| I've seen quite a bit of defensiveness on the part of online degree holders, though perhaps that has been because online degrees are questioned so often. If your friend had earned her MBA at a local college of no particular distinction, she probably would have had few questions about it; no interviewer would have weighted it as heavily as an MBA from Harvard or Columbia, but they probably wouldn't probe for details.
The challenge for the recruiter is to understand the rigor (or lack thereof) in the online degree program. It's a new enough area that many may have difficulty in distinguishing between legitimate and demanding programs and those with looser standards.
It may take the entry of "brand name" colleges to legitimize online degrees in the minds of recruiters. If a candidate showed up with an online degree from Yale (not yet available, unfortunately), the recruiter would most likely presume that reasonably high standards were upheld in granting the degree. I don't think we are that far away from all the top schools offering a variety of distance degrees. |