My brother has his own small local screenprinting and custom embroidery shop here where we live in the Tampa Bay area. For the majority of the time his business is a one man operation, but once in a while I need to go over to his shop and help him out if he's got a large order. That was the case today, as he asked me to come over to his place to spend a few hours in his place helping him get an order finished. This particular order is due for delivery to one of his customers on Monday.
Also helping us out was my brother's friend Rob. I was glad to have him there with us, because the job was a big one and the shop is a hot, sweaty place. Finishing the job quickly was great for us.
Rob is a fairly young guy (at least relative to me) but he never went to college and thus never received a degree of any sort. My brother told Rob he should talk to me about my own efforts to earn a degree, and he asked me to give Rob some advice. Well, when I spoke to Rob about the situation, I was a little taken aback by his reply:
"Hmmmm, so you're getting your degree online? Well, I really don't think that would work for me. I want a real degree".
What? A "real degree"?
Now don't get me wrong, Rob is a really nice young fellow. But apparently he is under the impression that degrees earned online aren't real. He seems to believe that a degree you achieve electronically is not equivalent to a degree earned in the regular classroom. That's very, very surprising to me. I mean, this is 2008, after all. Are people that in the dark about distance learning and the wide array of online educational offerings available through traditional colleges and universities?
It would seem to me that by now people (and particularly younger people) would understand that a degree earned online isn't going to look any different than one in the classroom, and that such a degree shouldn't be considered any less valuable than one earned sitting at a desk listening to a professor lecture.
Am I wrong to expect that people will realize that?