3 Advantages to Online Bachelor's Degree Programs Outside Classes

When I graduated high school and left for a traditional college, it seemed like little had changed. I was older, yes, but I still had a fixed schedule, places to go and parking to battle for. I had lived the sheltered life of boarding school during high school, and I felt like I needed to catch up on life experiences. That need and the requirements of college conflicted, and I chose the former.

Now that I've completed a bachelor's degree online, I realize how much richer my college experience would have been in the past if I had gone to school online in the first place. College felt to me like a time of exploration and adventure, yet I felt confined to the campus.

Students today, with undergraduate online learning, have an opportunity to maximize their extracurricular lives while at the same time achieving their academic and scholastic goals. Here are three outside-the-classroom advantages to online bachelor's degree programs.

Online school allows for travel: The student who backpacks across Europe has been a cliche of the college experience since at least the 1970s. Students would travel during the months between classes to explore the world and encounter foreign cultures.

With online learning, a college student can do this throughout the year. Anyone can access the Internet throughout most of the world. Even buses, trains, and airplanes provide Wi-Fi access. Companies such as Amtrak, for example, provide students with the means to take school with them to every stop across the U. S.

Discover how to [study abroad as an online student.]

Time is what you make of it: For many online bachelor's programs, and depending on the class, there are pre-set deadlines for all assignments, and virtually no "synchronous" class schedules. It becomes necessary for a student to meet these deadlines, but the student decides how to do it. It doesn't matter if a student stays up late the night before and decides to sleep in, since, other than the deadlines, there are no other time constraints.

A student builds the schedule based on motivation, instead of classroom time. This allows for room for more social interaction outside the classroom when attending school online. A student could, for example, surf every morning and do schoolwork at night, rather than daydreaming in a physical classroom about surfing or skipping class to hit the beach.

Learn [four time management tips for online students.]

You can skip housing fees: Online programs eliminate any fees associated with housing and living on campus. Plus, they typically don't require physical textbooks -- though students should keep in mind some of online learning's most common hidden fees, such as those relating to technology. Given all of these cost reductions for online school, the money that would have gone toward a brick-and-mortar education can now go toward experiencing life, traveling or relationships.

The takeaway: Education during the college years goes far beyond what a student learns in the classroom. Online bachelor's degree programs can help students prepare for the world by giving them freedom to explore life outside of campus.

Darwin Green, a Nebraska resident, received his bachelor's in psychology online from Pennsylvania State University--World Campus.