Issue 175 Company College October 2, 2013

College is expensive here in the United States. I have to say I was lucky to have my parents as I paid a year of college myself with the remaining three being paid off by my parents. As such I graduated with zero debt. But my fellow students at Hofstra and other universities were not so lucky. They owe in excess anywhere between $30,000 and $180,000. On top of this, colleges are not training students in the skills they need for the work place environment. Students often get retrained by their work place in the skills they need for them to be successful in the company. As such, companies want to cut out the middle man.

What Businesses are doing: Due to the lack of job skills coming out of colleges, companies are offering their own online degrees in the courses that they feel best prepare a person for a job. Well, the course prepares the person for work in their own company primarily. However, many of those skills transfer over to other related business disciplines and as such make an individual just as marketable as if they went through another company’s online college course. Yes that is correct; the courses offered are college level equivalent. As such you take a course online in the same way you would if you were taking an online college course. Plus the course is recognized to be at the college level. So it looks just as good on a resume as if you went to a traditional college. The only difference is that a company offered the course as opposed to a college who offering the course.

Advantages: For one, the primary advantage is that it is cheap. The cost of these company level courses is smaller in general to the traditional college courses offered. In addition, it is a company offering a course that is geared mainly for preparing you in skills to work in the field that the company is in. So a tech company will offer relevant tech courses based on what they need and projected future needs. This is the same for all disciplines of business who want people prepared to do the job as opposed to them having to waste their money retraining people with the skills they require. So there is less need to worry about no being able to do a job as the course has trained you to do it already. Also, the training helps you to prep to work in other businesses in the same field and as such you are not restricted to working for the business who originally offered the course.

Disadvantages: The main disadvantage is the lack of traditional networking that occurs on campus. Brick and mortar colleges allow for you to meet strangers who could possibly one day land you a job. No, your normal social life will not suffer as you create your own from home. But your networking, unless you use various forms of social networking, will be limited. As to other disadvantages, there are certain courses that can only be accomplished in person. Some interdisciplinary courses like art, literature and such may require an actual school. So you will need to seek one of those out to acquire such forms of study.

Conclusion: Online courses are the wave of the future. They will not remove the traditional schools from their position with respect to certain forms of study (like being a doctor), but schooling will most likely get cheaper. Businesses offering such courses though will mean more competition which will force colleges to either offer better courses or lower their prices to compete. This of course is a win for everyone either way. But this revolution also helps the people with a lower income level as college is now becoming that much more affordable. This means less loans will be needed and as such less burden upon the individual once they graduate.