Halloween Homework

Well, I don't think ever, in all my school years, have I ever done homework/studied during Halloween trick-or-treating. Until now! ;-) Here I am, reading my financial accounting lesson, popping up and down for trick-or-treaters...

So, I guess that's either a pro for online MBA's, or a con - I'm even working on Halloween! ;-)

Online Degrees More Acceptable in the Workplace

Interesting article on BusinessWire, regarding Vault.com's Online Degree Surveys, with 107 employers responding:

Online Degrees More Acceptable in the Workplace

Basically, one of their quotes touches on what I see to be the biggest strength of an online degree:

One such respondent stated, "It takes a lot of discipline to complete an online degree."

In my experience thus far, I absolutely concur with that statement - it takes considerable discipline to sit down and hit the books when nobody's really making you. They go on to give some statistics gathered from the survey, summarized below:

• 34% have ever encountered a job applicant with an online degree
• 20% have hired applicants with online degrees
• 54% still favor job applicants with traditional degrees over those with online degrees
• 45% said they would give job candidates with both types of degrees equal consideration
• 86% would be willing to accept a job applicant with an online degree, while
• 14% said that both online bachelor's degrees and graduate degrees are not acceptable
• 91% would hire a candidate who had everything they were looking for, but only possessed a degree from an online university

Yes, for the next few years, online degree holders will potentially be subject to a bit more scrutiny than a brick-and-mortar degree holder. However, I think that will continue to become less and less of a factor, and if you are a truly qualified candidate for the job, the degree will be seen as complimentary, and not a detraction from your credentials.

If nothing else - Just wait until I go and take over the world. THAT will give online degrees some credibility. ;-) To be perfectly serious, though - as more and more people take online courses, it would stand to reason that we will have more and more people who "make it big" that went online. As that happens, the perceived credibility of qualified online programs will increase dramatically.

ASU / W. P. Carey Chat

From the ASU W. P. Carey MBA Online Program homepage:

Get your questions answered in our October 19th Chat session. Simply log into the chat session on Wednesday, October 19, 2005 from 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. MST (5 p.m. - 7 p.m. EST).

Anyone is welcome to participate at anytime during the two-hour session.

I will plan to logged in for most if not all of the session - for anyone reading this that's a potential applicant, or just generally curious - feel free to log in!

Online learning gains ground

Online learning gains ground

Interesting article in the Nashville City Paper - hardly a publication of the same caliber as the WSJ, but interesting, nonetheless - generally quite favorable of online learning.

Google RSS Reader!

Not really about my MBA, here, but another meta-post on blogging, and/or keeping up with bunches of regularly-updated websites - to my non-techie MBA friends and readers who haven't yet found RSS readers - Let me make yet another plug of them as a concept in general - they will increase the productivity of your web surfing tenfold, if not more. It may sound silly, perhaps, to increase the efficiency of your web surfing, but if you're like me and try to follow tons of websites - of both professional interest (e.g. business, economics, finance, etc) and leisure interest - it's no joke. This is another thing you'll want to be ahead of the curve on, not behind it.

Anyhow - As I wistfully posted a while back, I really wanted Google to buy out Bloglines, or otherwise offer an RSS reader of their own.

Wish no more - They've got it! Of course, it's still in beta and all that, but of course, as with anything Google, they've put their own spin on it and done it up even better! For those into the whole Web 2.0 thing, it is definitely a move in that direction.

Thus far, it's very cool. It took me a second to get used to the interface - they use tags ("Labels"), of course, instead of folders. All very AJAXy - quick, snappy, and all that good stuff. Though, with my 85 feeds (and counting), it does bog down every so often. ;-)

I was able to export my Bloglines list to an OPML file (hint: you have to view your blogroll publicly, and look at the bottom to Export Subscriptions - mine), and upload all my feeds - migration took all of maybe 3 minutes. God bless open standards.

There's still a few things they could do - again, still in beta - but overall, a very nice reader. I'll probably keep my Bloglines account active for a bit, but I sense a migration to Google's Reader.