A Long-Distance Diploma

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

What all of this means is that whether or not you learn through distance means is largely up to you. Distance education is not for everyone. Simply put, it requires more discipline than traditional on campus programs do. Before signing on, ask yourself the following questions: Do I work well independently? Do I require regular feedback from my teachers? Do I desire interaction with fellow students?

Though the interactivity of the Internet is making distance learning a less solitary pursuit, it remains in most instances a loosely structured, individually driven endeavor. Generally, there are no set class times, few imposed deadlines, and no one to look over your shoulder to make sure the work gets done. Distance learning is designed for mature, self-motivated students—students like Marina Bear, who spent five years plugging away at her master's degree, working in isolation, long before the era of electronic correspondence and realtime online discussions.

"It's not as if I could just show up at office hours, either," notes Marina. "So, with great trepidation, I would pick up the phone and call my advisor, but seldom without feeling like I was somehow interrupting his life. How I would have loved to be able to just send him an e-mail!"

Despite the technological limitations of the day (all now overcome and then some), Marina stuck it out, earning her degree and paving the way toward her Ph.D. in philosophy, earned a few years later in a traditional on-campus program at Vanderbilt University. Today, she teaches ethics, bioethics, and logic in the program for adult college education (PACE) at Vista Community College in Berkeley, California. She's also begun toying with the idea, she says, of teaching a distance education course or two of her own.

"My wife is living proof that people can earn valuable, usable degrees at a distance," says John Bear, who laments the fact that most people who investigate distance learning seem to have a hard time coming down off the fence. "The most common thing I hear from people is, `I don't think I can do this,"' says Bear.

The results of this kind of thinking were reflected in a recent survey of Bears' Guide buyers: After consulting the book, just 10% had decided to enroll in a program, 10% had decided not to enroll in a program, and a whopping 80% had made no decision at all.

To the latter group, and to other timid would-be students, Bear offers the following anecdote: "One of my all-time favorite letters came from a man who said he had been thrown out of Columbia University graduate school in 1912 and wanted advice on how he could now finish his degree. I wrote him back and said, `There was a typo in your letter, you said 1912.' And he responded, `That was no mistake, I'm 96 years old.' He had been studying political science and had wanted to write his thesis on what he perceived to be the coming world war. They told him he was nuts.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print