My friend Clare has always been interested in law and justice, but growing up in a poor area of the country where opportunities were limited, she dropped out of the education system at a young age and started a reasonable yet largely unrewarding job. For years she dreamt of going to college to study for a criminal justice degree but time, family commitments and money prevented her from realising her ambitions. But only last year Clare enrolled on an online criminal justice degree and hasn't looked back since.
I'm surprised at the pace of her learning. I'd never considered a distance learning degree could be that practical, but thanks to the popularity of using the web as a quite useful teaching tool it seems a range of studies can be delivered through online education.
Although Clare is - or rather was - completely new to studying or working in the criminal justice sector, many other students already have a career in the criminal justice profession; they are either building on their existing skills and knowledge to develop their role, or looking to progress into a new job, or even both.
What Clare is discovering and what is generally considered to be one of the greatest benefits of online study, is that it is as vocational as you need it to be, especially considering that teachers will usually have recent experience of, or still be working in, the criminal justice sector.
Clare' experience of course is limited, but even after 3 months she's finding the criminal justice degree that she's studying for online to be well worth the effort of fitting in a degree course around her work and family commitments.
Because online colleges that offer criminal justice BA degrees online understand that their students will come from a variety of backgrounds, courses are especially geared to consider a wide range of often quite specific needs.
Clare's attitude with technology is fairly pragmatic. If she doesn't find it useful then she won't use it. According to her, a simple understanding of the web is enough to take advantage of the incredibly easy to use online systems for studying her criminal justice degree online.
By studying online, criminal justice and criminology is far easier she imagines, than the expense and time costs of having to attend a conventional college. Childcare costs, commuter stress and sheer inconvenience are but a few of the things she doesn't have to put up with by studying online at a quality provider of distance learning.
The criminal justice system is modernising, and Clare finds that by studying online she can keep up to date with developments in the sector.
Communication is easy according Clare, be it with fellow students or teaching staff, and she finds getting information over the web has a really good impact on her work. Web classes are broadcast live or can even be viewed later according to her work and home schedule. So, studying online seems to be a practical solution for a practical person.
Author Info:
Sarah Maple writes about marketing courses and distance learning.
