Hello, I am a full time employee and I have a family. I don’t have any formal education after high school. I have been fortunate enough to get a job in the manufacturing and automation industry. I have been a Robotics Engineer buy trade for the last 16 years. I have a great mechanical knowledge and know how, I have trained myself in SolidWorks 3d design and I have a good understanding of electrical. I know would like to make it official and start working toward a degree. I have to do it all online as I travel a lot for work and can’t attend actual classes. I am not quite sure what BS to go for. I tend to think that Mechanical Engineering is what I am best suited for. Is there anyone out there that might have some suggestions for me as to what colleges are best for online and what degrees you might recommend?
Highly technical/mathematical degrees from an accredited school usually are not available on-line.
You can probably get one from University of Phoenix, but I doubt it would be respected in the Engineering field.
To get a BS in Engineering you are going to have to take a significant amount of math (calculus) and physics - including labs. I don’t think those can be done online. Math professors don’t trust online tests, for good reason.
I would advise looking at the University of North Dakota.
I’ve looked at the UND web site and the BSME is online but has on campus labs. I have not actually talked to anyone there yet. I don’t live in ND so on campus labs are impossible. Do online colleges allow you to take you labs at colleges close to where you live if your not in the state of the college?
The out of state tuition for the online ND degree is insane… $852 per credit. The degree would cost nearly $110,000.
An online Bachelor degree is a bad idea, because a Bachelor degree requires too many courses (4-year load) and would take forever to complete if you are taking classes part time, and they want you to network and socialize in the college career.
A online Master degree is a different story, because online master degree studetns already have a Bachelor, and more than likely are working a day job, and also a Master degree requires only a 1-year load of coursework.
I’d suggest applying for a non-traditional college (like School of General Studies at Columbia) that’s designed for students who have had working experience but didn’t enter college right out of high school.
“An online Bachelor degree is a bad idea, because a Bachelor degree requires too many courses (4-year load)”
So what? An online bachelors degree and a cmpus one have the exact same number of credits. A campus BS is no shorter than an online one. Yes, the degree will take a long time to complete part-time, but a campus degree being completed part time will take no less time.
By the time you complete a bachelor degree online while working, you are about to retire from your job (or at least past the mid point of your career).
I understand the courses and degrees are equivalnt, but there is a reason top prestigious schools don’t offer bachelor degree online.
Harvard offers online bachelors degrees.
You mean Harvard “Extension School,” which basically everyone who meets minimum (or the lack of) requirement can get in.
Well, plenty of prestigious schools offer online graduate degrees, including Columbia, Stanford, Northwestern, and Duke.
Well, my point is about undergraduate bachelor degree online.
Of course I know many top schools offer masters programs through internet to allow working professionals to take their classes. Masters programs only require handful of classes (about 10 or so), while undergraduate requires 40 or so. Clearly, there is a reason why top schools don’t offer undergraduate degree online.
Georgia Tech also offer masters programs in many engineering disciplines (most of them in top 10) online.