AFTER graduating from college, if you are hurrying up to cultivate the family farm and supervise workers from Mexico and Chile, then you can always study online and acquire an agronomy course. Or if your family business is a ranch, then you can always take a bachelor’s degree in animal science. Online education may not involve laboratory drills and actual trips to a farm but you can already apply what you have learned in your own family farm. However, in online colleges, you are still required to have an internship.

Choose a reputable online school. Anyway, the tuition is not that much because you don’t need to pay for laboratory fees and other miscellaneous expenses. And there are lots of advantages as well. You don’t need to be away from home and stay in a dormitory where utility expenses can be expensive. And it’s not just the money that I’m talking about. In the farm, your whole family can monitor your whereabouts but in a boarding college, you may be influenced by fraternities who are up to no good at all. At least, if you get a girl pregnant in the farm, then the situation doesn’t get out of control because all you’ll do is commit to the girl and to your yet-to-be-born baby.

The expenses in a boarding college border to that of being hellish. Aside from the rent and the usual expenses such as food, transportation going to the school campus, more extra food, electricity, water, cable television and Internet bills, you will most likely acquire on such gadgets as a Wii. That can entail lots of money whereas in the farm, you will only eat what’s on the refrigerator and you already have your own appliances.

Now let’s go back to the internship. It’s not just taking a degree in agronomy which leads to an internship. It’s encompassing in all fields of education actually. For example, if you’re enrolled in a Swiss hotel school and you live in New Jersey, you are most likely directed to a semester of internship at a casino in Atlantic City. If you are enrolled at the online extension of Johns Hopkins for a degree in medicine and if you live near a Mayo Clinic, you may be enticed to have your internship there. If you are enrolled in a degree in international relations, you may have your internship at Foggy Bottom. If you are enrolled in an online course in teaching, you may end up having your internship at one of the Montessori or Waldorf schools in your area or even in a public school system.

Another advantage of online education is it doesn’t take up your entire time yet you can still achieve the same number of units. All you need to do is log online but if you catch the professor being online too as well as the other students in the same course, then take time in a video conference with them. In this way, you can learn more.

I was taking up a program in electronics and communications engineering here in Salamanca leading to a bachelor’s degree. But believe me, I didn’t take it in a classroom setting. I took it in an online school – meaning, I enrolled myself in an online school based in Massachusetts. And they took me in even when I’m Spanish. Yes, online schools are now global nowadays. They are not biased towards citizens of the country they are based. And so here I am having an electronics and communications engineering degree from a foreign institution.

And miraculously enough, I was able to secure a permit to take the board exam here in Spain. And I passed. Now, I’m an employee of the leading telecommunications firm here in Spain. Actually, online schools are reputable especially if they are based in the United States. Just be wary of those bogus schools which cannot present you a diploma or a certificate after graduation. Even then, your certificates or diplomas may not be honored by the body or by the government in the country that you are living in.

But regarding the globalization of these online schools – whether you’re living in the Philippines or in New Zealand – you can definitely enroll in these online schools. And the catch is tuition at these online schools is even cheaper than enrolling in a regular university in your area. That’s because you don’t pay for laboratory and other expensive miscellaneous fees. Look, even if the school that you’re enrolling in is based in New England or New Orleans, you will still pay the same tuition but with a far superior quality of education than being provided with an expensive, third-rate college in the Solomon Islands for example.

I do not mean to berate other countries but let us face it – United States has the most excellent standard of education in contemporary society. And another rub is that you will still have the same prospectus to be followed for the five academic years in the college. The program leading to a bachelor’s degree in electronic and communications engineering for example has a total of ten academic semesters to undergo and you need to renew your tuition for each of these semesters. Just like a regular college, tuition is computed through the number of units that you will be taking.

Another advantage of an online college is that hands-on training will also be online. You will be introduced to the best engineering software that is exclusive for students only and cannot be accessed by those studying in regular universities in your area. You will also have time to relax as students in online institutions have their own time of the day to comply with the requirements of the online school. I mean, you don’t have to be online at 7 a.m. You can wake up at 9 a.m. and as long as you have logged in and comply the requirements for a particular academic day, then you are free to do whatever you wish. Don’t take online studies for granted though. It is serious. Your online evaluator will definitely flunk you if you’re not that diligent.