The biggest myth about distance learning

"Where'd you graduate from, a correspondence school?"
R.H. Macy to Granville Sawyer, Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

There's traditionally been a lot of cynicism about distance learning or correspondence schools or whatever it's been called. And it gets to the point where some question the validity of the qualifications at all.

To cut to the chase, much of this comes from countries (particularly the United States) with historic lax systems of accreditation for schools, colleges and universities. Often they did not have a system of national verification of the quality and validity of institutions and instead either left it to lower levels of government or, worse, allowed a free-for-all that relied on local reputations to make or break an institution. Sometimes this fed into a culture that viewed government accreditation as being hostile to academic freedom. As technology and travel developed more and more people studied further afield so a need for a system of validation became clear. Some accreditation bodies did emerge, but often the culture of academic independence was already rooted and it was difficult to get legislation to force the issue. And so unaccredited institutions, both good and bad, persisted for a long time.

Distance learning developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and faced the question of whether the teaching was any good, especially in a country and world where anybody at the other end could set up an educational institution that would be known only through its advertising. (It also has to be said there was a debate about the teaching methods of distance education though time has resolved that one.) And so distance learning developed an unfortunate reputation for dubious quality courses from questionable institutions. Or more simply "diploma mills" just selling the qualifications.

Law in particular suffered from a backlash in the United States against correspondence schools by the existing law schools and legal profession in the years before the First World War. One of the results was the American Bar Association pushing a requirement for physical attendance at a law school for admission to a state bar, effectively limiting the value of legal distance education in the US. Most correspondence law schools closed by the 1930s at the latest though LaSalle Extension University was still offering Law courses into the 1970s (and fighting against the restriction). More about the rise and fall can be read at Legal History Blog: Missionary Man: William Sprague and the Correspondence Law School.

Fiction also added to this reputation, with TV Tropes even having a whole page cataloguing examples at Correspondence Course of dubious institutions and courses that really shouldn't be taught by distance learning such as driving. Though the page does (currently) acknowledge that in real life much distance education is highly valid and respectable, even giving the Open University as an example.

But the reality is that many countries do operate strict systems of accreditation and quality assurance such that distance learning universities are just as valid as physical attendance "bricks and mortar" institutions. And this is definitely true of the United Kingdom where a "university" has to be authorised by charter or Act of Parliament and it is illegal to offer unauthorised qualifications or even use the word "university" in a name.

So an Open University degree is just as legitimate and valued as one from a bricks & mortar university. Ignore the myths.