More People Choosing to Study Online to Avoid Increasingly Liberal College Culture

As a parent with a daughter who will be attending college in two years, I worry about her exposure to college culture. We have an advantage of having good colleges in both English and French languages (my daughter is fluent in both) within our city of Montreal so she wouldn't have to travel away from home and stay on campus. However, I have American friends who worry about their kids heading off to college. I thought this article might be useful.

Getting a college degree or undertaking graduate studies to get a master’s can make a big difference to the career options open to you, and is something a lot of people from all walks of life want to do. However, more and more people are snubbing traditional private colleges in favor of doing their degrees online with colleges like Rutgers Online. This is for a wide range of reasons. For one thing, it can be a lot less expensive, meaning people don't have to expose themselves to crippling student debt. For another, it allows people to study on their own terms, while also working, running businesses, or raising a family. Additionally, it lets people who live far from a university that offers the study path they want to gain their qualifications without having to leave their community to do it.

These practical reasons are not the only ones, though. A lot of people simply don't want to be in a college environment anymore, and this is often because people feel that they have become quite unwelcoming places for people who do not share the liberal views seen as the norm at many colleges.

College can be A Difficult Place for Non-Liberals

There have been countless stories about the increase in liberal values at universities all over America, and where colleges were always seen as somewhat liberal, it seems now that there is no place for people who don't have far left views. The scary thing for many is that they don't understand the rules that liberals tend to police each other by, and worry they may be disciplined for things like not using someone's 'preferred pronouns' or committing a 'microaggression'. For all the talk of safe spaces and tolerance in colleges these days, it seems that these rights are not extended to people who are, for example, pro-gun or Trump supporters, and this makes living in that environment frustrating for people who do not subscribe to 'social justice warrior' ideologies.

Online Degrees Offer a Less Stressful Alternative

For people who don't want to be distracted from their studies by politics, or have to worry about being judged for not conforming, an online degree offers a perfect solution. You can study all kinds of topics online, from an online masters in public administration to a degree in computer programming. You can get an MBA, or get yourself qualified for a career in healthcare. Aside from subjects where you need access to labs and other hands-on equipment you won't have access to outside of a college, you can basically study anything you like. Employers now see these degrees as just as valuable as equivalents from traditional colleges.

Would You Study Online?

Are you planning to do a degree like an MPA online? How much did modern college culture affect your decision? Let us know how you feel about the rise in people choosing online degrees to avoid attending liberal colleges in the comments!

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Thursday, July 6, 2017