On-site vs. Online Learning

[Indeterminate]

A friend of mine recently graduated with a B.A. in History, but he is looking to get an M.A. in English, which could allow him to pursue a PhD in English eventually. He told me he found an online program at Mercy College in New York State. I said that an onsite program would probably look better on a PhD application. Also, an onsite program is probably cheaper, and more likely to offer some financial aid. Am I correct? Has anyone had any experience with online degrees? Should my friend try to find an onsite program?

[Tybalt]

A friend of mine recently graduated with a B.A. in History, but he is looking to get an M.A. in English, which could allow him to pursue a PhD in English eventually. He told me he found an online program at Mercy College in New York State. I said that an onsite program would probably look better on a PhD application. Also, an onsite program is probably cheaper, and more likely to offer some financial aid. Am I correct? Has anyone had any experience with online degrees? Should my friend try to find an onsite program?

In the future, online programs may carry the kind of cache needed for a PhD app, but I would be inclined to think that they are still viewed rather skeptically at the moment. Too many of them are shady (not making any commentary on Mercy College, as I don't know anything about it, just a general observation). I would encourage your friend to look into onsite programs.

[fall-11]

Here's another suggestion. You might take a few undergrad English classes at a local university or online, in order to gain some background & a writing sample & LOR writers, and then apply to a MA program at a good university, which will then put you in a good position to apply to PhD programs. That's the route I took (I had a non-humanities BA), and it's worked out. Good luck

[dgobox]

I --personally (redundant, yes)-- would not even consider pursuing a graduate degree that involved coursework that was mostly on-line. The one on-line course that I had to relegate to take as an undergraduate for my minor degree in psychology was something that I did not particularly care for as compared to the structure and experience of every other philosophy, english, and psychology class that I took on campus.

Since your colleague can already to some extent be said to be a "leg down" (or whatever equivalent expression you like) given his B.A. in history, it seems like even less of a logical move to try for an on-line M.A. in something like English. That just sounds frustrating to me. Of course, a big part of it probably comes down to what is termed 'learning-style' so maybe for some people it's an attractive thing.

[Phil Sparrow]

I absolutely would counsel against an online MA. Whether it's fair or not, I cannot imagine many faculty members/adcoms taking an online graduate degree very seriously, and suspect most would dismiss a PhD application with such a degree pretty swiftly.