So far I’ve only found Georgia Southern University and University of North Dakota but don’t know what kind of reputation these programs have. Any help on these or others?
If it’s online, why require that it be in the US? There are European universities that are well-received by non-academic employers in the US (and sometimes even by academic employers in the US.) If your goal is tenure-track employment at a research university in the US, give up now. These institutions are all about status and having your union card stamped appropriately, and will not be interested in an online degree holder. On the other hand, if you are interested in a teaching career, or a career outside of academics, things change. If you want to work at a small, low-level university, the path will still be hard with an online degree, but not entirely impossible, if you want a teaching faculty position, which may or may not be tenure-track. Community colleges might also be a good fit with an online degree, if you have teaching experience. If you want private school/prep school kind of things, you’ll do fine with an online degree, if you’re a good teacher with a passion for your subject. (Notice how, as you go down in “academic respectability” and the ability to impress people, it becomes more important how well you do your job, and less important how prestigious your degree is.)
Bottom line - major universities (rightly) see online schooling as the major threat to their business model, and will do nothing to encourage such degree holders. High schools (private) care about having quality teachers, not how colleges organize themselves.
Problem is - what is meant by reputable? In general, such decisions in academics are made by other similar institutions. Why do you want to listen to them?
Yes, I’m aware of free-source MIT, Berekely, and so on - but that just proves the point. These institutions believe - correctly - that the main thing they are selling is not knowledge or information, but paper. They are giving away the information for free - but the lectures really aren’t any better than lectures in other schools, by the way - and people are still paying for a paper that says “you graduated from MIT.” It’s a stupid, dying business model, but in the meantime, these institutions are getting good press helping it die.
So, in conclusion, it would be more helpful if you tell us what you’re trying to do with the degree, and also if you want a masters or PhD.
What I meant by ‘reputable’ was that they have a reputation among the Mises.org community as being libertarian or at least moderate instead of straight mainstream Keynesian economics. Any college with basic accreditation would probably be fine.
I am a Financial Analyst by profession and would like to study economics at the graduate level and potentially doctoral level mainly for my own education. I’m not sure what I would like to do with this degree yet, I intend to stay in finance for the foreseeable future, but am open to possibilities at an economic policy research center, think-tank, statistical polling company, etc. I may be interested in teaching in the future at the high school or college level, but that is probably 20-30 years away since I am in my mid 20’s currently.
I suppose I would be open to an online program at an university overseas, I hadn’t really considered it. Any more information would be great.
Ah, well, now that’s going to be harder. I don’t know of any with a libertarian/Austrian bent, or even moderately. Most online programs are straight up minimum expectations, which for a masters is a couple years of neoclassical micro and macro. The best online program I know of, from an academic reputation point of view, is the University of London external program. You can receive the masters from LSE or the School of International Management. You cannot do a Phd there, though.
Another consideration - with a masters, you can go to France and to the Phd in one year with Guido Hulsmann.
Great, thank you I didn’t know they had an online program. I have requested information from them, thanks again!
I nearly have my masters in math education from the University of Phoenix and will vouch that the institution is a joke. They inflate the prices and the GPA’s. It like a Dummys Guide to education–i would not even list it as an accomplishment. Given this, i do believe that an online degree and a community college is a great setup.
Here’s something else someone pointed out on another thread that could work for you:
I don’t know much about the school, but their degree description sounds very Austrianish, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the faculty were at least Austrian friendly. I don’t qualify for admission, but you might - they require 4 years of experience at the executive or senior management position. You need a master’s degree, so maybe you could do the U of L distance ed then go here for your Phd. They don’t seem to offer a masters in economics.
On the other hand, I suppose one could attend U of P and watch lectures on the subjects from MIT and Berkeley. But yes, when I was a manager, and if I become a department chair, I’d be less than inclined to regard U of P as meaning anything. I wouldn’t turn away someone with that degree, but I wouldn’t count it in their favor either. If they had a masters from there, I wouldn’t rank them above someone with no masters, if you know what I mean. I’m also very friendly towards online education, but not their model. I wouldn’t count a U of P degree as a negative, though I might with certain other schools.
I’ve seen few online programs also. Funny, when you think about it, economics is usually in the school of social sciences. You can get a Master’s of Social Work, a Master’s in Criminal Justice, and a few other programs, but not economics.
It probably has something to do with the ‘institutions’ that offer these programs being for profit, merely taking your money for a specific period of time, and then issuing you a diploma. (I looked into doing the University of Pheonix at one point. There rabid need for me to enroll kind of scared me. I still get a phone call from them from time to time asking if I’m interested.)
That’s my experience though, and I’m not saying that it is the norm or the average in any way.
Scary thought for the evening: Economics may not offered as an online program too often, but there’s an aweful lot of online nursing and medical technician programs. Would I really want a med tech or nurse who “watched a video on YouTube” taking my blood–or my temperature for that matter?!
Ok, I feel a need to chime in on this one, having looked into the nursing angle at least in the past. Online nursing programs fall into the following general categories:
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RN to BSN - this is for a registered nurse who wants to complete the academic side of the bachelor’s degree, and includes no clinical education. Nurses need the BSN to be promoted in some hospitals, or to apply to graduate school.
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MSN - this is for a registered nurse who wants to further their education in graduate school. Online MSN programs are in non-clincal areas, such as management, administration, and education.
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Excelsior - this is a category all of its own, although in the future others may follow suit. Excelsior allows for a non-nurse to take nursing core classes and become an RN through online study, followed by taking the appropriate licensing exams. However, there are two things to note about this program. First, admission is limited to people who hold other certifications or licenses covering the relevant clinical skills, such as corpsmen, paramedics, PAs, doctors, and LPNs. Such people mainly need the to learn non-physical things about nursing practice, and will already know how to perform the relevant physical tasks, and have experience doing so. Second, before graduation, students are required to perform a skills test, in a hospital, under real nursing conditions, with real patients, under faculty supervision. This is not watching a youtube of drawing blood.
I cannot speak for the med tech side, but the title ‘med tech’ or ‘med assistant’ covers a lot of ground. A lot of people with that title do not perform patient care, but rather chart, bill, schedule, and so on. I would highly doubt that a doctor would hire someone for a clinical role whose training did not include clinical skills training and practice, unless it’s one of the medical practices that does in-house training.
@JAlanKatz: I am familiar with how the programs work for RNs trying to move up in their field. I have several family members in the medical field–mostly nurses, a pharmacist, one aspiring doctor. My mother has her MSN. She works full-time at a hospital and co-teaches a nursing clinical portion of a college program on Saturdays for part-time students (mostly mid-life career switchers in that college’s nursing program). On several occassions she has tried to get me to switch over to a career in nursing–her argument being that my prior military service would be a positive attribute. I looked into it, but didn’t have much interest in becoming a nurse except for the Flight Trauma Nurse field–the adrenilin rush of zipping through the air in a helicopter on its way to an accident scene appeals to me for some reason.
(Sarcastic digression to another thread: No, I do not waterboard children for not knowing their ABC’s.)
All of those people, several of whom have many years in the medical profession, are extremely wary of the nurses who’s education is online. Not the RNs that took their classroom portion via the internet, mind you; but the one’s whose entire program consisted of watching lectures online, taking an online test, and then doing a ‘clinical’ on a training aid at the programs campus–which is more of an office–for their final evalation. Those programs are out there… and they are scary.
As for the medical tech programs, many of them check vitals and do the prep work prior to the doctor seeing you at the office.
I am not aware of any such programs, and I looked into it when I was interested in being a nurse. That said, I’d have no real objection to such a program if, like Excelsior, they required incoming students to already have the relevant skills. If not, then I see your point. However, you can’t always take the opinion of people in the field at face value, even if they are people you know to be good, intelligent, rational people. You don’t work in a field for many years without absorbing some of its ethos. I worked in medicine for 5 years while calling myself an anarcho-capitalist, and I look back at what I thought in those days and realize now just how much of the ‘predominant wisdom’ I had been absorbing. So, is it possible that nurses oppose such programs out of the institutional knowledge that they lower pay and increase supply? Is it possible that rationalizations abound, and members of the profession absorb this message without thinking directly “I hate such programs because they make it easier to enter my field”?
I used to think that online EMT and paramedic training made no sense, and opposed it. Then I worked with a few partners whose education was online, and found they were about the same as the other EMTs I’d worked with.
Furthermore, if such nurses really don’t know what they’re doing, can’t that be corrected at the level of hiring decisions and probationary employment? A lot of nurses I know tell me that they learned more in their on the job orientation than in 4 years of nursing school - shouldn’t that be relevant too?
There are/were a few programs in the Philadelphia area that offered it. I remember one being investigated and shut down. Like you, I looked into the idea but I didn’t have the interest in it.
I would agree with you about the fear of falling wages and competition for jobs due to online prgrams, but the complaint that I hear most often amongst my family is the lack of nurses. As for the ethos, most of it seems to be centered on providing the patient with quality healthcare. As for the opposition to online programs, I have asked and there isn’t any… at least from my mother. Her complaint is the lack of basic clinical knowledge–which makes her lose two nurses on her floor: the new nurse lacking the basic knowledge and skills and a second, more experienced nurse that now is dedicated to correcting that knowledge deficit and “bring the nurse up to speed”.
As a former volunteer fire fighter who did the online portion of the EMT program offered through the county community college, I would tell you the program was top notch… but back to my original statement: there was a portion that was not online, the practical training that was given on weekends at the county fire/police academy.
Part of the issue of screening candidates at the time of hire is that some people get past the process and are hired. Yes, the lack of knowledge can be (and often is) corrected through on the job training. Sometimes, though, the readjustment of personnel resources makes daily operations difficult.
As a side note, I’m hoping that you don’t think that I am “downing” on online education programs. I took several courses online while earning my BAs; and my fiancee did most of her accounting degree online.
I would also like to say thank you for the debate. It feels good to stretch out some unused brain cells… I spend too much time in a cubicle staring at statistical tables and can sometimes feel myself getting stupid. 
So it turns out that the London School of Economics does not offer an online graduate program, only an online undergrad program. The Univ of London does offer an econ graduate program but it is not tied to the LSE… too bad.
Yes, sorry about that. However, the other programs are also from reputable schools.
I am looking for an undergrad econ program but am unable to find any information about a distance learning program at LSE. Would you happen to have any contact information for someone who could point me in the right direction?
http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/prospective_students/undergraduate/index.php
Scroll down to economics, BSc.
Ahh… Not sure how I missed that. Thank you.
It looks as if they teach the classical macro/micro set. Would this be a good school to attend if a person wanted to stay along the lines of Austrian/free market ideas?
It is not an Austrian/free market program, it’s a typical, no frills neoclassical/Keynesian program. It is a very well known school, so people will think you have a clue what you’re talking about (the way they judge things) and it will prepare you to answer Keynesian arguments in a sophisticated way. It will also put you in a relatively good position (vs. Phoenix, Kaplan, etc.) to apply to graduate school. A lot depends on what you want to do. What do you want to do with the degree?