Many students graduating from high school will be faced with making the decision as to where they will go to college. This will probably be one of the first major decisions that they have to make in life. There are so many options and where to attend college is not the only decision to be made in this process. While many graduating from high school are making these decisions, they are not alone. Standing in this process, along side of the 18 and 19 year old graduates are the 30-60 year olds who have had life changes and find themselves needing to go back to school to either elevate their knowledge or acquire education for a whole new career change.

Deciding What Works for You

Many schools, colleges and universities now offer online classes and online degrees. Determining how valuable an online degree will be for you will depend largely on your circumstances. Only you can decide if an online degree will be worth it for you. Do you need more flexibility than a traditional class schedule offers? Many students who have children or jobs find the flexibility of an online class extremely valuable, as they can work on school work around other schedules. Of course, the financial aspect is always a major contributing factor when making a major decision such as this.

The Value of an Online Degree

There is often the question that arises, "Will an online degree be as valuable as a traditional degree in the eyes of employers when I graduate?" This is one area where you may be wondering, "is an online degree worth it?" Statistics show that online degrees are not inferior to degrees obtained traditionally. One important aspect in selecting the right online education is to ensure you pick a college or university that has proper accreditation as this is an indicator of whether you’ll be getting quality education similar to traditional education. A properly accredited online college or university uses the same course material, papers, coursework, books, test exams and most important the same instructors for both their traditional as well as online students.

In fact, many of the well-known schools, including Duke and Stanford, now offer online degree programs. Another thing to keep in mind is that college and university transcripts no longer indicate whether a class was taken online or in a classroom.

The Bottom Line

One might think that taking an online class or pursuing an online degree may be easier than attending a class because there may be less work involved and less accountability. This concept could not be further from the truth! In fact, there is often more work involved when you undertake to study online, due to the fact that writing is the only way to communicate with other students and the professor. Also, there is a great deal of accountability in regard to deadlines and assignments. The bottom line is that one’s educational experience obtained will only be as great as the effort put forth by that student.