Online degrees are fine for adults who are looking to change careers or achieve a promotion. 18-20 year olds would lose out on the necessary social and development opportunities of an in-person school.
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2026
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18-20 year olds would lose out on the necessary social and development opportunities of an in-person school.
Yes, but they specified engineering.
Engineers aren't known for being social beings :p
18-20 year olds would lose out on the necessary social and development opportunities of an in-person school.
I think this is a toxic mindset. Do people not consider 18 year old fully formed adults? University is really about learning and then your fit in whatever adult stuff you choose around that.
Also I went in person college and the socialization was terrible, I went to several clubs and a lot of them were almost empty. people like to pretend like traditional and personal options are just so fantastic they really aren't all the cracked up to be
Same! I didn't mention that because I didn't want to just receive a reply like "well obviously it's a YOU problem!"
I'm in university right now, 2 years behind on standard schedule, and the people younger than me have a distinct problem with communicating or making friends, which I'm told is due to going to school during covid for longer than I did - but I think part of it is also technology exposure.
I went to several clubs and a lot of them were almost empty.
Clubs are indeed declining. People might then suggest fraternities/sororities but they're very problematic, generally.
I also genuinely don't have the time for clubs because I do one of the highest work-hour courses available. The socialisation I've done was largely not at uni but from interacting with the wider world around me,e.g thru volunteering, and I think we're moving towards a world like that since people are increasingly unable to move out of their parents home, and working from home increases.
But more importantly I think the attitude of 'uni is for partying and if you don't party through it all there's something wrong with you!" Is harmful to neurodivergent students.
The punishing courseload is part of it, especially when cost stressed try and cram un as much as fast as possible to get it done faster
Correct, your brain is not fully developed until 25-26. Many 18-20 year olds are still visibly children, and they aren't mature enough to make decisions independently. Although 18 year olds have reached the age of legal responsibility for themselves in our country, we still implement restrictive laws on them, such as not being able to smoke, drink, or open a credit card without a cosigner. In the US, university functions like a rite of passage into adulthood. You enter as a child, and with guidance from older adults and development opportunities given to you, you exit as ready to function as a mature, employable adult.
Don't keep spreading that misconception, people are losing rights because of bad brain science. The study your half remembering did not even attempt to study people at age 26 or older and thus you can't make conclusions
In the US, university functions like a rite of passage into adulthood.
Which i think is precisely the reason it shouldn't be like that across other countries. This is very derived from anglo-culture but historically university has been for all ages groups; public education in Europe is the reason people started doing it later, but realistically some people could be doing it earlier and some people shouldn't be doing it until later in life when they're more sure of what they want. To me the tragedy of public education is that it holds smart and hardworking kids back until the less motivated ones catch up with them.
The brain i suppose does keeps growing until say midlife, 30s, or 25 (most things keep developing until 25) - this is something doctors believe when I talk to them. But as my above paragraph alludes: some people reach mental maturity faster. I would rather we look at uni as a scholarly pursuit again and detach the societal pressure to engage in hedonism. It (university) would benefit as a system engaged-in by all age groups.
I mean, we can go back. I am in my 30s, and I am in law school. It's just that, our economy is a high-knowledge, skills-based service economy. Immature kids that don't know anything are not very employable. In the US, recent high school graduates have a 20% unemployment rate. We just don't have enough simple work available for all of the people who would prefer it. If you have the intellectual capacity to perform higher skilled work, you are better off doing it than trying to compete in the oversaturated, undercompensated low skill market.
For your engineering degrees, you'll definitely want to have some sort of home engineering lab to apply the theory you learned to real-world applications. With an in-person university, they'll provide all the equipment you need on-site.
This whole comment will be from a UK perspective
In Britain they kind of tend to be (unless redditors are lying... which happens... so it could just an astroturfed narrative by the government to "sell" more degrees) but the important elements of getting a job, I feel, are how well you market yourself OR good luck and connections. Sometimes people have all 3.
The benefit of an in person uni in this regards is that good ones have employability teams which will coach you on preparing your cv on any day you want, and put on events to help people get experience.
I expect that online unis have the same thing (and to be fair I've gotten more help in this regard from the independent employment charity I use rather than the uni ones, which are basically just there to waste your time and keep their own staff in a job [notwithstanding the course specific ones]) but I guess the in person unis are more likely to have it as a service, and it might be more robust.
But basically since covid society has had to admit that an open university degree (our leading example of online degrees) is worth as much as a university degree, since people did uni degrees mostly online in 2020. SO the only reason someone might reject you is their own bias against people who stray from the norm, which is probably a boss you don't want to be working under.
Is the question in relation to immigration requirements, or for job prospects? For the former, any accredited university will likely not have a problem being recognized, not unless it's a for-profit university or has a sizable "controversies" section on Wikipedia. Online degrees from an established public university generally bear the name of the university at-large, so there'd be no noticeable difference when looking at the diploma.
As for the job prospects, that's going to be very market specific. Perhaps the larger question is whether an online degree or not, is there enough demand in your prospective countries for MEs and EEs that employers are willing to go with a new resident from abroad, rather than from one of the established local universities?