drunkenbeagle
Gang Member
How the hell could you do EE online? I mean, without letting out the magic smoke in labs, what are you really learning? 75% of it is really a math degree though.
Looking for an online school for B.S. degree
- Thread starter Rich B
- Start date
How the hell could you do EE online? I mean, without letting out the magic smoke in labs, what are you really learning? 75% of it is really a math degree though.
ppragman
No pasa nada.
They send you a ton of lab equipment, and some of the crazier stuff is remoted out of the lab in Tempe. Some of it is done with arduino and raspberry pi - there's a bit of a systems engineering component too. I'd imagine a useful adventure would be to try to build your own 'scope too. It's a pretty cool program - I thought a lot about doing that program when I decided to get another BS, but the price-tag ran me off in the end, it's crazy spendy. I elected to finish my Math degree instead (which was significantly cheaper) and am hoping to go to grad school soon - hopefully it'll dovetail nicely with something in engineering, controls, or applied math, but yeah, I couldn't justify doing another BS for price of a MS.
When I was going to do it, a good solder gun and a work bench was listed as required course materials - so you can definitely let the smoke out.
Yeah, it definitely bothers me that they simply want you have a degree. It doesn’t matter if it’s aviation related or not. I’m prior army (leadership experience), earned my pilot certificates using my savings (motivated, responsible), and then gained experience through years of flight instruction and other work (diligent, resourceful, real world experience). However, I’m apparently less qualified than someone who was a 4 year art degree.
So yeah....
ppragman
No pasa nada.
In the eyes of HR, you are less qualified because once you started the army you couldn’t quit, and theoretically you could go zero to hero in Aviation in less than a year. The idea behind the degree is that you’re able to understand “delayed compensation for hard work,” or more succinctly, “will you stick with something even if you can quit and it’s hard?”
This is a gross oversimplification, and personally I tend not to agree with this philosophy - one should evaluate individuals holistically and in isolation from others - but when your airline gets 12,000 resumes, you probably can’t go through all of those by hand and evaluate them without thinking about how they stack up compared to everyone else in terms of education.
And at risk of being a hypocrite, it’s been my experience that the people without a degree are - at least anecdotally - just as good as (and often better than) their college educated compatriots at being pilots. That said, they are often less interesting to hang out with after work or talk to in cruise. One of the most interesting person in aviation I’ve been around was an art history major, and another briefly had a stint as a photojournalist.
CK
Well-Known Member
I did WilmU. They have 7 week semesters. I was able to graduate with a four year degree in under three years with what felt like an average course load as you essentially do two semesters in a normal semester’s timeline. The classes were very enjoyable.
My degree was in General Studies and that was good enough for Legacy equivalent cargo carrier.
Alex.
Screaming_Emu
Well-Known Member
bucksmith
Did you lock the doors?
I feel your pain and sympathize. In a former life, I would often get hired ahead of college grads into contracts based on my 3 page long resume mostly built in the Marine Corps. They couldn't compete with my experience and skill set combined with the known quantity often found in former military applicants.
But that was a different career with different circumstances. I'm also not complaining about the degree requirements found in legacy airline job postings. I happen to agree quite a bit with PPragman's assessment above. It's a demonstration of something they are looking for and it's a way to cull the pile. Put a quarter in the machine and go around the merry go round.
fiveninerzero
Well-Known Member
It's much cheaper if you take full advantage of credit by exam. CLEP, DSST, ECE, etc.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
Do they give you college credit for your ratings?
If you're at an ALPA airline: https://www.tesu.edu/alpa/ is cheaper than in state tuition. Wish I had it when I was there.
I think I had around 21-24 credits earned by CLEP and other exams, so it saved me approximately 8k. The time saved by not having those credits in your course load allows you to maximize your enrollment efficiency with credits that require course enrollment for the degree.
nibake
Powder hound
Liberty University online. Accredited and you get full credit for pilot certificates with no extra fees. Know a guy who went from zero to B.S. in Aeronautics in 16 months while only taking 30 credit hours by testing out of core requirements and using credit for pilot certs. Don't remember the cost but just google the price per credit hour * 30.
ahw01
Well-Known Member
Christian University?
PhilosopherPilot
Well-Known Member
Scarebus
Well-Known Member
I had a good experience at UVU for my BS. I was given experiential credit for some classes and I didn't have any proctored tests, everything was 100% online. I already had my AS degree so all my generals were already taken care of. Those classes will definitely require proctored testing. I did the Aviation Administration degree (I'm dispatch) so it may be a little different in that regard as well, although all of the core classes are the same.
Anyway, I would highly recommend UVU. It is not hard, just a lot of mindless busy work. I went full-time all the way through while working. Working in this industry makes it a lot easier to go to school since we get more days off per week and don't take our work home with us. All assignments are due at 11:59pm Sunday so I just did my few hours of homework on one of my 3 days off and was done.