Online colleges have grown significantly within the last few years, as the job market becomes more competitive and unemployment increases, more people are turning to online education at the right time. This growing popularity has caused many traditional universities to offer at least some online classes and others to create online-only programs to cater to the online student population. Today, there are hundreds of online colleges circulating the Internet, all offering excellent degree programs, affordable tuition rates and convenient curriculums. The downfall for many online colleges is that they do not have a main campus that you can visit, and all correspondence with representatives and advisors takes place online or over the phone. This can make it hard to know if you are choosing the right school. To assist you in this important decision-making, Web sites have developed online college rankings that evaluate schools on many different platforms and display the results for all to see.
College rankings are especially helpful for online students because the data used in each study has pertinence for their overall educational experience. Some of the evaluation criteria used to determine rankings, includes acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, peer Web citations, retention rate, years accredited, student-faculty ratio and more. This data gives you the chance to interpret the numbers as you see fit. For some, it may represent the reputation and quality of education you can expect from each school. For others, it may just be another set of numbers. But, however you want to look at it, rankings are there to help you make sound, methodical decisions when choosing a school. Unfortunately, not all online college rankings can be trusted because of the lack of transparency and ulterior motives. Many online rankings are completely false and set up to promote diploma mills. So, be sure to examine rankings and who conducted them closely.
Before you take any online college rankings seriously, be sure to ask yourself these questions:
- How trustworthy is this ranking? Look for ranking sites that give an explanation of the organization’s methodology, how they gathered data, who they are and why they conducted the study. The reputable college ranking site, Online Education Database, is transparent about their methodology and gives in-depth descriptions on how they reviewed 1,041 programs from 88 accredited online colleges. Their rankings are based solely on accredited colleges, therefore, each degree listed is considered valid and accepted by potential employers.
- Are all of these colleges legitimate? Don’t get fooled by false rankings and diploma mills, do your own research to ensure that the schools you are looking at are real educational institutions. You can check out other online college ranking sites and use trustworthy listings, such as the U.S. Department of Education’s College Navigator. This site lets you search by zip code, level of award, institution type and more, to ensure that your potential school does in fact exist.
- If you are interested in simply data, then browse the U.S. News and World Report’s online education search for general information on distance learning programs. This survey examined schools with undergraduate distance learning programs. Other surveys include online graduate business programs,online graduate nursing programs and more.
