Distance Learning Programs Is Within Reach As A Rural Student
It used to be the fodder of comedies about the country kid coming to the big city to make his future. What many may not realize is it underscored something that is endemic of the 20th Century, i.e., rural settings have struggled for years to provide career opportunities for their children. Unless they are going into agriculture, when country kids graduate from high school they can’t find jobs around their home towns. Many times they have to move even to go to college, which also tends to center in metropolitan areas. Some demographic experts call this out-migration.? This is changing and a student can now earn anything up to and including a distance learning PhD.
This is thanks to recent technological innovations and more and more towns may have a solution: online education. Country kids can choose to earn their degrees through the e-learning programs and can improve their employment prospects. To top it off, benefits come from continuing to live in their home towns.
Considerable research has been published showing college graduates have a leg up when entering the work force. Further, human resource directors testify online graduates come with honed skills that set them up to be exemplary employees. These skills include an understanding of time management, refined self-motivation skills and considerable technological experience.
The only problem with all this is access. Many rural districts are missing one critical element for distance learning: broadband access. They lack the needed communications infrastructure to move beyond dial-up modems to DSL or T-Lines. Most online schools require high speed connections for many of their educational tools to work effectively such as streaming video, real-time chat sessions and downloading textbooks in a timely manner. Broadband allows students to hookup from home without having to worry about cable, putting them on an equivalent playing field as his or her classmates. Further, once they graduate they can now find jobs that require telecommuting, or web-based jobs, instead of having to move to the big city for employment.
There is one other factor that makes this an attractive consideration: cost. Virtual schools, on the average, cost much less than their on campus counterparts, even if advanced education is still expensive. This can be tough for rural areas, which are more likely to be economically challenged than the suburban and urban students.
That’s where another advantage of online colleges could come to play. Many rural students can work and then go to school after hours. They can also talk to the schools to see if they can get financial aid packages that could include grants, possible scholarships and even, thanks to Obama’s latest educational initiatives, tax credits.
This does leave one last challenge. A final obstacle for new users, especially rural ones, may not have the physical tools necessary for online education. Many rural kids are not accustomed to communicating with peers and teachers they aren’t within eyesight of. That picture is changing though. More and more kids are finding e-learning as a fact of life. Millions of kids between kindergarten and high school today are either fully online or taking blended online/in person classes.
As it stands, e-learning is a perfect match for rural citizens. It opens the doors to find greater opportunities once they get past school and enter the working world.?Many will go on in their education to earn their college degree, allowing them basically global employment.?Whether you choose your associate’s degree or PhD degree, distance learning programs is a large part of the future.