Daily Aid 80: Online degrees on CNBC, community college psychic costs

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Daily Aid 80: Online degrees on CNBC, community college psychic costs

11 February 2009 1 views No Comment

Daily Aid 80: Online degrees on CNBC, community college psychic costs

Student Financial Aid News

A new report suggests that students at two-year institutions learn more slowly than those in four-year programs because higher education exacts greater financial and psychic costs from people in community colleges. For example, community-college students may struggle more with college-level work, causing college to exact a greater psychic cost from them. Two-year students, particularly if they are attending a community college less than half-time, also tend to have more limited access to financial aid than their counterparts in four-year programs.

Commentary

it’s absolutely true that if you’re enrolled less than half time, you get less financial aid than a full time student – that’s true of all federal financial aid, including federal student loans. That said, I think it’s more a function of the fact that part time students tend to be working a job as well, so their academic progress is being slowed by work, not a mysterious psychic toll.

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News You Can Use

From CNBC:

Last week, Cramer put all the online-education companies in the Sell Block: Apollo Group (ticker:APOL), Corinthian Colleges (ticker:COCO), ITT Education (ticker:ESI), Career Education (ticker:CECO). These stocks, which offered one of the market’s few secular growth opportunities, had become too popular, so it was time to take profits.

Well, on all but one, that is. Cramer recommended holding onto American Public Education (ticker:APEI) as a speculative play. He liked the military exposure. Eighty percent of APEI’s student body is either military or military-related, and the company tailors its programs to better suit soldiers’ often mobile lifestyles. APEI’s a cheaper alternative to bricks-and-mortar schools, and even still, the military isn’t cutting student aid the way many corporations are.

Commentary

This segment of Mad Money was good in its focus on online degrees, but I think Cramer missed a couple of points that are worth putting more emphasis on. Online degree programs are not just terrific for working professionals trying to juggle a schedule and family, but they’re also good for folks who want to enroll far below half time enrollment. True, you will get nearly no financial aid, but if you’re taking a degree program a few credits at a time, not borrowing any student loans is a good thing.

More important, online degrees are not necessarily a good match or money saver for undergraduate students – a really important point. You can absolutely complete an undergraduate degree online, but that requires an extra level of discipline and self motivation that on campus learners get reinforced by living in an academic setting. True, you also don’t get beer pong and walks of shame at the same rate as on campus learners, but just as telecommuting workers have to have a little more self discipline to work from home, so too do students need the same discipline to take a degree from home and be successful.

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