Online Degree Is Within Reach While Enlisted
March 17, 2010 by Natasha Bright
Filed under Online Colleges
Online college courses require commitment and self discipline-traits that many members of the military already hold. And the flexibility that’s inherent with college degrees can prove a welcome constant for soldiers deployed into service or transferred to another base. Continuing education during off-duty time is voluntary and is often free, and experts say there are several benefits to it.
“Voluntary education programs help members improve their mission performance, prepare members for greater responsibility and enhance their professional, as well as their personal, potential,” Education Technician Lori Popp of the Lifelong Learning section of Marine and Family Services aboard North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune told the Jacksonville Daily News in July 2009.
Anyone who served in uniform in 1944 began to have the opportunity to obtain a college scholarship as part of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, more commonly known as the GI Bill. Nearly half of all college students in the nation by 1947 were veterans, according to a Time Magazine article.
Now, as part of a Post 9/11 GI Bill, service members on active duty after Sept. 10, 2001 can obtain as much as 100 percent of their tuition money for graduate and undergraduate degrees and vocational or technical training. The bill also allows money for books and housing. Members of the military can get academic credit for military training and experience, and the U.S. Army reportedly has more than 1,900 community college and degree programs online partners that accept these credits from soldiers during or after service.
Many bases are said to feature satellite branches of local, accredited universities and, for many members of the military, online college offerings might be the only option. Online classes involve obtaining 80 to 100 percent of a course’s content online, according to the Sloan Consortium, and distance education typically attract students who otherwise might not be able to attend classes at a traditional campus.
Online classes and online degree programs are particularly popular among students who otherwise might not be able to attend a traditional campus, and their popularity has been steadily increasing. The Consortium is made up of a group of organizations and institutions that are dedicated to quality online education. The recently released results of a study, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States,” showed that 4.6 million students enrolled in online classes for the fall 2008 semester, a 17 percent increase over fall 2007.
According to Popp, more than 1,000 deployed marines and sailors these days put tuition assistance to use. Among the military, online courses are a “boon” for those who “want to participate in college despite geographic displacement,” an October article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The article, centered around a professor and National Guardsman who continued teaching online classes after being deployed to Iraq, noted that soldiers work, read, exercise, play video games and watch movies when the situation isn’t hectic. Deployed soldiers also enroll in online college classes, according to The Chronicle.
U.S. Marines Corporal Dakota Berg joined the military after his 2006 high school graduation as a means of paying for his online education and pursued an online degree in accounting, the News article stated. The military’s tuition assistance program relieved a lot of financial and mental stress.
