Employers Still Prefer Traditional Degrees Over Online Learning, Study Finds

Employers are still skeptical about the notion of earning a degree online and generally prefer applicants who hold degrees from traditional colleges and universities, according to a study conducted by two professors.

Given the choice between two equal candidates for a job, employers indicated that they would hire the person with a traditional degree over someone with a degree from a virtual institution, says Jonathan Adams, an associate professor of communications at Florida State University's College of Communication.

He and Margaret H. DeFleur, associate dean for graduate studies and research at Louisiana State University's Manship School of Mass Communication, conducted the study. They published a report on their findings in the June 2005 issue of The American Journal of Distance Education.

"In each case, people are saying that they don't find online degrees acceptable at all," Mr. Adams says. "Ninety-nine per cent of the time people will take the traditional degree over the online."

Employers were also asked to respond to statements like: "The type of college or university (virtual vs. traditional) from which the applicant obtained his or her degree would be of no importance as a hiring criterion in our organization." Sixteen per cent of those surveyed agreed, 72 per cent disagreed, and 12 per cent gave other answers.

The researchers collected employer data by scouring help-wanted ads from eight major metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Washington. Only jobs requiring college degrees were included.

The researchers sent questionnaires to 1,285 companies and received 269 responses. Because the participation number was so low, the survey cannot be considered a definitive sample, the report says, but it helps give an indication of employer attitudes toward online education. Mr. Adams says many companies are reluctant to reveal hiring strategies and might be concerned about legal implications by indicating such preferences.

Mr. Adams also noted that if a student were to earn an online degree from a well-known traditional institution, the employer would probably never know distance education was involved and would most likely assume that the degree was earned traditionally.

And there are rarely two equal candidates, Mr. Adams says. Employers still look at background and experience, and they indicated to Mr. Adams that a candidate with good credentials and an online degree might beat out someone with just a traditional degree.

Employers are more open to the idea of job candidates having taken some courses online and some in a traditional setting, Mr. Adams says. But employers seem to prefer that courses crucial to a student's major be taken in a traditional classroom, he says.

"People's tolerance for online courses is much better," says Mr. Adams, "if the courses are not part of the core of your education."

Officials at some online institutions say employers' attitudes toward distance education is mixed, but they are not surprised to hear that some people are still skeptical about hiring students with online degrees. With so many news reports about online diploma mills, online education still has an unfair stigma attached to it, they say.

Patrick Partridge, vice president of marketing for Western Governors University, a virtual institution, says employers are going to be biased in favor of what they know.

"Any hiring manager, by simply being human, is going to be more comfortable with what they experienced than something new," Mr. Partridge says. "Employers have a certain level of fear of the unknown."

Attitudes are changing quickly, he asserts. Just three or four years ago, few employers were familiar with online education, he says. Now more of them know students who have taken online courses and are even incorporating online training on the job site, he says.

In fact, many employers who are familiar with online education often like the attributes of typical online learners, he says. These students are often independent, self-motivated, and well organized, he says.

Chuck Trierweiler, director of marketing at Capella University, an online institution, says other research shows that employers are gaining respect for online education. Capella and the American Society for Training & Development, an organization that promotes workplace training and education, recently conducted their own study of online learning and found that distance education is slowly gaining credibility among employers.

"Online is still new, and it's gaining," says Mr. Trierweiler. "I've seen a lot of progress being made, and it's going to take more."

Dan Carnevale

http://chronicle.com

Section: Information Technology Volume 52, Issue 5, Page A43

Language focus

1. Explain what the following words and word combinations mean from the context in which they are used:

– an associate professor/dean;

– metropolitan areas;

– a definitive sample;

– legal implications;

– distance education;

– credentials;