(ThyBlackMan.com) If you’re thinking about applying to college for the first time, you will be looking at a number of different schools where you can get a qualification. But have you considered studying online? Getting masters degrees online is now a reality with advances in online technology. In the past, studying online was only accessible to people who wanted to complete certain degrees, But these days the number of subjects that can be studied online has grown to massive numbers with everything from IT to law. As well as this, the prestige of these degrees has also grown with many businesses holding them with the same esteem as a typical college qualification.
But why could an online degree be the right decision for you?
Flexible Time
One of the best advantages of an online degree is that they are typically very flexible. You will be able to choose how you work when you work and how much time you put in each year. As such, this can be the ultimate part-time degree. The benefit of this, of course, is that you will be able to work on other things at the same time. For instance, you might be gaining a new qualification to expand your career. That doesn’t mean that you have to give up your current job to complete it. As such, you can still get paid, even as you are working to better yourself and advance your position.
This is also great news for people with social commitments as well. It’s difficult to head off to college if you have a kid or if you have anyone in your life that you need to look after and who requires your support. For instance, you might be caring for an elderly relative. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get a qualification, but it does mean that you won’t be able to head to college lectures every day.
Any Point To In Person Education?
Not really, not these days. If you speak to a typical college student, they will probably tell you that they hardly ever attend lectures and instead only go in for seminars. In fact, there are many courses these days where lectures are run completely online. Even if they are run from a lecture hall, you can bet that there will be a full recording uploaded afterwards or even a live stream. At the very least, the lecture notes and slides can often be obtained. It’s at this point that the students who did show up wonder why they even bothered and it’s difficult to give them the right answer.
Virtual Meetings
You might think that if you join a course online, you won’t be able to get meetings with your lecturer or college professor. However, that’s not true. Let’s say that you are studying something like counseling. Counseling requires a lot of abstract studies that may need explanations from an expert who can help you understand complex areas. Well, if you study online you can still get regular meetings with your professor, and this is one of the important factors in an online counseling degree that you should consider. The only difference is that these meetings are virtual. As such, just like your learning, they can be scheduled around your time to match your needs. A big worry of some students is that will be impersonal, and it will be difficult to gain real one on one time. But that’s not true either. Not with HD video calling readily available that will allow you to speak to your professor as though they are sitting in the room next to you.
A Cost You Can Afford
College can be expensive. In fact, it is probably one of the reasons why 69 percent of Americans will die in debt. That’s a bleak thought, but you can avoid this if you study online. By studying online, you can get the same level of education for a much cheaper cost. Instead of ending up in massive levels of debt, you could pay off the cost in a just a few months or at the very most a year. As such, the debt won’t be hanging over your head long after you finish your college degree.
At this point, you’re probably wondering what the downside to e-learning actually is. Well, while not all courses are equal, e-learning has vastly improved due to increases in technology that allow a faster more effective option for learning online. As well as this, since the general opinion of online degrees has greatly improved nothing is holding you back from gaining a qualification in a way that is flexible and completely built around your needs.
Staff Writer; Steve Foster