College Degrees, To Go

If there is one thing career counselors agree on, it's the fact that in a tightening job market, applicants must do whatever they can to make themselves stand out from other candidates.

Reduced air travel during 2001, initially caused by the slowing of the U.S. economy and exacerbated by September's terrorist attacks, is affecting airline hiring. Most major airlines have reduced pilot hiring, and some have announced furloughs. Regional airlines have not been affected as much, and some actually are expected to grow in the short term as the major carriers give them routes that can be more efficiently served by turboprops or regional jets. Meanwhile, charter flight hours have been increasing and fractional jet ownership programs report a high level of inquiries.

So, what does that mean?

While overall pilot hiring trends remain uncertain, it is clear that at least for the short term, the major airlines will be hiring fewer pilots than they have during the past few years. If your sights are set on flying for a big airline, it might be time to look at your r�sum�.

If that r�sum� doesn't include a college degree, most career counselors will recommend that as a place to start. And depending on your professional objectives, if a bachelor's degree is already listed, it may be time to consider adding a master's degree.

Today several colleges and universities offer a variety of courses - ranging from certificate programs through associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees - that can be taken without ever setting foot in a classroom. Increasingly these distance learning programs harness the capabilities of the Internet, giving students flexibility in both when they complete coursework and where they log on to do so. A working pilot, for example, might log on from a different city each day, determined by the location of layovers in his flight schedule. An individual's class can meet anywhere that he or she can connect to the Internet.

Two programs employing this technology - Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Utah Valley State College (UVSC) in Provo, Utah - share similar objectives but have different philosophies and approaches. Both report a rate of enrollment growth that would have a traditional college scrambling to build new classroom buildings.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

"People think that distance learning is a new phenomena, but it's not," said Dr. William Herlehy, chairman of Embry-Riddle's Department of Distance Learning. "The concept actually goes back to the apostle Paul in the Bible." Many consider his letters the first example of distance learning.

ERAU's program is not quite that old. The university launched its Department of Independent Study - basically a correspondence program - in 1980. By 1992, graduate courses had developed an online component, before online had entered the universal lexicon. Lectures and other course content was provided on videotapes, with accompanying workbooks, study guides, and textbooks; students communicated with instructors via e-mail.

During the 1996 to 1997 time frame, the university bought servers and brought in house much more sophisticated online programs. "We found a good platform for the delivery of educational programs. It gives us the capability of giving everything to the student electronically, except for the textbook," Herlehy said. The course syllabus, bulletin board, chat room, tests, video streaming, and simulations are all provided online.

ERAU's online offerings currently comprise some 180 courses that complete three certificate programs, two academic minors, three bachelor's degrees, and two master's degrees - a master of aeronautical science, with a specialization in management, aviation education, human factors, or operations, and a master of business administration in aviation.

The online MBA/A joined the course roster in May. ERAU introduced its first online undergraduate programs - associate of science and bachelor of science degrees in professional aeronautics, and a bachelor of science degree in management of technical operations - in October 2000.

"We went to being totally online 14 months ago for the [distance learning] master's and bachelor's programs," Herlehy explained. "We transferred in about 400 graduate students and just shy of 1,000 undergraduates." Now, slightly more than a year later, ERAU's online courses tally some 13,000 students - about 8,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students. Some 280 instructors keep things moving.

The university has made some minor adjustments to the online programs. "We found that people didn't like the semesters that we had set up" - five per year for undergraduate courses, and three for graduate programs, Herlehy said. Now, 12-week undergraduate terms start every month except December; 15-week graduate terms begin five times per year.

Some undergraduate students em-ploy a seamless multimodal approach, taking some courses in classrooms at one of ERAU's 120-plus distance learning centers and taking some online. Others take the entire degree online. As a rule of thumb, undergraduates are limited to 12 semester hours at any given time; those combining traditional classroom and on-line courses during the same term must be careful of overlap. Graduate students are limited to nine semester hours per term.

Herlehy is also an online faculty member - he's been one since 1992 - and is enthusiastic about the concept because it is so efficient. "I've found there was a lot of wasted time in the classroom-and a lot of that goes away online," he explained. "You get right to the business of education. That's a very comforting trend - I like that."

Academic oversight committees have been established for all online programs. "We don't see class grade rosters filled with As. The tests that you get online tend to have had many [faculty] eyes look at them. They're very discriminating tests, and we've been getting very good grade spreads." In addition, the WebCT system that ERAU uses to deliver online courses records everything that happens in online classes - including all messages and online discussion. That kind of archiving is not possible in a traditional classroom, Herlehy noted.

"Believe it or not, I get way, way more participation from everybody in the online class than I ever got in the classroom," he observed, citing more than 2,000 interactions during one 15-week graduate course with about 25 students.

ERAU currently does almost everything for its online programs in house, including computer systems work, videos, and CD-ROMs. A 14-person support staff fulfills the needs of the 280 faculty members and 13,000 enrollees. "We've been mildly successful, but it's been a team effort," Herlehy said. "As the leader of this team, I'm enjoying this success."

Utah Valley State College

Rick Vincent, director of online training at UVSC, has experienced similar reactions from students in the college's online Global Aviation Degree Center.

"The students actually feel like they get more interaction with an instructor online than they would in a live class," Vincent explained. "We have more of our local students taking our online courses than our traditional [classroom] courses, because they feel like they're getting more service and learning more online. Once they go online they tend to stay with us." He attributes this to live help and support from trained faculty that is available 16 to 18 hours per day, over the Internet or by telephone.

In the college's last survey, 83 percent of students preferred online to traditional courses. "One student said, 'This is the best course I've ever had in college. I learned more online than I ever would learn in a traditional class.' We've just figured out a unique way to support our courses, and I think that's been the key to our success."

UVSC started its online aviation distance education program in 1997, although it had some television courses before that. "It's been a radical change for some people in the college to think in terms of online learning."

It would appear that the aviation program is up to the challenge. Sixty percent of the college's total aviation program enrollments are online - while for the university as a whole, only 10 to 15 percent of students take at least one online course. And aviation program enrollment has been doubling each semester, Vincent said. "Our enrollment starting in November was three times the size it was last year," he said. The aviation program currently has 1,000 to 1,500 online students at any given time. Students can choose from eight-week or 15-week versions of any online aviation course.

UVSC currently offers five online aviation degrees: three associate's degrees, a bachelor of science in technology management, and a bachelor of science in aviation - professional pilot degree.

Four of the degrees have flying components, which is not common among online aviation degree programs. Ground schools are completed through the university's online courses, and flight training is provided by one of the flight schools associated with UVSC's Pilot Career Foundation - established to help manage liability concerns - that are located across the United States and Canada.

Standardization is a challenge, Vincent acknowledged. "That's a real hard thing to do, controlling quality at a hundred flight schools across the country. We originally wanted to force standardization to all of our affiliated flight schools, but we decided that every airline and every employer has different standards that they want to employ; different flows in the cockpit. We decided that didn't help anybody," Vincent said. "Instead, employers want sharp employees with good CRM [crew resource management] skills, and will teach them how to fly their equipment. We will teach them how to be a professional pilot."

He said that through the first half of the year, UVSC's job placement rate has been running between 95 percent and 97 percent. "The airlines like our graduates because of the attitudes that our graduates have. Your ability to learn and your attitude is as important as anything else when you come to a new job. In many ways we're teaching an aviation student how to think in the aviation industry."

The philosophy behind the college's flight programs is to encourage students to earn as many pilot certificates as they can during the first two years. Then, after they land a paying job, they can finish the degree coursework while on the road. "We realize that the most important commodity on your r�sum� is flight time. A bachelor's degree is necessary to move on to the highest-paying jobs. But while they're working at a regional airline or elsewhere, they can finish up the degree."

UVSC's online students comprise a real mix, but most fall into one of three categories. Twenty to 30 percent are recent high school graduates or people with little college experience - what once was the typical college student. About 30 percent are working professionals interested in adding to their skills. Another 30 percent to 40 percent are career changers. About 10 percent to 15 percent of students want to go into general aviation careers, often instructing or flying for fractional operators.

Today's students are located across North America and even overseas. Professional pilots or people serving in the military can be anywhere in world. "There's really a maximum number we can have enrolled in Utah - we only have 30 aircraft," Vincent explained. "This has allowed us to expand outside of Utah."

Vincent observed that it's easier to monitor the quality of instruction online. "You can handle bigger student loads and help students who aren't doing well in their courses. "We've also found that you can't give students open-ended deadlines for finishing distance education courses," he noted, adding that nationally, online distance learning courses have a completion rate of 40 percent to 50 percent - while UVSC's completion rate is more than 90 percent.

What does the college see in the future? "We're just unveiling in April [2002] our maintenance degree, which we figured out how to do online with a cooperative internship with the Army and some FBOs." Vincent said that students will learn the theory in online courses, and then gain the required hands-on experience while working for the Army or an FBO.

From a technological perspective, broadband Internet connections eventually will allow a much richer online course experience, with increased use of streaming video. "We base our courses right now on a 28-kb modem connection, and we have to restrict some of the more exciting things we can do. But we're already working on our next generation of courses, using a wide screen with a TV on the left and text on the right. We're about five years away from that, in my opinion - based entirely on broadband availability."

Utah Valley ( www.uvsc.edu/avsc or www.aviationuniversity.com ) and Embry-Riddle ( www.ec.erau.edu/ddl ) are only two of the schools offering online degree programs. AOPA Flight Training's College Directory Online ( www.aopaflighttraining.org/learntofly/collegiate_directory.cfm ) offers links to the Web sites of many other educational institutions that offer aviation degree programs. Check them out and see if one is right for you.