They are perceived poorly, but not because they're online, but because they are an unknown. This may change as specific institutions and programs gain a solid reputation, but an online degree from a virtual school no one has ever heard of has a very steep uphill battle. Programs from established bricks & mortar universities have a better reputation but still fight the stigma. Some of this is fair. A university is not supposed to be a factory for pumping knowledge into your head as fast as possible; it should be a full community and we've learned this past year how hard it is to build fully online communities. Ironically as many successful in-person universities rush to hand out as many degrees as possible they are weakening their key differentiator from online competition. I suspect online-only will become more competitive and respected but it will take time.

When you're given a resume, do you look at the education, other that briefly? If it doesn't sound like an online program (e.g. University of Phoenix) I doubt most would notice.

But then again, I never see resumes until someone asks me to do a phone screening. Even then, I kinda glance at them enough to figure out which set of questions to pull out.

So I guess that decision is made well before me. Getting to the actual phone/in-person interview is the challenging part. I've discovered it's often more about who you know than anything else.

When I see degrees from universities I've never heard of I assume they're diploma mills and look them up. Often they're not but fill a particular niche in learning or circumstance. This is the major failing with the US system IMO, in Canada the word "university" has a much stronger legal definition so there is more trust in it. Similar to what happened to the title "Engineer" when programmers started using it*

*I have a MSc in Software Engineering but I am not a PEng

Wow, I hope to never work with you. You value things that should not be valued in tech. We care about competence, not credentials.

I've interviewed dozens of engineers. Never once looked at their education or gave it any weight. I assess them myself, no need to defer.

Selecting for people from schools you've heard of is probably the wildest thing I've heard in my career.

It depends on the number of applications. If the number of applications is unmanageable, then credentials can be a useful first filter.

This is also why the SAT/ACT is still important in college admissions: they get a lot of applications, and they need to filter out some applicants to make it more manageable.

Im doing OMSCS at GaTech and once you graduate you just have a Masters degree from The Georgia Institute of Technology, it says nothing about online or in person or anything. My resume just says Masters Degree, in progress. People asked about it during my last round of interviews but nobody seemed to care it was online.

Good point. Existing institutions which are starting online programs have a huge advantage here.

It does allow someone who is filtering Y/N for this to check Y. Maybe that's enough to open some doors.