Earning an online degree can turn a job from blah to hurrah - sometimes in surprising ways
by Emily Wengert
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Despite having neither expectation met, Doyon decided to go on and earn a master's in distance learning at the same school. In fact, it's partly because those expectations weren't met that she's as happy as she is today.
Newfound Poise
Doyon works in Maine as a production operator making computer chips in the semiconductor industry - the same job she held in 1997 when she began school at the University of Phoenix. After graduating in 1999, she applied for a higher position, which her company willingly offered her. But before accepting, she stopped to evaluate her career path.
"I just knew it wasn't right. I had the confidence to know that was not the direction I wanted to go," Doyon says. "So I turned the job down, and I have never regretted that decision."
And that was the biggest attribute she developed during her two years working toward her bachelor's: Confidence. Years earlier, she earned an associate degree through a traditional school, but she never learned how to feel comfortable expressing her opinion in a group.
"I was the one who would never speak out in a traditional class," Doyon explains. "But in the online community, you have to write out your thoughts and ideas because that's how the teacher evaluates if you're learning anything." Through the online discussion board, she found she could take the time to formulate her arguments, and because she couldn't see the other students face to face, she wasn't as intimidated.
"It was so safe. No one knew me. No one knew that my face got really red when I was nervous or embarrassed. No one would see my hands shaking. No one would hear me stuttering because I was so nervous when the teacher called on me that I couldn't form my thoughts," Doyon says.
The partial anonymity of the online program - students posted bios about themselves but never met in person - made it easier for Doyon to respond to ideas from vice presidents of companies or supervisors she would otherwise have been too nervous to talk to in class.
"Sometimes hitting the send button was really scary. But what came back was more written words, not someone in my face," she says.
Now this wallflower who dreaded having to speak in class has become, ironically, a public speaker. She started her own company as a life coach and motivator, which she works on when she's not manufacturing computer chips or spending time with her husband and two children. She also published a book titled Glow: Renew Your Spirit & Release Your Inner Beauty (Mione Publishing, 2003) - all because of confidence gained earning two online degrees.
Her hiring manager, to whom she had to explain why she wouldn't be taking the higher-level job she'd been offered, has told her that he still thinks back on that moment.
"My manager told me once that whenever he's in a quandary about what to do, which direction to go, he thinks back to that decision I made and the confidence I had in making it," Doyon says. "He knows that I've never had any regrets about turning the position down because that wasn't where I was supposed to go."
Online Explosion
Doyon isn't the only one who's found that an online degree can help people realize their career aspirations. Administrators in schools with online programs predicted enrollment would increase 24 percent to 2.6 million in fall 2004, according to a study by the Sloan Consortium. By 2005, cite education industry analysts at Eduventures, online enrollment will reach approximately five million.
John G. Flores, Ph.D., executive director of the United States Distance Learning Association, believes these programs are so successful because they reach a different type of student than the typical undergraduate. He described the average distance learner as between the ages of 25 and 45 and usually married.
Distance learning used to focus on three areas: Business, education, and technology-related degrees. But Flores has noticed health care degrees, like nursing, are becoming a close second.
"I don't think there's any subject area that somehow cannot be integrated into a distance learning opportunity," Flores says.
Paula Peinovich, Ph.D., has found the same thing to be true at Walden University, where she is president. For every new degree that the school launches, students sign up ready to learn.
"Our most rapidly growing degrees are our Ph.D.s in psychology, education, and management. and we have a rapidly growing master's [degree program] in education," Peinovich says.
But public health and nursing, two of the newest degrees at the school, have their fair share of learners as well, in part because going back to school can be just the jolt many people need, no matter what the career.
"One of the things that can help you jump-start your career, particularly with online education, is that you are actually associating with people in your professional area from around the country and sometimes the world," Peinovich says. "For some programs, particularly public policy, or public health, or even the MBA students get together and oftentimes have the same problems but different solutions. You can really regenerate your own excitement, get that spark back."
Business classes often include assignments that demand real-world application, another way students rev up their careers.
"Even if you've stagnated in your career, you can take a new theory of employee motivation and do a project where you're actually required to apply it to your own organization," Peinovich says. "People just love that. It's one of the things they say is most helpful to them."
Finally, the Dream
Many years ago, Cathy Miller talked herself out of her dream career. She'd wanted to become a nurse, but decided to specialize in ultrasound instead.
"I was terrified. I thought I could never do all of what it takes to be a nurse," Miller explains.
But she has recently taken the plunge, with the support of her family and her employer, a large pharmaceutical company in the Philadelphia area. She is in the second half of a six-semester online nursing program at Deaconess College of Nursing, based in St. Louis, MO.
Intent on finding a school that offered the flexibility she needed, Miller settled on Deaconess after a thorough search.
"There aren't any other totally-online nursing programs I found with minimal campus attendance requirements," she says. "This one is also unique in the fact that you can start the program with no formal medical background."
Miller likes her school so much that she recommended it to her daughter, who is now completing her third semester. She and her daughter have found the program benefits them in different ways. Her daughter can study during the day, but Miller works on her degree on her days off.
"My assignments can be completed around my daily schedule. I can do it on the weekend, which is more conducive to an adult learner," she says. "Most adults don't have the luxury of leaving work or even attending evening classes."
Miller does point to one drawback of her online classes: She doesn't always know how to word her questions to instructors in e-mails so they understand what she's confused about. But with a little back and forth communication, however, she generally learns what she needs to know.
Once she graduates, Miller hopes to catapult her career from lab data specialist, a desk and computer job she has had for more than five years, to clinical research associate, for which she'd work in a doctor's office to ensure the proper data collection during drug tests.
Eight years ago, Miller convinced herself she couldn't cut it as a nurse and chose ultrasound instead. Now she has the confidence to pursue her dream through an online degree. "My involvement is so much more self-motivated because I know this is all up to me."
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