Online degree courses have gained immense popularity recently. The COVID-19 outbreak experienced throughout the world brought the transformation in education back to the agenda by forcing distance learning. Although learning the right brush stroke or mastering a drawing technique online can be a little more challenging than learning how to draft a business plan, online learning is now starting to gain some momentum in the fine arts as well. Students can now earn online degrees and certificates in painting, photography and other creative disciplines. However, while some consider them the future of education, others debate that it is nothing but a cheap alternative to traditional education.
For years, fine arts and creative education have been left out of online education, but today students are offered a great variety of classes and programs of art, design, architecture and other creative disciplines to choose from, depending on their goals.
A simple online search will yield plenty of results for free or relatively cheap (under $100) online courses and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Another option is for-credit individual courses that give students a chance to earn college credit in fine arts for a moderate monthly membership fee. The goal of these courses offered by online platforms like Kadenze or Sophia Learning is mainly to make students more prepared for bachelor’s degree. The college credit that students receive is recognized by the offering university, but the circumstances may vary when it comes to transferring credit to other institutions.
A few colleges and universities offer fine arts certificate online as well. At Sessions College for Professional Design, an accredited fully online college offering degree and certificate programs in art, design and photography, an undergraduate online certificate costs $510 per credit. According to President Gordon Drummond, the body of the program’s students consists mainly of adult learners who already have a degree and are less interested in qualification but in developing their skills and making their work progress, and those who want preparation in the field before pursuing a master’s degree.
And finally, some schools and universities offer online degrees in fine arts that are completed partially or 100 percent online, with no physical interaction with other students or professors. Rather than having to attend class on a set schedule, these students who have time restrictions or live far away from a physical college campus, can complete a bachelor’s degree, learning at their own pace and submitting assignments in their spare time between work, family demands, or other personal commitments.
Increasing popularity of online degrees is easy to explain. When online learning first appeared some 25 years ago, its main aim was to make education accessible to those who are not able to attend traditional learning programs. “Online degree programs are designed to help adult learners with busy lives earn their degree without being tied down to class times and without having to go to campus,” says Jeff Caplan, dean of strategic enrollment management at American Sentinel University, an online university. With online learning, people can enroll and easily complete their courses from any part of the world eliminating the barriers of geographical borders. Offering easy access and flexible scheduling, online programs enable students to enroll in class part time or full time; choose classes that occasionally meet in person or that take place completely online; and log on to the class platform at any time of the day. In such a way, online degrees allow students who are limited by geography, opportunity, and time to obtain a degree whereas they may have not otherwise been able.
Being accessible to anyone with internet access, online classes will most likely become a space for diversity and inclusion. Here one may be learning with those who are not able to attend traditional learning programs – disabled people, veterans, parents, professionals, and retirees, who all bring in their own experience and mindset into the educational process.
Although the cost of an online education varies greatly depending on the university, online classes generally tend to be more affordable than their traditional counterparts, because there is less overhead. Besides, some online colleges have an open admissions policy, which means that applicants will be automatically accepted to the school if they can pay the application fee and provide a copy of high school diploma or equivalency exam results.
An opportunity to learn at one’s own pace and vocational focus of most of the courses offered are among other advantages of online education. Unlike traditional programs that cover a vast array of topics for the graduation of students, online ones streamline subjects as per the degree requirements, which leads to a quicker completion of programs.
While all of this sounds alluring, there are a few things to consider before choosing an online degree over a traditional one.
For good reason, many educators and employers have been skeptical of online learning. It would be wrong to deny that there is a stigma around online education, as some sceptics continue to judge this form of higher education solely as a cheap and more flexible alternative for nontraditional students, such as adults and students with children, implying everyone is cheating and no one is actually learning. Such opinion of course questions the qualification of the online graduates. To some people, online degrees can be an issue of trust, or lack of reputation.
Indeed, statistics shows that online students drop out or fail their classes more often than traditional students do. One of the reasons for that is that the responsibility of completing the courses and monitoring the process is much higher as compared to traditional education programs and requires a higher level of self-motivation. With relaxed entrance requirements, a liberty to study as per your own schedule, and no teacher to call on you during classes, some students procrastinate which can eventually lead to poor results. No instant feedback from the professor can also be frustrating for some people who join online programmes.
Universities, however, claim that another reason for the higher dropout rates is the fact that online degrees are in no way inferior to programs that take place in face-to-face, classroom environments. This means that some students are not expecting their classes to be that competitive and are unable to keep up with the high academic standards.
Up until now, most universities have never truly embraced online education. They offered some courses online, making them accessible through aggregators such as edX or Coursera, while their most popular and prestigious degrees were never offered remotely.
With the pandemic, online has become a backup plan for many institutions, including those offering degrees in fine arts and other creative disciplines. If seen strategically, it could expand access exponentially and drop its cost by magnitudes, while providing recession- and pandemic-proof revenues for the institutions.
While just a few years ago, a transition to online learning at the current scale would have been unimaginable. It was impossible to imagine a 100 percent online degree in a discipline that requires hands-on experience – such as sculpture. However, professors are pioneering new methods and ed-tech companies are developing new platforms. A professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts taught a drama course that allows students to “act” with each other in virtual reality using Oculus Quest headsets; while a music professor at Stanford trained his students on software that allows musicians in different locations to perform together using internet streaming. “It’s a little more difficult to move fine arts to the online education arena, but it’s not impossible,” says Andy Fulp, Dean of Educational Technology for the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which offers online degrees in various fine arts fields.
Experts believe that the future for the universities that wish to stay up-to-date lies in creating “parallel” online degrees for all their core degree programs. By doing so, universities could expand their reach by thousands, creating the economies of scale to drop their costs by tens of thousands. Some instructive examples are already available – e.g. in Georgia Tech, a top engineering school, who launched an online masters in computer science in 2014 and now has nearly 10,000 students enrolled, which makes it the largest science programme in the US. The case demonstrates that the online degree programme has not cannibalized the in-person one, but rather opened up an opportunity to a different target group, mostly midcareer applicants looking for a meaningful skills upgrade. There is no reasons why fine arts cannot follow this path.
With all the advantages of online learning, virtual degrees are becoming increasingly popular option. According to The National Center for Education Statistics, in 2016 alone, nearly 6 million students in the US — over 28 percent of all college learners — were enrolled in at least one online course at a degree-granting college or university. Of those students, over 2.8 million, which makes 13 percent of all college learners, did not take any in-person courses, completing their degrees exclusively online.
With so many online learners making up the student body at top institutions, a shift in how people – and most importantly, employers – perceive online degrees is inevitable. The stigma attached to this form of education slowly disappears and companies are adjusting their hiring practices.
In a survey done by online institution Excelsior College and Zogby International, 61 percent of CEOs and small business owners nationwide said they were familiar with online or distance learning programs. As many as 83 percent of them see an online degree at a reputed institution as having the same value as an on-campus degree.
This opinion is shared by 61 percent of HR leaders. On top of that, 52 percent of them believe that, in the future, most advanced degrees will be completed online. Today already, they hire job applicants with online degrees – 71 percent of organizations claim they have done so in the last 12 months.
However, where you receive your online degree makes a significant difference in how employers will view your credential. Employers said such factors as the accreditation of the college or university, the quality of its graduates and the name of the institution awarding the degree were among other things they considered to make an online degree more credible. In fact, 58 percent of employers “believe that an institution’s brand and reputation is the main driver of a credential’s value, regardless of whether or not it was earned online.”
Among other factors that inspire trust among employers is the fact that an online degree is offered by an institution that provides traditional on-campus programmes in addition to its online coursework. This is based on the employers’ presumption that brick-and-mortar schools dedicate the same time and attention to developing online courses as they do for in-person courses. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 92 percent of employers view online degrees from brick-and-mortar schools as favorable, while only 42 percent would consider a candidate with an online degree from a university that operates solely online, despite any accreditation.
Despite all the ever growing popularity of online degrees, the debate around them continue unabated. No matter which one you choose – online or traditional – make it an informed decision and make sure the school you choose is accredited and reputable. BE OPEN Academy is always here to help you make the choice.