successful online master's program that apparently everyone forgot about because it could be a great starting point to do everything online.

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It's an online masters in computer science, a lot of engineering and science courses require labs that aren't feasible without being present. And even if most of your courses are lab free, from my experience there, I had a lab course most semesters, even if it was just one.

Nobody says you are going to going to school online forever. So I'm not that worried if you have to put your lab courses off by a semester.

Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of diploma mills.

My final semester will be entirely online, but I couldn't care less, since my degree isn't an online degree.

> Online degrees that are marketed as online degrees carry a stigma among employers, because they are perceived as being lower quality than not-online degrees, and the stuff of diploma mills.

Do you have some survey results or where are you getting this "fact"?

Sure.

> In 2009, Norina L. Columbaro and Catherine H. Monaghan, researchers at the Cleveland State University, published an article analyzing dozens of studies and popular articles on employers’ perceptions of online degrees. By and large, they found that “gatekeepers”—for example, employers and hiring managers—“have an overall negative perception about online degrees.” In their survey, Columbaro and Monaghan also found several recurring concerns about online degrees. These concerns ranged from a perceived lack of rigor to concerns about the increased potential for academic dishonesty. Not surprisingly, the fact that online degrees were still associated with an earlier generation of diploma mills was also a concern.

https://news.elearninginside.com/have-online-degrees-and-cre...

I think this may be context dependent. My impression is that a lot of people who are mid-career or changing careers get degrees that are online or otherwise don't appear to be top tier, because they simply need to pass a requirement that they get a degree. I think teachers in particular, face requirements to get masters degrees. If you have a statutory or other rule that says you must get a degree, and it's basically a checklist item, then it's in your interest to go for the cheapest, easiest, most accessible option, and not worry about the pedigree or mystique.

Georgia Tech issues the same diplomas for their online and offline masters degree programs.

Please do expand. It's apparent from this list[1] that GaTech differentiates traditional from online.

[1] https://www.gatech.edu/academics/masters-degree-programs

https://omscs.gatech.edu/explore/faq/admissions

>Your diploma will read "Master of Science in Computer Science," exactly the same as those of on-campus graduates. There will be no "online" designation for the degrees of OMS CS graduates.

Getting an MS CS degree from Stanford HCP via SCPD is a major achievement, arguably even more difficult than the on-campus one due to a lack of in-person office hours and having the same lectures/homeworks. GT's OMS CS seems to be crazy as well due to the amount of hours per class. So it likely depends on that particular online degree.

the online classes for the master program are better than the campus ones I took some of those that overlapped with my campus ones because they were shitty.

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