Distance Learning College Degrees

A factor that influences the balance against distance learning is the effort by distance learning schools to copy the brick and mortar educational model. Distance learning by its nature must accomplish the primary task using other methods. B&M will always be better at being B&M.

I have known many students that took the easy path at B&M schools; find the easiest teachers, in the easiest courses, in the simplest discipline. I have known students at both B&M and distance learning schools that had others do required work for them.

Regardless of the sloppy ethics encouraged by degree pursuit as opposed to seeking learning; some students have found their goals achievable by cheating. There are at least two factors that make this unethical strategy viable for a student. First, most jobs acquired after graduation have little to do with what was supposedly studied. Graduates are hired for their degrees and expect training to prepare them for their new job. Second, the reason they went to school was to get a job or promotion. Actual learning had little to do with their goal of a college degree.

There are of course entries on the other side of the ledger.

There are large numbers of students at both brick & mortar and at distance learning schools that study very hard, do their own work, and apply diligence toward their education. For most of them it is the same goal that drives them, they want a job upon graduation. Education, a degree, and a good job have become synonymous. Few students would risk harming their grade point average to take a class just to learn something.

For most students a college diploma is nothing but a self marketing tool.

Seeking knowledge, learning new and useful things, is at best secondary in the modern educational equation. A degree represents that a graduate stuck with a difficult mission until completion. The capstone of a degree's significance is the diploma holder completed their undertaking within an archaic bureaucratic hierarchy.

Tenacity at a vain pursuit is perceived as a valuable trait by huge institutions seeking compliant employees.

"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." - Baruch Spinoza

This is where we were, we will find out where we are in the next section, and then on to where we think we might be headed.
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At this progression; education, degree, good job, the B&M schools are without equal - distance learning is a dubious second place. Distance learning has lesser value because of its lack of ability to compete directly on B&M turf. Traditional brick and mortar colleges graduate employees tenaciously dedicated to an employer's objectives. Bureaucratic employers know and appreciate this.

Just 30 years ago the plan was simple. Get a degree, get a job at IBM or equivalent, never leave and never be laid off. An employee would be well paid, forced to travel and move, and would work toward retirement after 40 years. That model no longer works.

Current Graduates are frequently forced to put government in place of IBM. They are not very well paid, they will work in a painfully degrading bureaucracy, but they can still anticipate a reliable job with a decent retirement. The old choice, joining a large corporation, is an invitation to be laid off as industrial age companies shrink, out source, or implode.

The next 10, 20, 30 years and beyond are going to be very tough on both models. The entire world is likely to go through a series of deep recessions and maybe a greater depression. Governments will have to down size and privatize. Both B&M and most distance learning schools are therefore graduating workers looking for jobs that are disappearing. Just as guilds disappeared in the industrial age, so will the bureaucratically employed middle class disappear in the netcohort age.

Now that you are depressed, In the final section I will cheer you up with some good news.
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At Bastiat Free University you can try a third option. Determine for yourself what you will learn. Learning can once again become an all life experience, and learning can be a pleasure.

The same technologies that are dismantling bloated industrial age institutions will liberate both education and work. You can start your own business very cheaply, you can re-train yourself frequently for ever better opportunities.

The liberating influence of a self-directed renaissance education is becoming the new, new thing. If you pursue your passions, learning is a constant product of seeking useful knowledge, not a short term goal. One new way to pursue learning for the networking, technology capable individual is being created at the Netcohort Institute.

You do not have to spend time, money, and lost opportunity jumping through bureaucratic hoops to get a degree. Take this chance to rediscover the pleasure of self directed learning. You will learn as you pursue your passion, this is the model of a new self-directed renaissance education.

"A formal education will make you a living, but self-education will make you a fortune." - Jim Rohn

You can research what you want to know, seek out what is of value to you, and you can use the knowledge acquired to create real wealth.

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

Your best investment in a wonderful personal future is an investment in yourself.

If you work at what you love, what you are passionate about, you will never experience a dull job.This is why BFU exists. Liberate yourself from constrictions of the fading industrial age; seek out and discover where meaningful action based on your passion is rewarded. You don't even need Bastiat Free University, we are but one source of many for the knowledge you seek.

"There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there's only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

Bastiat Free University is a resource in your life's passion quest. Look around the Bastiat Free University online campus and find educational materials that will cause you to succeed. Register now at no-cost and relearn to enjoy learning; learn about what you love. Renaissance learning is a pleasure because you get to discover what is important to you, and act on it.

Resolve to get an education that will grow and go with you.

Do it for yourself this time.

return to the top of this distance learning lens.



100% of direct income from my lenses goes to Bastiat Free University and to micro-finance solutions for world poverty provided by the Grameen Foundation. The Grameen Foundation is creating a rising tide of positive influence upon our world.

Will YOUR life be based on what you want to use it to accomplish, or by random urges of what you want to do?

"We hear fables about the past, we develop dreams of the future, but the work needs to be done today." - Allan R. Wallace