Earning Your College Degree Online May Be Right For You!

Post by Natasha Bright

If you’re interested in pursuing an on-line degree or certificate, you have a wide selection of classes and programs from which to choose. Online offerings have been growing in numbers, enrollment and perception. These days, there are also scholarships, grants and other forms of financial aid offered to help pay the tuition.

This income is available largely simply because of accreditation, a 2001 report from the American Council on Education Center for Policy Analysis and EDUCAUSE suggests. The federal government, which is regarded as the largest source of monetary aid in the country, looks upon accreditation as a sign that colleges, universities and technical schools supply students a quality education that merits monetary aid, according to the Council on Education-EDUCAUSE report. A U.S. Department of Education pilot program years ago apparently helped the government to realize the potential of on-line college, university and technical school programs.

On the web colleges, universities, and technical schools can be accredited by national or regional agencies, but that doesn’t mean that the Department of Education recognizes these agencies. When accrediting on-line colleges, universities and technical schools, agencies with the nationally recognized Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions consider areas such as interactivity, student services and having trained faculty areas that have studies have shown to be associated with good quality and effective online studies. The U.S. Department of Education has also updated its guidelines, in component to ensure also that schools verify a student’s identity and make certain the student who enrolls is the very same 1 who receives academic credit.

Officials have been taking measures toward stopping “diploma” or “degree mills” that permit folks to buy phony credentials. Wisconsin State Senator Fred Risser, who’s amongst them, says the difficulty with diploma and degree mills is increasing. Risser crafted a Wisconsin law intended to prosecute these operations and stop the use of fraudulent academic credentials, according to a news statement from his office. Numerous other states, according to Risser’s office, have taken comparable action.

Other people, which includes Congressman Timothy H. Bishop of New York, also have proposed cracking down on diploma mills, according to a January report in The Chronicle of Greater Education. The Federal Trade Commission in 2005 issued a “Facts for Business” guide to help companies avoid hiring individuals with phony degrees. The guide suggested that employers check credentials and supplied a list of warning signs, such as “quickie” degrees earned inside a short period of time or many degrees earned in the very same year, and institutions with names comparable to prominent schools but located in various states. Students can locate a list of accredited schools and recognized accreditation agencies on the U.S. Department of Education web web site.

Even with accreditation procedures for on-line institutions in place, students as late as 2006 may have been tough-pressed to discover government grants and loans for some on the web programs. The law until that time denied grants and loans to students attending institutions where much more than half of all students and programs had been on the web, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education report. The restrictions, part of what was recognized as a “50 Percent Rule”, were developed in 1972 as a means of curbing the rapid growth of fraudulent diploma mills and correspondence schools, a 2005 Inside Greater Education report noted.

Colby, a pet cat, was accepted into the on the internet degree program following investigators filed an application claiming he had taken community college classes and worked as a baby sitter, reports show. The feline reportedly achieved a 3.5 grade point average, and earned a worthless degree. An attorney general’s office sued the organization that awarded it for fraud.

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Greater education access improved and institutions with more than 5,000 students in the 2003-2004 academic year reported that as numerous as 79 percent of their students qualified for federal monetary aid. The Department of Education recommended that the program open to far more online classes and that the 50 percent rule be eliminated.