Even though numbers are getting for Wall Street, jobless rates continue to hurt the economy. While job opportunities do exist, the competition is getting tougher as more people in every industry imaginable vie for select positions. Its well known that having a higher education will give most candidates an edge over those without. As online college degree programs gain in popularity due to their convenience and often cost advantage, questions come up concerning how they compare to the traditional campus based university degrees. While the U.S. Department of Labor sees some light at the end of the downtrodden economic tunnel, predicting that all seven of the major job categories will expand in terms of job opportunity over the next decade, many future students will ask themselves if their diploma was earned online or at a campus university?

The Trends: While the world wide web has been around for some time now, online colleges and schools have not. And those that were around didn't draw the same number of students as did campus-based schools. In the last 7 years though, those numbers have changed. According to a Sloan Consortium survey of online courses the number of people enrolled in online courses has more than doubled since 2002 and that the number of enrollees increased by more than 12 percent last year to nearly 4 million.

Even though in years past some employers cast a negative eye towards candidates with online college degrees, the number of good quality online schools has significantly improved the general perception of degrees from these online schools.

How College Graduates with Online Degrees Can Flourish: Employers concerns over an online college degree generally stem from whether or not its from an accredited degree program and the teaching methods utilized. Fortunately for students currently looking for accredited online college degree programs, there are a number of resources to assist with the filtering process. A simple online college search of accredited college degree programs will deliver a host of results, including resource sites that show provide information on several accredited colleges at once. Sites including the Council for Higher Education Accreditation's maintain databases of more than 7,000 degree-granting and non-degree-granting institutions in addition to 17,000 programs that are accredited by United States accrediting organizations.

Businesses Educate Online: Online training methods have become more commonplace in businesses " especially large corporations. It saves costs as employers don't have to pay for travel or training facilities, and it classes can often be attended a few hours at a time meaning lost time shouldn't be much of an issue. GlobeInvestor.com wrote, Today there's a good chance employees at a large corporation are themselves online students, maybe even the hiring manager. In a 2007 research study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) over 70% of the respondent companies offered tuition reimbursement for online degrees from regionally accredited colleges,.

Its all about the interview. Regardless of whether a degree came from an online college or campus based institution, its important to showcase a person's academic track record and how it pertains to the position applied for. Showing a potential employer the hard copies of transcripts, graded assignments, and research will serve well during the interview showing tangible evidence that highlight an online learning experience.