Has anyone gotten a degree online?
Does anyone have any experience with online degree programs? I was looking into the Arizona State University online Electrical Engineering BSE. The program is accredited and your degree is not marked any differently than an in person ASU degree.
I already have a BA in Economics, but I don’t really use my degree for my work. I feel like my career is progressing just fine, but I’ve always been interested in science and math. I tried Electrical Engineering at the beginning of my undergrad, but I was too undisciplined and unfocused to handle it.
I am interested in ASU because it will allow me to take classes while still having a full time job, but I am interested if anyone else has gotten a degree while working full time. What was your experience like?
A couple, yeah--highly recommended for work-life balance purposes, career advancement, etc. None of mine ended up being useful in the ways I planned, which is a whole other thing haha. But as long as it's an intentionally online program that was intended to be taken remotely (vs an in-person program where they'll let you watch on zoom, stay away from those), it's a great option.
I did humanities, though; EE does seem like an intensive course of study for online work.
I was part of the "generation" of engineering students who had to spend ~2 years studying remotely due to the covid pandemic. Therefore, I might be able to give my 2·10⁻² € on this subject.
If we exclude subjective issues (e.g. some of my fellow students just couldn't properly concentrate on a remote lesson), there are some objective issues regarding an online engineering degree.
The main, objective issue is that you're essentially getting (near-)zero hands-on experience on anything related to your degree. Excluding programming, you're almost certainly not going to have any proper labs where you learn anything useful, unless your course either forces you to purchase your own equipment, or lends you equipment that was purchased by your university. This was unanimously the biggest problem we faced.
The second main problem is the structure of the actual content of the degree. EE, at least for the most part, isn't a course where you memorise things for exams. In order to pass most of your exams, you'll have to solve hundreds of exercises by hand; just looking at notes/presentations is not enough. The main reason I consider that a problem is that, as a course, EE doesn't really benefit from the format(s) remote lessons tend to have. In our case, this even went as far as affecting our remote exams, where many of our exams were quite simplified compared to their "normal" counterparts.
Of course, this is just my anecdotal experience in an unprepared university during the pandemic, and should be taken with a grain of salt (or any salt substitute of your choice)
Right—I’ve taken online courses where the class was definitely intended to be in-person, and all the meatspace attendees had access to physical office hours for help, etc, while I just sort of watched on Zoom. That sucked lol. I would hope that a program designed to be virtual would circumvent those issues, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone pay for one without verifying that first.
What programs did you do?
EE is intense, but I did a bit of it before I switched majors in undergrad. I just wasn't focused enough at 18 to forgo partying and hanging out with friends to put in the effort needed for it. I do naturally have an interest in this kind of stuff, so the homework and reading weren't things that I had to force myself to do.
Yeah undergrad would be a crapshoot, but master’s level and above, especially for career purposes, makes more sense. I did a library degree and a doctorate in education, went to campus like four times total for both. One was during Covid, but again these were conceived as virtual programs (and obviously didn’t require hands-on experience). So YMMV.
I didn't do an online degree, but I do want to warn against an EE degree. I went to a top rated university for E/CE and I don't think I know anyone in my graduating class that actually uses their EE or CE degree in their job, everyone ended up going to software (myself included). Obviously just an anecdote, and maybe because the state I live in doesn't have too many of those jobs available, and if you're doing it for fun, go for it, but EE isn't exactly the easiest degree haha.
I live in California, so I'm not too worried about finding a job that uses an EE degree. I wouldn't be opposed to working in software and I intend to learn more about that anyways. I really enjoyed electrical engineering classes that I took before I switched majors, but I didn't really have the focus or appreciation for education at 18 that I do now.
Totally your prerogative! I would probalby have moved out to Cali too if I wanted to actually use my degree for sure, so definitley in a better position than I. Be sure to brush up on your calculus (-shudders in 5 semesters of wasted calculus knowledge-) and good luck!
Yeah I will probably want to take the calculus courses as a refresher. I took Calc I and II for my Econ degree, but I took a version of Calc II without the taylor series. I also probably have to take linear algebra again because I forgot it all. Thanks for the advice!
That’s totally anecdotal though. I know plenty of people who I graduated with who got jobs in the EE/CE industry.
Yup, that's why I wrote that it's totally an anecdote, I just wanted to throw in my thoughts for it
Removed my last post and reposted with a new title because I wanted to make a more general title to accurately represent my question.
No discussion on the last post so nothing was lost.
I got my master's degree online and feel a bit ambivalent about it. I had been working in the industry for a few years already so there wasn't heaps of general knowledge I acquired, though I did learn some useful stuff on specific niche topics (Nothing that I've used at work but interesting stuff to know).
I don't think I could have done it in person as I was working at the same time, and while it was sometimes challenging to feel that I didn't have much time to myself, I managed to find a good balance in the end.
Not sure I would do something like that again other than if I simply wanted to gain knowledge in an area, because that degree I feel has done nothing for my career. I can tick boxes in forms that ask what my highest level of education is and I tell people I've done it when they ask me, but hasn't helped me get a better job or get paid more. Or at least not directly, I guess some of the discipline I gained from reading technical documentation and balancing workloads has helped me be a better worker.
I've been considering an online master's degree. I've done some research, and like rlyles said, stay away from in-person programs that can be taken online. Those suck.
I did an online masters while working full time and found the work life balance pretty challenging even though I had extremely supportive teachers and a fantastic cohort. I'd get home from work then be stuck working at the computer for 4 or 5 hours most nights. I had to be protective of my time and some friends and family were a bit grumpy about me not being able to visit as often, but it was just for a couple of years so I toughed it out. Overall I enjoyed my classes and would do it again, but I won't deny that the burnout was real during the last semester. I'm not a great student so you may have an easier time with it. My only advice would be honest to yourself about your mental state and don't be afraid to take a break if you need it
I'm working towards my Bachelor's in Computing at The Open University in UK - highly recommend it. Anyone can apply (provided they have tuition money, but they have financing plans!)
I found their courses much more in-depth and genuinely useful compared to courses taught at my local university, so I dropped out of that one to focus on the OU (and got a job as a software developer to fill up the extra time).
It's definitely not recommended for procrastinators, though. Since there's no attendance, I find myself lagging behind on my projects and assignments until a week before the deadline. Luckily I managed to complete most of them in time.
UPDATE: I decided that making the sacrifice and doing a full time in person education would probably be a better education and a more efficient use of time than part time online school. I just got admitted to a state school for Computer Engineering in the fall.
For anyone else considering going back to school, I feel like it's worth it to make as big of a sacrifice as you can. Online school can be a good option if you have people relying on your income, but if you have the ability to attend in person, you should go for it. If the education is worth it to you, a short term sacrifice should be as well.
I haven't done an entire degree online, but my degree was done with a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and entirely-online classes.
Online classes are made or broken on two factors: the amount of resources you are given and the way you learn. To make things more confusing, the way you learn things can change depending on what kind of skills you are learning. Some of the classes I took required Zoom lectures, and in some cases they were very useful because the professor could take questions and expand upon the ideas. In other cases they were a huge waste of time. In almost every case, having someone to talk to - the professor, a TA, tutors, or even other students in the class - was a useful benefit. Even just being able to hear other students' questions was good because it helped to further develop my personal understanding.
My college required me to take a single PE class, and thanks to the pandemic I was basically forced to take it remotely and entirely by myself. It was the worst.
While my experiences were a mixed bag, I'd say overall it was good. But I don't know if I would recommend doing it entirely remotely. The biggest difference between in-person and remote is that it takes a lot more effort to remain engaged in remote classes, which is why social support in particular is so important for them. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to everyone, because I know many people who would surely fail in them.
Beyond that, I find evaluating the quality of online degree programs to be very difficult without actually paying to get into the classes. It feels like a lot of them are just saying "trust me babe," and expecting you to make a leap of faith. But I also have an instinctual distrust of any of the programs that do major advertisement campaigns, and I'm sure the majority of good ones don't do that.