The website is a one-stop shop. It offers more than 130 online degrees, certificates, and licenses offered by the 16 UNC campuses.
 
It also offers special sections with information tailored for community college students and military personnel and their dependents based in North Carolina.
 
This collection of online degree programs is one of the largest in the United States.
 
More that 1,000 online courses will be available this fall to qualified students.
 
Initially, the website will offer more than 90 online degree programs, 35 bachelor’s degrees, 55 master’s, 2 doctoral, more than 40 online certificate and licensure programs.

UNC hopes to compete with big-name online universities such as the University of Phoenix. Students graduating from UNC’s online school will receive a diploma that is identical to that received by students graduating from one of their 16 traditional schools.

More often than not, employers are fine with online degrees from either for-profit or nonprofit schools, agrees Forrester Research analyst Claire Schooley.

“In most cases, they’re more concerned about being comfortable with the skill level of a person after they complete a degree online,” she said.

Schooley says a lot of how well a person’s academic background registers with employers depends on perspectives of human-resources directors. “If they’re familiar with an online degree program, then they’re more likely to be fairly receptive,” she added.
That’s why some analysts believe that unless you’re willing to pay top dollar for programs from schools like Duke University and Babson College, it’s smart to start your search locally or around the area you’ll be seeking a job.

Picking an online program with a brick-and-mortar presence nearby might also help, agree Schooley, Phillips and Cornell. For one, they say such a combination can offer a safety net in terms of making sure all of the learning tools you need are available when you need them.

The idea that online degrees are less respected than traditional degrees is a thing of the past. For the most part, employers look at the employee’s credentials and aptitude to fit in and succeed at the company, not where their degree came from.

References:

Jim Baker’s Online Learning -The One-Stop Site for all your Learning Needs

In order to avoid diploma mills, consider this advice from CNNMoney.com:

Experts and program administrators at some of the most well-known and largest online programs say you should check to make sure a school is properly accredited. That means credits can be transferred fairly easily between most major higher-education systems.

One way of double checking a college’s claim is by contacting a well-known university in your area to see if they accept credits from the online degree program in question, says Warren Ashley, a distance learning program director at California State University Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles.

Another red flag he warns about is a college offering to trade “life experience” for classroom credits. Although that’s a common practice for gaining acceptance into graduate schools, Ashley says such swaps aren’t generally counted as substitutes for credits at accredited universities.

“People need to make sure no expensive preconditions exist in the online program they’re considering,” Ashley added. “Some traditional schools just don’t believe in earning a degree completely online. They’ll require you to take at least a class or two on campus.”

Another good way of deciphering whether or not a school is reputable is simply to enter the name of the school in a search engine and see what other students (current and former) are saying in chat rooms and message boards. In general, if an institution is trying to simply sucker you out of money, people are going to do their best to warn others.

With the continuing shortage of qualified professionals in the news, health care programs remain at the top of the list for students seeking an online education. The government estimates that medical careers will continue to mushroom in popularity for decades in order to fill a very real need.

Stan Banks, president of Virginia College Online, notes, “We offer two-year associate degrees in some of the most important medical careers. For instance, Healthcare Reimbursement can lead to a medical career with an HMO, insurance company, hospital or doctor’s office. Medical insurance paperwork has become more and more complex over the years, and specialists are always needed who understand the system. Health Services Management is a bachelor’s degree program for those who are already working in the field and who would like to move into management.”

Virginia College is only one of the many colleges that offer online healthcare degrees. For a comprehensive list of online colleges and their respective healthcare degrees, visit our healthcare degree page.

Online credit hours at the University of Minnesota, Crookston are up 41 percent over summer semester 2006. The increase is being attributed to the U of M, Crookston accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), along with two additional bachelor’s degrees available entirely online.

“As a working adult, I knew that the traditional on campus college degree was not an option for me,” said Tony Decembrini, an online manufacturing management student from California. “I needed and wanted something a little more flexible. As a transfer student I was searching for the right online degree and the University of Minnesota, Crookston was just what I was looking for.”

As more students seek degrees from online institutions, more employers hire employees who hold online degrees, and more colleges are getting in on the trend. The growing number of students seeking online degrees serves as just more evidence that online degrees are becoming more and more legitimate to people all over the world.

• Forensic Nursing
• Game Art and Design
• Holistic Health and Nutrition
• Natural Resource Management
• Digital and Graphic Design
• Criminal Justice
• IT Networking and System Management
• Homeland Security
• Information Technology Security
• Executive Coaching

Students interested in entering any of these fields should seriously consider training for them in an online environment. An online degree in these fields of study can earn you the technological abilities that you’ll need to score the job after graduation.

• Actuary
• Architect
• Audiologist
• Clergy
• Dentist
• Editor
• Engineer
• Fundraiser
• Higher Education Administrator
• Landscape Architect
• Librarian
• Management Consultant
• Medical Scientist
• Occupational Therapist
• Optometrist
• Pharmacist
• Physician
• Physician Assistant
• Politician
• Professor
• Registered Nurse
• School Psychologist
• Speech-Language Therapist
• Systems Analyst
• Urban Planner

Many things were considered to determine which professions to deem the best careers, including the rise of Internet use and the aging baby boomer generation. Each job was also ranked based on the median pay, the position’s attainability, the quality of life of a person in the profession, the job market outlook, and the degree required to get a job in the profession.

• Alternative Schools
• Camps (day camp, summer camp, etc.)
• Churches
• Colleges and Universities
• Community Recreation Centers
• Consulting Firms
• Correctional Institutions
• Day Care Centers
• Educational Publishers
• Hospitals
• International Language Schools
• Libraries
• Middle and Junior High Schools
• Museums
• Non-profit Organizations
• Preschools and Nursery Schools
• Public and Private Schools
• Secondary (High) Schools
• State and Federal Government
• Test Preparation Companies
• Two-year and Technical Schools
• United-Way Agencies
• Vocational Services
• YMCA/YWCA
• Youth Services

Students enrolling in an online education degree program should keep in mind that most online education programs do not offer teacher certification in the state in which a student resides and wants to teach. Students will have to gain certification on their own. Teacher certification is needed to work in most public schools in the nation.

Can you add to the ‘Best Places to Work’ list?

International Work References

Language Centers Abroad Directory allows students to Learn Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German and English and Japanese abroad.

When asked directly, well-known Fortune 500 companies such as Intel and Wal-Mart said they’d accept online degrees, provided they come from regionally accredited programs.

Of course there will always be people–recruiters included–who are have reservations about new kinds of learning. But, for some perspective, consider a survey by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) that found that almost 70 percent of corporate supervisors rated the value of a distance degree as “just as valuable” or “more valuable” than resident-school degrees in the same field.

Professionals in the field assert that getting your foot in the door at a company is more about who you are than where you earned your degree. If you encompass the personality, values, and drive that a company is looking for, then most likely they’re not even going to notice that your degree comes from the University of Phoenix. With convenient online courses  allows you to earn your degree on a schedule that fits your life. Check out Online Degrees Today.com for more information on accredited online colleges such as University of Phoenix.

Over 94 percent of Harvard MBAs had received at least one job offer by graduation day, as did 93 percent of University of Virginia at Darden MBAs. Over 80 percent of Columbia’s second-year MBA students were reported to have secured post-graduation employment by February. Dartmouth’s Tuck School reported a 30 percent increase in the number of employers recruiting on campus this year.  87 percent of UC Berkeley at Haas students had one or more job offers by graduation, with those who accepted positions reporting an average bases salary worth almost $103,000 and an average signing bonus worth over $20,500.

The most popular specializations among employers right now seem to be consulting and investment banking — something to keep in mind for next year’s potential MBA students.