The Grad School Search
Posted: February 18, 2012 Filed under: Graduate School | Tags: certification, distance learning, edtech, Educational Technology, financial aid, georgia, grad school, online learning, technology, universities 4 Comments »I want to go to graduate school so bad it hurts. Here’s what I want:
- Must be 100% online unless extremely local (and even then, must be 95% online).
- Must offer a masters’ degree in instructional technology.
- Must be a versatile degree which will work for K-12 as well as the private sector (If I’m paying for it, I want something versatile).
- Highly prefer programs that don’t require applicants to take the GRE. The GRE is not an effective measure of my ability to learn. Plus, I hate math and the GRE has some of the craziest math questions I’ve ever seen. I’m worried I wouldn’t pass.
- I prefer programs that have some sort of simple-ish project at the end, rather than having to write a big fat thesis. It’s not about writing. I love to write! It’s about the time commitment that would be involved in putting together something that massive while still working during the day.
I think that’s pretty much it in terms of academic requirements. And I’ve found a small number of degrees that appear at first glance to meet most or my requirements. But it turns out a masters’ degree is so expensive! The worst part of this is figuring out how I am going to pay for this whole ordeal. Especially since I continue to owe plenty for my bachelor’s degree and it will be a long, long time before I get out from under that.
But at least there are choices out there–that’s something, I suppose.
I have to be honest, I am tempted from time to time to go to grad school. But two things always stop me:
1) I see no point in paying for an online education.
2) I see no point in paying as much as they’re asking for an in-person education.
I’m very curious how the higher education bubble will pop, because I really expect it to in the next decade.
I can see paying some for an online education, since an instructor is still involved, but definitely not what the going rates are.
From what I’ve seen, an in-person education is prohibitively expensive, plus there’s the inconvenience of having to go somewhere.
That said, the payoff is relatively quick for educators. The pay raise is generally automatic and pays you back for the cost of the degree in about five years. I do want to make myself more marketable but for the money I definitely want a degree that’s useful in public education as well as the private sector should I choose to go that route at some point in my career.
I do agree with you that I think one day there will be something big going on at colleges. I’d be perfectly fine with automated, do-it-yourself graduate degrees at a super-reduced price, or even in-person classes if the structure or format changes (or they get closer!) We’ll see, I guess.
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Indeed we will. It’s an exciting time to be involved in education!