online masters worth anything?

horsegracie
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:19:11 +0000

Here is my experience. It really depends on both the school AS WELL as the degree/field. For fields such as Education as well as some Administration such as public admin and nursing admin, a degree from a controversial school such as University of Phoenix will be fine. I know several people who have degrees/crendentials/advanced degrees from these types of schools and have done well (promotions, jobs…etc.)

For a field such as business (MBA), this is company dependent. I know a few people who may have lost on on a job or promotion becuase their MBA was from UoP and not a regular school. On the other hand, one guy I know got his MBA (paid partly by his company) from UoP and was promoted. So some companies do recognize UoP, but my guess is it CAN hurt you.

Engineering is a different story. Maybe it is just at the small group of companies, I’ve been with, but I know first hand that in at least 3 companies that I’ve personally had first hand involvement, comments were thrown around like “oh, but that degree is from National University or Coleman or ITT or University of Phoenix” and the resume is skipped over. Several times. This happened at at least 3 different companies that I’ve worked at where we were looking to hire new people.

So, bottom line, online or offline, I think for teaching/education, these schools are fine. For some administration even MBAs it is okay (but varies by company). For Engineering, these schools are deffinately frowned upon. That is just my experience though.