Eight Countries Offer Online Degrees – Class Central Research
Our goal was to identify countries which offer fully online degrees provided by accredited higher education institutions.
Starting in 2020, Indian Universities are able to offer fully online degrees. Class Central CEO Dhawal Shah compiled a list of 50+ newly approved online degrees by University Grants Commission (UGC), the official governing body for these matters.
The global pandemic has brought online education into focus. It made me wonder which other countries offer online degrees? I decided to find out.
My curiosity about online degrees started when I was working as a policy officer at the German ENIC-NARIC office, the central authority for the evaluation of foreign qualifications in Germany. I also maintain the list of Class Central’s list of MOOC based degrees, which increased to 55+ offered by 22 universities on the three major MOOC provider platforms, Coursera, edX and FutureLearn. A closer look at the difference between MOOC based and online degrees was provided by Dhawal here.
Methodology
Our goal was to identify countries which offer fully online degrees provided by accredited higher education institutions. For the purpose of this project, we excluded universities specially established to offer distance education i.e Open Universities across the world.
I searched through Google for 100+ countries to check whether they offer online degrees. In many cases, my efforts were hampered by lead generation companies that occupied the first page of Google but don’t actually offer accurate data.
I tried to only include official sources. It is quite possible that I might have missed something, so please let us know in the comments if your country offers an online degree but is not in the list.
This is our first pass. We want to get this out there and welcome feedback. We plan to update this list frequently.
Results
Here is the list of countries that I have identified:
- Australia: https://www.open.edu.au
- Canada: https://www.universitystudy.ca/
- Germany: https://antrag.akkreditierungsrat.de
- Guatemala: https://www.galileo.edu/busqueda-avanzada/
- India: https://www.classcentral.com/report/india-online-degrees/
- Netherlands: https://www.studyinholland.nl/
- United Kingdom: https://study-uk.britishcouncil.org
- United States of America: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
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Philipp Hoellermann
Nice work. The list of institutions offering online degrees in Germany (and available programs) is far from complete in the linked database, though.
If you go to https://studieren.de/fernstudium.studiengangsliste.t-0.filter-20.html you will find all distance learning programs available in Germany. While some require some presence in Germany, about 80-90 can be studied without attending a single on-campus session (with e-testing or alternative solutions in place). This includes Bachelor, Master and MBA degrees.
All programs are accredited under German and EU law and equivalent to degree programs in the US.
Muvaffak GOZAYDIN
I have tried to convince Turkish Educators to online for the last 25 years . I went ahead only 2 % . Now thanks to Corona , it has everybody in the world accepted . Now Tujrkey is going 100 % online during the corona . I hope It will continue some how after that too .
K12 is also 100 % online except 1st grades .
We have to spend more money for research in online .
Did you know that now the conversion of a course from f2f to online is almost zero .
And it has unlimited capacity . Even 2 million enrollment to one class is OK .
Muvaffak GOZAYDIN
Now 4 million college students , 16 million K12 go to online in Turkey starting 15th of September . . It is big .
Martin Dunn
There are more Australian online degrees and degree granting institutions than those participating in Open Universities Australia.