KetTarma posted:

I do not know why you said that because I am a pure electrical engineering major. I work for a very well respected engineering company. Anyway...

I am quite familiar with the program you're talking about because I was talked out of it by an engineer friend of mine. It's not bad. It's just less than ideal and online degrees are, in general, suck for a number of reasons. I think anyone that sees North Dakota on your resume will know it's an online degree since I think it's the only online EE degree and you obviously never lived in North Dakota.

Ok, here is industry perception: It is completely up to the whims of the particular person you run into. In general, online engineering degrees are garbage. "They're getting better" is a common statement. My old manager simply said "no" and walked away when I asked him his opinion of them. I know other engineers that are doing their MS via an online VTC style program. They tend to think that they're ok and are less hesitant to hire someone. Then again, I know of an internal design contest that a major corporation held recently where one award category was "Most Likely To Have Been Designed By Someone With An Online Engineering Degree."

Why are they crappy? You get little instructor interaction. You don't get asked questions in class. You don't have pop-quizes. You don't get office hours to ask questions (and believe me, there are many). Some of them (not the one you're looking at) only do online, video-game style labs. Often, you take unproctored tests that people obviously cheat like crazy on. Because of that, people take online degrees less seriously.

Then again, I've interviewed at places where they were pretty open about degrees being "just a piece of paper." In general, you don't want to work at places like that. Most good jobs will have a GPA restriction. Generally, if you have <3.0, you will have a much harder time getting interviews at a "good" place.

To get hired as an engineer, here is the procedure:
1) Go to college.
2) Get good GPA.
3) EVERY summer, work as an intern at the best place you can. This will be impossible on active duty.
4) Senior year, accept a job offer from one of the places you interned at.
4a) If you didn't intern, post in the SA Engineering thread about how there are no jobs
4b) If your GPA is <2.5, post in the SA Engineering thread about how there are no jobs

Since I am all about nukes getting engineering degrees, let's look at what you should NOT take online:
-Any lab. Period. No, being a nuke doesn't mean you know anything about chemistry or physics. Engineers take calculus based physics which is completely different from algebra-based.
-Calculus of any type. Online colleges usually have unproctored, open note, open book, open everything tests where calculators are allowed. That means you don't learn poo poo.
-Differential equations of any type. Ditto. I have never been allowed to use a calculator in a math class. As a result, I'm pretty good at math!
-Circuit analysis. No, being an EM doesnt mean you know anything about circuit analysis. You'll blow through A-school after the first week of Circuits 1.
-Digital logic. No, being an EM doesn't mean you know anything about digital. You'll blow through A-school after the first week of Digital 1.
-Electronics. Ditto except first day. The only advantage 9 years of being a nuke EM gave me was that I already knew the definition and uses for "diode" before the professor said it.
-Signals and Systems. This is just too difficult to take without a professor to talk to daily. It is like some type of weird math voodoo.
-Electromagnetics. Ditto.
-Electrical engineering electives. These are often too difficult to take without daily office-hours visits.
-Design project (duh, groupwork)

I guess I'll mention that I'm going to do a semi-online masters program where you only travel to the school a few times per semester and VTC everything else. It's about 100 miles up the road from me and the only option for my area.