Has the Time Gone for an External Degree?

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The development of a wide variety of external degree programs throughout our country brings some much needed innovation and long overdue flexibility to American higher education. More and more students, who have previously been effectively denied access to higher education and to academic degrees because of age, sex, employment or family commitments, now have increased opportunities to undertake various study and degree-granting programs. Clearly this trend toward increased options is a wave, if not the wave, of the future; but if this movement toward non-traditional study is to prosper, some problems must be solved. Unless those educators responsible for the development of new external degree programs, and those faculty and students who participate in them, maintain a deep respect for the rigor and quality of their programs, no matter how innovative they may be, the respectable external degree may become merely a lofty goal whose time has past. The future and the viability of some external degree programs may be in doubt unless both their internal rigor and external credibility can be maintained. There are at least five facts of life now in American higher education