Employers Often Distrust Online Degrees

Some say they prefer job applicants who earned diplomas the old-fashioned way

Karen Glover thought she was lucky when she found a way to take online courses from Florida State University and work full time at an academic library in Georgia. But when it came to finding a new job with her master’s degree in library and information studies, her strategy backfired.

Potential employers wanted to know how she had been able to hold a full-time job in one state while going to school in another. When she explained that the courses were online, she was met with befuddlement. “I got the feeling that they didn’t understand the concept,” Ms. Glover says. “They were skeptical.”

Although she interviewed at several organizations during a yearlong search, the only job offer she received was from the library where she was already working, at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She accepted a promotion to assistant department head. She feels that her online degree kept her from getting offers elsewhere.

The results of several surveys of those who evaluate potential employees and make hiring decisions indicate a bias against online degrees, even as more and more colleges are offering programs online. To those officials, the words “online education” conjure up images of those spam e-mail messages that promise a Ph.D. in exchange for $5,000 and a bit of “life experience.”

Fifty-five percent of managers surveyed last year by Vault Inc., a career-information company, said they favored applicants with traditional degrees over ones with online degrees. Forty-one percent said they would give equal consideration to both types of degrees. A report on the survey, which tallied responses from 101 people from various organizations, was released in December.

Acceptance of online degrees may be growing among managers, however. The employers who are most skeptical of online education are the ones who seem to know the least about it. The more they learned, researchers found, the more comfortable they were. Also, because many traditional colleges offer online degrees, graduates of those programs can often apply for jobs without the hiring manager ever noticing that the courses were delivered over the Internet.

“The challenge comes when a student attends a university that’s only known for online education,” says Cheryl Wyrick, chairwoman of the department of management and human resources at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona. “Some employers may see that as an updated version of the correspondence program, and that university may not have that much credibility.”

Testing Perceptions

All other things being equal, is an online degree a strike against an applicant? That’s one of the questions posed to employers recently by Jonathan Adams, an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Communication.

He sent surveys to hiring managers around the country in 2005, asking them to choose between two similarly qualified fictional applicants — one with a traditional degree and one with a degree from an online institution.

Out of 269 responses, 96 percent chose the hypothetical applicant with the traditional degree.

“People have just made their minds up,” Mr. Adams says. “They just perceive these degrees to be of a certain quality of education — a lower-quality one, unfortunately.”

Jerry Ervin, president of a management-and-sales-training company called Paragon Strategies, in California, is among those who would pick the candidate with the traditional degree. Communication skills are important in his business, he says, and many of those skills are picked up through day-to-day interactions on a campus.

“If people are only learning through the box, what I call the gray box, you’re only getting a piece of the pie,” Mr. Ervin says. “We’re talking about the human asset here. The human being likes communication.”

Silvia Guzman, regional human-resources manager for ProTec Building Services, likens online degrees to diploma mills or institutions that advertise on career Web sites promising to help you earn a degree in a year.

“The online degree is not weighed as heavily as a traditional degree,” says Ms. Guzman, who hires people for a range of positions, including publishing, administration, and building engineering. “It’s almost like, oh, you’re purchasing a degree.”

She mentioned several universities that raise red flags for her when she sees them on résumés, including Capella University, an accredited for-profit online institution, and the University of Phoenix, an accredited for-profit institution that has both classroom and online programs.

Not all online degrees are suspect, she says. If an applicant received a bachelor’s degree from a traditional institution and then went online for a master’s, that would be more acceptable. But she says she would be wary about hiring someone with an online bachelor’s degree.

“They don’t get that real-life, problem-solving, pressure’s-on type of experience,” Ms. Guzman says. “Going through a university is pretty much like boot camp. If you can make it through there, you can make it through anything.”

Even online programs offered by traditional institutions can face skepticism, which they often view as unfair. Larry Dennis, dean of the College of Information at Florida State University, says the university strives to maintain the same level of quality in its virtual classrooms as in its brick-and-mortar ones.

Still, sometimes colleagues there and at other institutions question how rigorous the online program really is. “Even some students come into these courses with the attitude thinking that, Well, it’s online so it’s going to be easy,” Mr. Dennis says. “It isn’t easy. It’s harder.”

Florida State would not attach its name to an education program of shoddy quality, he says. “We just tell people that this isn’t something we do as a sideline,” Mr. Dennis says. “This is the way we provide education.”

Quality Varies

Brian Mueller, president of the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, says some people tend to lump all of online education into one category. The truth is, he says, the quality of online education varies — just as the quality of traditional institutions does.

“It’s not fair to say that online education is either effective or not effective,” Mr. Mueller says. “People do online education to various degrees of effectiveness.”

People in the education and corporate worlds are generally impressed when they see firsthand how Phoenix runs its business, Mr. Mueller says. In some ways, it is more challenging to complete an online course than a traditional one, he says, because the student has to be self-motivated.

One employer who sees great benefits in online degrees is Colleen D. Butler, director of human resources for West Coast Drywall & Paint, a construction company in California. In fact, she has an online degree herself.

She earned her master’s degree in organizational management from the University of Phoenix Online. She had little trouble getting a job afterward with her degree, she says, though it may have helped that some employers did not realize she earned it online.

Now that Ms. Butler is doing the hiring, she recognizes the value in employees who put themselves through an online program. “Actually, I think online is much more laborious than traditional work,” she says, “Now you’re in an environment where you have to communicate electronically.”

Jennifer Schramm, manager of workplace trends and forecasting at the Society for Human Resource Management, which boasts a membership of over 200,000, says the name recognition of the college matters more than whether the degree was earned online.

“It will just come down to quality and reputation,” Ms. Schramm says. “If people are familiar with the institution, then they’re not going to look at how the degree was obtained.”

Partnerships With Employers

Many companies have special arrangements to help their employees continue their educations through online institutions. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has a partnership with Capella University in which the company reimburses its employees when they take courses from Capella, and the university gives Johnson & Johnson a tuition discount.

Bill Young, director of education alliances for Capella University, says companies are interested in such partnerships because the businesses are starting to recognize not only the quality of the programs but also the convenience for employees who are busy working and traveling.

“Large organizations with a dispersed work force are trying to create options for their employees,” Mr. Young says.

Early in its existence, Western Governors University, an online institution, had to fight off some perceptions that it was a diploma mill of the type that offers a degree for life experience — just like the ads in those shady e-mail messages.

Ken Sorber, vice president for strategic relations, argues that the university’s program is actually tougher than some traditional programs. Students earn their degrees through a series of competency assessments, not classroom time, to determine whether students really understand the material.

Now the institution’s situation is improving, he says. In 2003 the university received regional accreditation. Then, late last year, its Teachers College was accredited by the prestigious National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. That, he says, created instant credibility for graduates of the program.

While Western Governors does not have the marketing strength to try to convince every employer out there that the university is legitimate, he says, it is solidifying its reputation. It has formed partnerships with many companies to provide education for employees, and many other companies recognize its degrees. But it still takes effort to persuade employers, he says, as opposed to the automatic acceptance of a degree from, say, a state university.

“There is skepticism out there,” Mr. Sorber says, “but I see it becoming less of an issue all the time.”

DOUBTS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION A survey of 101 managers conducted last year by Vault Inc., a career-information company, found that most of them were at least somewhat wary of online degrees. Have you ever encountered a job applicant with an online degree? No 57% Yes 43% Would you give equal consideration to job candidates with online degrees and job applicants with traditional degrees? Favor candidates from traditional colleges 55% Give them equal consideration 41% Favor candidates with online degrees 4% Is an online bachelor’s degree as credible as an offline degree? Not as credible, but acceptable 58% Yes 28% No, not credible or acceptable 14%

http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 53, Issue 18, Page A28