Featured Articles on OnlineEducation.com
As part of an ongoing commitment to provide students with clear and comprehensive guidance on online education and degree programs, OnlineEducation.com offers a broad range of informational resources on relevant topics in the field of higher education. These articles are meant to complement our rigorous research and reporting on specific online degrees, on trends in online learning, and on careers in fields linked to particular academic programs. The features section includes general interest stories, in-depth reports, and practical guides that delve into a wide array of subject areas, extending beyond online education, and reaching out into the larger world of knowledge and scholarship.
Reskilling for Tomorrow: The Reskilling Gender Gap
Women make up only 13 percent of engineers in the U.S. One of the few areas in STEM that they do outnumber men is in mathematics. But the average total earning potential of a statistician, math teacher, or professor is closer to the starting salary of a civil or mechanical engineer. This pattern is not confined within healthcare and STEM. It’s also observable in professions like sales, real estate, administration, and management, among others.
Reskilling for Tomorrow: Who Should Pay for Workers to Upskill?
Learn about trends in employer-led upskilling, reskilling, and how the face of the job market has changed with technology.
Social Media Dos and Don’ts for College Students
Social media activity can impact the lives of college students with short- and long-term effects; online personas affect not only a person’s immediate circumstances, but also one’s future ability to secure a mortgage or job.
Social Work Month 2023: An Expert’s Advocacy Guide
Social workers are a vital part of our society, providing vital services to individuals, families, and communities. They support those facing poverty, homelessness, abuse, and neglect and assist people facing various other issues. Social workers also advocate for their client’s rights and interests in the political arena by working with local, state, and federal government bodies.
Socially Connected Professors on Twitter
Platforms like Twitter allow users to communicate with others beyond their direct connections. This sort of access allows even the most underserved student to connect with professors from schools like MIT and Harvard. This article explores the top twenty-three socially connected professors on Twitter.
Staying Competitive: How to Upgrade Your Employability Online
There are myriad professional training and certification courses available online, many for free. Professional certification can be one of the most effective ways to improve your employability and ensure career growth in the long-term.
Strategies for Winning Scholarships
As higher education costs continue to rise, scholarships are becoming increasingly important for many university students, especially those who want to minimize or avoid student loans. However, these days, winning scholarships can seem like a daunting challenge.
Strategy Guide: A Playbook for Online Student Success
During the past two decades, online education has democratized access to learning, specifically with respect to geography and time. By illustration, a farmer in the American heartland may be hundreds of miles from the nearest university, but she can still enroll in an MBA program; or a nurse may have a demanding work schedule at a local clinic, but he can simultaneously pursue his graduate degree in nursing at an institution located six states away.
Student Debt Relief: How “Plan B” Relies on This 1965 Law
In late June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden Administration’s student debt relief plan, holding that the program lacked authorization under the 2003 HEROES Act. Biden’s program would have wiped out $430 billion of debt by canceling at least $10,000 of federal student loans for qualified borrowers with incomes under $125,000 per year. It didn’t take long for the President to unveil a new strategy at a White House press conference only hours after the ruling.
Student Guide to Phishing Attacks
Hackers and scammers use a continually evolving set of tools to break through computer security. One of the primary modes to get access is phishing, or sending fake emails from speciously reputable companies in hopes of gaining access to credit card numbers, bank accounts, or other sensitive information. This guide helps students identify and respond to phishing attacks.
Student Loan Forgiveness: “See You in Court” Say PSLF Advocates
According to government data, PLSF enrolled more than two million borrowers through certified employers in December 2024. They include public school teachers; doctors, nurses and other clinicians who work for nonprofit hospitals; firefighters and police officers; public interest lawyers; and military employees of the Department of Defense. The program incentivizes people to choose lower-paying jobs and careers crucial to society’s functioning by offsetting some of their financial sacrifices through student loan forgiveness.
Student Loan Forgiveness: Answers Borrowers Need Now
The U.S. Department of Education’s launch followed decades of expanded federal education funding. Those efforts started with Sputnik-era and Cold War math and science initiatives, followed by President Lyndon Johnson’s landmark Higher Education Act of 1965, which attempted to open college access irrespective of any student’s ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic background.
Student Loan Forgiveness: Could the New Administration Claw Back Your Award?
Alarming reports that employees from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency Service (DOGE) gained access to computer systems inside the U.S. Department of Education containing student loan records. Millions of borrowers who’ve benefited from student loan forgiveness programs worry that the new administration could suspend or reverse their discharges.
Student Loan Forgiveness? Rate Slashes in New GOP Plan
The bipartisan Affordable Loans for Students Act (ALSA) from Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) would cut interest rates on existing and new Direct Loans to only 2 percent from the 6.5 to 9 percent range most borrowers currently pay at the time of this writing in April 2025. That works out to a 69 percent decrease from the rate undergraduates pay, along with a 78 percent decrease from the premium PLUS loan rate paid by graduate students and parents.
Student Preference for Online Learning Jumps 222 Percent In Only Two Years
Educause’s October 2022 survey of 820 university undergraduates across America found that student preferences for online learning had soared by a sensational 222 percent since before the pandemic. But oddly enough, that newsworthy figure appears nowhere within the language of the report.
The $335,000 ChatGPT Skill Savvy Online Students Need to Know
Anyone who interacts with an AI chatbot to elicit desired responses from that system engages in their own form of prompt engineering, which some have described as the most valuable computer skill in history. As shown in this guide, some prompts are more effective than others. Online students who can optimize their prompts by applying the principles, best practices, and tips we suggest will likely obtain more useful results from AI systems in less time.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Degree Programs
The challenges for online students are well documented. We do not talk enough about the strengths that online students bring to the classroom. Recognizing the experience and passion that adult learners bring to the classroom is fundamental to supporting students.
The Biggest Higher Ed Story of the Decade: How Online Degrees at Scale Will Transform Education
We spoke with professors that are also experts in the design and rollout of scaled online degrees to learn more about the development of online degrees at scale and what they could mean for students.
The Chinese-American EdTech Space Race: Who is Best Set to Win Global Education Markets?
With recent TikTok and WeChat drama highlighting business competition between U.S. and Chinese tech companies, the same trend may be on the horizon for edtech products. Find out what players are best set up to succeed in education markets worldwide.
The Digital Equity Initiative: Bridging Washington’s Educational Divide With Expanded Access
The novel coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the digital divide impeding online educational access and support for many students from low-income families as schools moved the majority of their operations online in efforts to stem the spread of the virus.
The Effectiveness and Potential of E-learning in War Zones
Education plays a pivotal role in fostering security and stability, yet it is often one of the first casualties of war. The relationship between education and conflict is deeply intertwined—access to quality education is compromised during wars, and the absence of education perpetuates instability, trapping individuals and communities in cycles of violence and insecurity.
The Emergency Connectivity Fund – Should High-Speed Internet Be Considered a Public Utility?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently hosted a new application window for the Emergency Connectivity Fund. This third application window is intended to support schools and libraries in the upcoming school year as part of the FCC’s effort to support student access to educational opportunities.
The Future Online Classroom: Augmented & Virtual Reality
As virtual reality began to dip its toe into the mainstream, the first obvious use case for immersive technology was gaming. However, the education industry would soon benefit from VR as well.
The Measurable Impacts of Covid on Education
Preliminary data quantifies the impact of Covid-19 on higher education and students, providing insight into the tumultuous period’s impact on the education sector. OnlineEducation.com spoke with an expert who has studied the impact of Covid-19 on education to gain his insight on the pandemic’s evolving challenges for students and higher education.
The Modern Minister: How Online Ordainment has Created a New Avenue for Entrepreneurs
A significant portion of individuals who get ordained online perform just one ceremony at the request of their friend or loved one and never end up officiating again, but others find that performing wedding ceremonies is a fulfilling experience that they want to continue to replicate—and a legitimate way to earn money.