Best distance education in Canada

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Q. Please give me suggestions regarding which Canadian university offers the most "recognized, valued, accredited, etc." degrees through distance education.

A. Check the University of Waterloo... I am not sure what they have for current course offerings. If nothing is of interest, I would try Athabasca... a well-respected DL University out of Alberta. However, everything being equal, I would take Waterloo over Athabasca. Waterloo is a first-rate, traditional (residential) university, with much higher name-recognition in Canada. As such, it carries a general air of legitimacy that a distance ed school like Athabasca just doesn't have. I would say that 9 out of 10 employers would be more impressed by a Waterloo degree than Athabasca. However, it is not inconceivable that Athabasca could excel over Waterloo in a particular program, but I can't speak as to that issue. Just as a follow-up to my own post... Macleans Magazine (Canadian magazine similar to Time or Newsweek) publishes an annual issue that rates Canada's Universities, which happens to be its best-selling issue each year. At any rate, Macleans ranks universities in six categories that are applicable to all Canadian universities. Waterloo finished at the top of the rankings in three of the six categories! Specifically: "Best Overall", "Most Innovative", and "Leaders of Tomorrow". The Macleans website is at www.macleans.ca/pipeline/unimag/excel.html for anyone who is interested. As far as the quality of the education, I believe both to be notch. However, I would generally take Waterloo over Athabasca for two reasons. First, Athabasca is a distance learning University... Waterloo is a University that offers distance learning. I would tend to always take the later over the former. Second, Waterloo has a better general reputation than Athabasca. So, a Waterloo degree should give a person a little more weight. I don't mean to overemphasize this though. Athabasca is a very reputable school (it has a highly respected DL MBA, incidently) and I can't imagine an Athabasca degree not being accepted anywhere. Do I detect a bias? At Waterloo distance ed. is an afterthought. At Athabasca, it's what we do. Would you rather take distance ed. courses from an institution organized around classroom delivery, or from one dedicated to distance education? If you can't see that there would be a difference then you haven't really thought about what's involved in distance ed. It's not just recycling classroom notes and making them available to students at a distance (along with taped lectures on cassette). That's what Waterloo used to do. I expect they've mended their ways, but never doubt that classroom delivery is what they concentrate on.

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