The Distance Learner

Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog that I track regularly. One recent post was about how important it is to have actual job experience after graduating.

The premise of the article is that a typical college grad won’t have any experience and will be forced to take an entry-level position as a receptionist or mail clerk. Gradually, the grad will be able to work him/herself up to a more interesting position with better pay. The author gets it wrong, though, when she says that working a boring post-graduation job is inevitable.

It’s true that a grad coming from a traditional college setting typically has little choice in the matter. But by earning a degree through distance education you can get the “peon job” period out of the way while you’re studying and be ready to enter a better paying, more interesting job upon graduation (if not sooner).

Why prolong the process of securing a decent job if you don’t have to? Distance education leaves your schedule flexible enough to accommodate experimentation in a variety of job fields without suffering through the post-graduation doldrums of a boring entry-level position.

Read the full article.

I was reading over a page of quotes today and came across this one from an unknown source:

“A knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.”

How very true!

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To those of you who made it to my talk at NCHE last Saturday, thanks for attending! One gentleman pointed out to me afterwards that Baker’s Guide to Christian Distance Education by Jason D. Baker was not listed in the handout. I apologize for the oversight. Aside from the book, Baker also has a new web site that provides a lot of good information on distance learning. Finally, if you didn’t get a copy of the handout at my talk then you can download a PDF version of it. Feel free to e-mail me with any additional questions you may have.

Here’s an interesting article about distance education that was published by a news station in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite the fact that it’s targeted at adults who want to go back to school, it contains a good overview of distance education along with some valuable warnings about what to watch out for when picking a program.

I’ll be speaking at the North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE) state conference in Winston-Salem again this year. I’m giving my distance education talk on Saturday, May 26th, from 12:30 to 1:30 PM in South Main 3. A few of the points I’ll cover include:

• Why distance education is a good alternative to traditional college for homeschool graduates
• How I earned my own four-year degree through distance education
• Which colleges currently offer distance education and how to choose wisely from among them
• An overview of the different methods that can be used to earn credit through distance education (portfolio review, CLEP, etc.)

There will be a few surprises too! I hope to see you there.

For the student who is really looking to cut costs, here is an informative article contributed by one of our readers. It seems that more and more colleges and universities are offering enough tuition assistance to basically eliminate most or all of the cost of earning a degree. Of course, you typically must meet certain criteria to be eligible for such programs.

The interesting thing here is that, despite common perception, many distance education schools are now offering similar programs. When it comes to scholarships and other financial assistance, distance education programs are no different than traditional college programs.

In fact, one barrier to earning a college degree that was brought up in the article (namely, the inability for lower income students to sacrifice their work income for spending time in school) becomes a moot point when pursing a degree through distance education. Students can study in the evening and on weekends and work during the day. As tuition for distance education programs continues to fall, this option will become more and more viable for a broader range of American students.

Read the full article at U.S. News.

Well, no, not necessarily. But what Walter Williams is arguing in this column is that many professors are against those who are anti-Communist. As Walter writes:

Leftist elites love the ideas of communism so much that they are either blind to, or tolerant of, its many shortcomings.

I certainly witnessed a small portion of this intolerance during my time in community college. I’m not saying that all professors are this way, but for those who are, academia suits them perfectly. Once tenured, they don’t have to compete with anyone or even produce anything. They have a captive audience of students whom they are free to influence without accountability.

I found it much easier to avoid the influence of such professors by taking distance education courses. I was able to be more selective in the courses I enrolled in, and the professor-student interaction was much more natural and free. I think this was due in part to the geographic separation between professor and student. It was also due to my separation from the campus environment. I didn’t feel pressure to conform to what other students were thinking, saying, or doing. I wasn’t made to feel “un-cool” if I voiced opposition to a professor’s philosophical viewpoint. And I had my friends and family around to straighten me out if they saw me drifting too far in a certain direction.

Read Walter’s article and consider that, however slim the chance might be, do you really want to risk subjecting yourself (or your son or daughter if you’re a parent) to such an influence just to earn a college degree? Distance education is one of many attractive alternatives to traditional college.

University of Wisconsin officials are being warned their refusal to recognize Christian student groups is illegal.

Not a surprising development considering the stance most colleges take towards Christianity. What’s interesting is that, in this case at least, the university is being publicly challenged on the issue.

There is no denying that students can still participate in similar groups off-campus, but this is typically not feasable given hectic class schedules and difficulty finding transportation to leave the campus. If the Christian students at that university were instead enrolled in distance education, they would likely have the time and flexibility needed to participate in such groups.

For more details about the school’s denial to recognize the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as a legitimate on-campus group, read the full article on WorldNetDaily.

My brother, David, and I are in the process of developing a web application to make the work of building professional high school transcripts (suitable for submission to colleges) fast and easy.

Traditionally, the process of building a transcript for a home schooler has been quite involved. My own parents and I designed my transcript using an Excel spreadsheet. It was painstakingly slow! Many books on home schooling through high school have transcript templates in them, but the process of photocopying and filling them out is time consuming.

It is because of this that we decided to create Teascript, a web application that makes generation of transcripts simple. Teascript is still under development, but we’ve put up a teaser page highlighting some of the planned features of the application. The page also allows you to sign-up to receive notification when Teascript goes live. We encourage you to take 30 seconds and check it out!

We truly want this app to be a useful service to other home schoolers. Comments or suggestions from people who will actually be using it are much appreciated. If you think the idea is worthy, please also consider sharing the link with your friends or blogging about it. The more home schoolers who know about this app, the easier it will be for them to generate transcripts.

So you scraped together the money to pay tuition for your child’s first year in college, and you would like to see a report card when spring semester ends this month.

Sorry. You can’t have that.

This is an excerpt from a News & Observer article published earlier this year. The article goes into detail about how parents are routinely denied information from their students’ records. Now, this isn’t so different from the way government schools frequently operate in elementary and high school, but it is a definite paradigm shift for home school parents who are used to knowing everything about their childrens’ academic progress.

Even parents of children who graduated from public school have good reason to be outraged. Apparently, these colleges will accept thousands of dollars in annual tuition from the parents, then deny them access to information that would tell them whether or not their funds are being used correctly.

The fascinating thing about this article is the apparent disconnect on the part of some parents when it comes to their treatment of the college system as “real life.” Having your annual tuition covered by your parents while you spend years in a contrived atmosphere where anti-family and anti-religious values are stressed is not “real life.”

One quote from a parent vividly illustrates this mentality:

“You want to be available, but they need to know that this is their world now. When they are in that world, they need to solve their own problems.”

If it’s so important that students solve their own problems, why cover tuition for them in the first place?

Distance education is refreshingly different. Students are able to remain in close proximity to their parents. Indications of their academic progress thus become more easily available. Students are also able to cover tuition expenses themselves by apprenticing or interning in their field of study while in school, thus reducing or eliminating the need for financial assistance from their parents.

Which way is most realistic? You decide.

Read the full article: Kids in college? Don’t ask; just pay