Accredited Online Degree From Capella University

Online degree programs have been one of the biggest direct changes in education due to the internet. It is convenient for working adults to be able to take courses without having to fit classes around their busy schedules or commute to campus. One of the most popular accredited online degree programs is offered by Capella University. The school was founded in 1993 and got its accreditation in 1997. When this happened, it changed its name and established five schools: Education, Business, Psychology, Human Sciences and Technology. The school is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Within these five schools, there are 70 different areas of study with more than 650 classes offered. The school has 650 faculty members, more than 550 employed staff and 13,000 students enrolled in courses. As you can see, this is a real college with real credentials.

The school has its good points and its bad points. In order to draw a balanced picture of the school, let's consider both.

The school has a special individualized portal for each student, called the iGuide. After you enroll, you get secure access through this portal to all the academic information you need. This makes it easy to look at courses and transcripts. Through this portal, you have access to your internet classroom, which they refer to as a 'courseroom', where you can get your assignments and post messages. Other schools have online chats and webcams which often don't work very well, but here the technology is all together and in working order. This school has a special system for turning in assignments which is efficient and easy to use. You submit all assignments as zip files or Microsoft Word documents.

The portal offers access to the alumni center which you can use for networking and looking for employment opportunities. There are other services available, like access to grants and other public money. Some graduates have criticized the alumni center as not being so useful, and being mostly just for show. However, most graduates are happy with it.

Because this school is geared toward students who are already working, its opportunities for on campus employment are pretty bare. Things like work study are hard to come by here. It is assumed that you are already working, and that's the reason you've chosen to study here instead of at a traditional college. Unless you live in Minneapolis, the school does not offer much in the way of employment for its current students.

The school does offer a wide range of services to handicapped students. There is a variety of software available, and staff makes an extra effort to accommodate students with disabilities. The school is consistently ranked high among educational institutions for its services for disabled students. There is mobility assistance, sign language interpreter service and additional time given to those who need it.

Most other services are somewhat lacking, however. There is a campus bookstore where you can buy various kinds materials including software, as well as books. Like most college bookstores, you can easily find the same books more cheaply if you look around a little. Like most schools, the bookstore is used to make extra money for the school. But, the easy way out of this, for you, is to buy your books on the web somewhere. There are lots of services available for buying textbooks on the internet. In spite of this, the school is quite affordable. There are more schools on the web every year, and those that want to stay must be competitive. There are five schools within the college. They should be considered separately in terms of quality. While the Business, Education, Technology and Human Sciences schools are quite good, the Psychology school has been undergoing some problems. There have been some problems with the management, and this has affected the overall quality of the program. Because of these problems, the Psychology school has had to keep changing its dean, which also has contributed to the problem. At the time of this writing, the school is still not accredited by the American Psychological Association, even though the school has been running this program for so long.

This shouldn't reflect too badly on the whole school. Remember, there are 650 faculty members, so there is a lot of variety. In fact, the quality of the instructors has always been commented on by the students who have graduated here. One criticism leveled at the school is that so many of the faculty are part time contractors, and thus do not have the interests of their students in mind as a highest priority. It is also charged that many teachers here are new to teaching on the web, and in being unaccustomed to it are unable to give the best instruction to their students. This charge comes particularly from students who have attended masters or doctoral programs here and found the quality of instruction at that level to be lacking. It could be that the strength of the school is in its undergraduate program. This is what most students attend the school for, so it may be that the instructors are better able to teach at that level. There aren't many complaints from undergraduate students about instructor quality, so this may be the case.

You get a bit of everything here. Whether or not you think it's for you depends on many different factors. Retrieving and submitting coursework is fairly easy. Besides that, the quality of the teaching has consistently been lauded, if at times inconsistent. The fact that every program is not yet accredited may reflect badly on the school. Still, as internet programs go, it is rated well in all areas. If you are looking into pursuing your education online, way your options well.