Best Online Colleges

What are the best online colleges?  That actually depends on you and your interests, desires, talents and passion for learning.

Here are some questions to ask as you begin to contemplate the best online schools, or best online universities, for you:

What is your career goal? (for example, to make maximum compensation, to learn everything possible about a given field or subject, to become a specific professional, to build your own business, to be an entrepreneur)

What are your talents? (for example, sing, dance, work with your hands, play a musical instrument, draw, create graphics or photographs or some type of art, drive vehicles, play a particular sport)

What do you enjoy doing more than anything else? (for example, hang out with friends, write, talk, watch or follow a sport or sports, play a sport or sports, fly or study/watch anything that flies, building things, designing things, working with tools, working with or on or taking apart and putting back together computers)

Do you enjoy learning about new subjects or theories?

Do you want more education? (Even the best online colleges, may not be best for you if you do not want to go on to college right now.)To expand on the last item above, college is not for everyone.  Even the best online college may not work for you.  Have you pursued a search for the best online schools just because mom or dad or both have said you ought to go, or even you have to go to college?  At some point, usually at or just after reaching 18 years of age, you will have to start making major decisions yourself and choosing an online college, or pursuing any college degree program, is just one of them – although certainly an extremely important one.

The third item above deserves some additional explanation.  If you believe, and many others have agreed, that you are exceptionally talented in a specific field, then ask yourself:

Do I enjoy it? (Just because you are good at something does not necessarily mean you enjoy it and should pursue a college career in that field.)

Do I need an online college degree, or any college degree, to pursue it?

But what is the most important question above?  As a college professor for more than a quarter of a century, I believe the most important question is the italicized and bolded bullet item 3 above, and the first question above.  “What do you enjoy doing more than anything else?”  It is a shame to spend time, effort and resources on one pursuit when your real passion lies elsewhere.  Or put another way, do you really want to dread going to work on Monday mornings and just live for the weekends?