Arizona Online Education

Do Arizona's employers respect an education earned online?

A 2006 study by Vault Inc. suggested that 81% of employers perceive degrees earned online as more credible than they had been five years earlier. But better than that, 86% said that they would hire someone who had earned a degree online. How's that for respect!

Online education is a reinvention of something that has been around for a very long time. It's really an expanded form of distance education for the computer age. When it was invented in the 18th Century, distance education was what became known as a "correspondence course." While the British took it to a whole new level in the 19th Century, the first correspondence course dates back to America in 1728 before there even was a United States of America. After that, with a reliable mail delivery system that reached across the colonies and then the newly formed states, correspondence colleges popped up everywhere.

Another name for online education is remote learning, and it has gained such respectability that most universities offer degrees which can be earned through programs featuring online studies.

Distance Education Today: Online Education

The person most responsible for the modern concept of distance education was Charles Wedemeyer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With funding from the Carnegie Foundation in the late 1960s, Wedemeyer's work Articulated Instructional Media Project (AIM) made recommendations for a number of communications technologies to be used to provide off-campus education to a rural populace. As mentioned before, it was the English who first exploited distance learning for full effect with what they called the Open University, now known as the United Kingdom Open University. They fully implemented Wedemeyer's recommendations, using TV and radio to reach those for whom location and social position prevented them from enhancing their educations. Initially, the greatest drawback to the quality of distance learning was the lack of interaction between students and educators. Their question and answers could only be passed back and forth through snail-mail or by phone.

Online Education via The Internet

With the rise of the Internet in North America, the phrase distance education has all but been replaced by the phrase "online learning" thanks to most Americans having access to PCs and the Internet.

And with computers in virtually every home and now more common high-speed Internet connections, online distance learning has never been easier or faster. One of the largest universities in the U.S., Phoenix University, right here in Arizona, is almost exclusively an online educator. It counts its student body at 200,000 and projects an enrollment of five hundred thousand by 2010.

Phoenix University isn't the only institution to see the benefits of courses and degrees offered to an online populace. In 2006, an organization called The Sloan Consortium initiated a study that showed more than 96% of the largest colleges and universities in the U.S had online courses. It also claimed over 3,000,000 people were taking at least one online course during the fall semester of 2005. Remarkable given that most people hadn't even heard of the Internet until the late 1990s.

Thanks to the Internet's versatility and adaptability, online learning seems to be the wave of the future, especially when you consider the astronomical costs of traditional higher education. And better than the lower cost of online education, the courses of study online are often the same as in traditional universities! Even serious students intent on a superior education are turning to online education. And it isn't limited to college level studies: K-12 students can get a moderated education at home, or in groups - considered by many to be superior to traditional public schooling - but paid for by public funding!

From associates certificates to masters degrees, online education holds the promise of a bright future for our country and all who live here. With the practical collapse of geographical barriers and cost of higher education, online education is quickly becoming the land of educational opportunity, and not only in here, but across the globe. Imagine living on a reservation in northern Coconino County and wanting an education. Well, thanks to the Internet, a would-be student can get be educated from kindergarten to a high school diploma, to a bachelor, then on to a masters degree online! And with the degree that had been out of reach for so many, at last no one has to see that dream die when they can receive an education on line. Instead, like you, they can get their Arizona online education.