Do you think graduates of online marketing degree programs have an advantage in the job market?  I’ve seen a number of internet marketing related degree programs pop up in the past few years – some better than others.  The newest one – and from what I can tell the one with the curriculum that appears to best prepare students for the real world – is the Online Marketing Program offered by the University of San Francisco .  Also, as an honorable mention, Full Sail University offers a degree in Internet marketing that seems to be fairly well designed.  I’m not endorsing any of these programs – just offering an opinion.

I think it’s time for career-minded internet marketers to distinguish themselves by their academic credentials from those who “just do internet marketing".  This is not to say that someone who studied traditional marketing in college isn’t prepared for a career in online marketing.  Let’s be clear – I don’t mean that at all.  However, I do believe establishing online marketing as a rigorous academic program that prepares students for real world conditions is a necessary step toward greater solidification of the legitimacy of our industry. The online marketing industry has matured passed the point where being "self-taught" is acceptable and on-the-job training is sufficient.  Every other business discipline has its own recognized academic major – accountants earn degrees in accounting, human resources professionals study human resource management, operation managers study business logistics.

Of course, some areas in Internet marketing simply aren’t mature enough or don’t warrant a full degree program.  For example, the masters degree in social media marketing offered by Birmingham City University makes me scratch my head… hard.  What this university is calling a degree program could simply be condensed to a semester long course. But if executed correctly,  I think it’s a start in the right direction toward achieving greater independence and recognition for our industry.

Not demanding our own sphere of academia after a certain period of time is dangerous.  It unnecessarily exposes the online marketing field to hacks and frauds which in turn gives us all a bad name.  This is already a huge problem in the field of search engine optimization and one beginning to emerge in social media marketing where anyone can just declare themselves an expert and potential clients can’t distinguish the the good from the bad.  Practicing web marketers should not resist the “schooling of online marketing” – this is what needs to happen and it will be better for us all in the long run.

I’m a big fan of education in all its glorious forms: traditional classroom learning, online education, and on-the-job-training.  Having completed graduate school in 2008, I needed a new set of educational goals.  More specifically, I wanted to learn a web programming language.

For the past three weeks, I have been taking a non-credit Ed2Go course entitled Introduction to PHP and MySQL offered through the University of Maryland Baltimore County Training Centers.  Ed2Go provides six week long online courses that cost between $95 – $120.  I must say, that I am thoroughly impressed with the presentation of the material and the quality of the instruction.  I am especially impressed with the knowledge and responsiveness of the course instructor.  Ed2Go classes have flexibility build into assignment deadlines to accommodate working adults.  Lastly, the intuitive e-learning platform means that you don’t have to “learn the platform”, instead you simply learn PHP.

Why did I sign up for an Ed2Go class?

I briefly considered enrolling in another Masters program (which I still may do in the future), however I couldn’t bear the thought of having to amass another pile of student loans obtaining a second graduate degree.  So, I asked myself what do I really want to get out of going back to school?.  The answer was simple: I want to learn about web programming. This is different than desiring to earn a degree in a subject, or wanting to do firsthand research in an academic environment, or all the other responses my heart could have given.

I had failed in the past at completing self-paced enrichment courses because they lacked deadlines, structure, and were low stakes – meaning I wouldn’t waste tuition money or receive a failing grade for not finishing them.  For me, options like MIT’s Opencourseware, although amazing in many ways, aren’t practical.

I have always had a healthy interest in software programming and application testing and despite not having much formal academic training, I have a “better than expected” knowledge of the methodologies of both.  As an undergraduate, I took a C programming course that provided me with an introduction to the data structures and program flow controls common in every programming language.  Soon afterwards, I began developing simple, yet effective procedural programs using Autoit 3.0 to streamline my tasks as an application integration tester.

Ed2Go and Career Changes

Ed2Go classes are great for professionals seeking to acquire new skills to help advance their careers or for lifetime learners desiring personal enrichment.  Although, they won’t help you transition into a new career like a certificate or degree program can, Ed2Go courses can certainly give you the opportunity to test the waters of a career change before spending thousands of dollars on tuition.

I’m still working my way through Introduction to PHP and MySQL but so far, so good.  I’m even considering signing up for Intermediate PHP and MySQL which starts in a few short weeks.

As a soon to be alumni, I enjoy reading articles about the great goings-on at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT).  Although NYIT it’s a low profile school and a relatively young university (a bit over 50 years old), there’s just so much out-of-the-box thinking taking place around its campuses that the institution is quickly gaining increased attention from watchers of higher education.  Today, in an article called U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outpost Abroad, the New York Times identified NYIT as a leader in international education activities.  The article quotes Edward Guiliano, President of NYIT, as stating:

“We’re leveraging what we’ve got, which is the New York in our first name and the Technology in our last name,” said Edward Guiliano, the institute’s president. “I believe that in the 21st century, there will be a new class of truly global universities. There isn’t one yet, but we’re as close as anybody.”

- Edward Guiliano, President of New York Institute of Technology
U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outpost Abroad – New York Times

With campuses in New York, Bahrain, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Canada, China, and Brazil, NYIT is truly a global center or learning. 

Newsweek’s 2008 America’s Best College List is out.  This year,  New York Institute of Technology’s Masters Program (and the delivery mechanism of my business education) is ranked 80th in the Northern United States.   That’s pretty darn impressive considering NYIT is in the company of some top caliber schools .  Check out NYIT’s school profile.

As I prepared to write this post,  I realized that I have been continuously enrolled in one school or another for 23 years.  I am 26 years old.  The first 21 years of my education followed a fairly typical path of Head Start beginning at 3 years old, a series of public schools for grades K-12, and an undergraduate education at a brick-and-mortar state school culminating in 2005.

By 2005, I was working as a tester in a software company and already had 3 solid years of professional experience earned over the course of 2 jobs.  I was so entrenched in my career that I couldn’t be bothered to attend my undergrad graduation and spent the day at work clearing client deliverables from my to-do list.  Perhaps, I disregarded the graduation ceremony because I knew this wasn’t truly the end of my formal education.  I wanted to earn an advanced degree.

I was in a place dissimilar to many recent graduates my age – I had a few years of full-time professional work experience, a blossoming career outlook, was out of my parent’s house, and was financially independent and stable.  The last two years of my undergrad tenure were as a commuter student and involved putting 100 miles a day on an unreliable 1993 Chevy Blazer.  I had no intentions of repeating these daily voyages on any scale.  These factors, combined with a job commitment of 40-50 hours a week and a part-time eBay sales consulting business, told me that my grad program would have to be extremely flexible.

I began my search by looking into MBA programs at nearby traditional colleges.  My undergraduate grades and GMAT scores were good enough to easily get me into just about all area grad school program, so I wasn’t too worried about meeting admission criteria.  I was more concerned with finding the program that was right for me.  I soon realized that none of the schools in my area adequately addressed my unique interest of online marketing and e-commerce.  And what’s more, only a few of the colleges I visited recognized the unique time constraints of working adults.

Different types of online education

It was about this time, that I began to explore continuing my education online.  To successfully pick the right school, I had to learn what online education really involves.  As it turns out, online education is really best viewed as a continuum that describes the degree to which institutions leverage the Internet as a learning platform.  On the minimalist side of the online education continuum, there is the single course taught at a physical college that deploys the occasional use of online resources.  In the middle of the scale are physical universities that offer degree programs that can be completed entirely online without having to set foot in a classroom.  And at the extreme of the spectrum, there are universities where all learning and coursework take place only over the web.

I also had to learn more about accreditation to be sure that I made the right decision.  Some degree mills attempt to pass themselves off as legitimate accredited universities, a practice which represents a severe threat to the credibility of degrees earned online.  The U.S. Department of Education has created a resource page that helps students spot degree mills and a database of all accredited schools in the United States.  As part of my search for the right distance degree program, I learned about for-profit degree granting institutions.  As nonprofit universities dominate offline education, for-profit universities, for better or worse, are becoming synonymous with online education.

Why I chose Ellis College of New York Institute of Technology

Eventually, I came across Ellis College of New York Institute of Technology.  Ellis College had everything I was looking for in an MBA program.  The university offers an extremely challenging core MBA program with an e-commerce specialization option.  E-commerce MBA tracks are something many physical colleges have overlooked, and with online sales booming year-over-year it’s one of the hottest topics in business.

Moreover, Ellis College’s distance learning program is part of the New York Institute of Technology, a brick-and-mortar university located in Old Westbury, New York which regularly receives good rankings in U.S. News and World Reports.  The affiliation with a traditional school should appease most skeptics of online learning.  The graduate program is geared toward working adults and extends students a measure of flexibility without compromising high education standards.  Additionally, the school has an active community of students and faculty (check out the video below).  I found the professional credentials of the Ellis College faculty especially impressive.  Most professors have PhD’s and/or 20 plus years of business experience at major corporations.  The instructors are always available to answer questions about coursework or to give professional advice.