Editor’s Note: In this week’s Thursday Feature, we take a look at a growing trend in post-secondary education among supply chain and material handling professionals: Distance learning.
Back in 2012, Beth Wachowiak had a choice to make.
Six years earlier, she graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in supply chain management, which she was able to parlay into a supply chain job at the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, in Neenah, Wisconsin.
For the first couple of years, Wachowiak’s career was on fire. She got several promotions and enjoyed her job, her career and the company where she worked.
But Wachowiak realized that if she wanted to keep moving upward, she would need to have a master’s degree.
“My decision was based on a desire for both professional and personal growth,” Wachowiak told Inbound Logistics. “I want to hold a leadership role eventually, and I feel a master’s degree will give me part of what I need to get there — as well as help separate me from the crowd.”
The problem was that the closest university that offered a master’s program in supply chain management was hundreds of miles away.
“Kimberly-Clark is in Wisconsin, so I had few school options,” Wachowiak said. “To attend a traditional university would require a five-hour drive each weekend for four to five years.”
That option was too cumbersome, but leaving her job and putting her career on hold to advance her education also wasn’t an option.
Instead, Wachowiak enrolled in Michigan State’s Master of Science in Supply Chain Management program, which allowed her to take most of her classes online from the comfort of her own home. About one-third of the classes are held at the school’s campus in East Lansing, Michigan.
For Wachowiak, it was a happy compromise.
“I was able to complete my degree in 19 months, while working full time,” she said.
Growing Popularity of Distance Learning
Wachowiak is one of millions of working people who are opting to work toward post-secondary degrees online.
According to a report issued recently by Ambient Insight, an estimated 25 million students in the US will be taking online courses by the end of this year. And the number of students who go the traditional route — taking classes while living on campus full-time — is rapidly shrinking, from 14.4 million in 2010 to only 4.1 million in 2015, according to the report, “The U.S. Market for Self-Paced eLearning Products and Services: 2010 – 2015 Forecast and Analysis.”
Many of these students are people in the supply chain and material handling industry who don’t have time to put their careers on hold or can’t afford to walk away from their jobs to go back to school.
Online course offer more flexibility for people with active careers. They can choose to attend live, streaming classes or completely independent study that they can do when they are able.
Some distance learning degree programs — such as MSU’s — require students to attend a combination of in-person and online classes. And they use chat rooms, online forums, social media and other web-based platforms to interact with instructors and other students.
New Challenges
Nancy M. Taylor is the director of MSU’s Master of Science in Supply Chain Management program. She said that while distance learning is often more convenient for people with busy lives and active careers, it’s definitely not easy.
“On-campus and online learning each present unique challenges,” Taylor said. “When students are on campus, the challenge is the workload. Classes run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for 11 days. It’s tiring and all-encompassing. The trade-off is that students obtain a lot of credits in that short time.
“The online portion is also challenging because it demands students stay committed to the work despite outside pressures such as career and family,” she said.
The typical student in MSU’s master’s program already has spent some time in the supply chain industry. Most are older than 30 and many are married and already have families. So the traditional approach to getting a graduate degree — moving close to campus and attending classes for a number of years until the course work is completed — is impractical.
Instead, to accommodate the needs of these unique types of students, MSU doles out online course work in 30-day increments, with each assignment due at the end of each month.
“Setting monthly schedules helps students manage the workload without getting overwhelmed,” said Taylor.
Keeping Connected
For Wachowiak, one of the biggest benefits of the MSU program was that it included the on-campus component, which enabled her to meet other students in the program and interact personally with the professors she would later be seeing online.
Plus, because she was actively working within the industry, Wachowiak — and her fellow online students –were able to take real-world experiences into the classroom. That’s something that wouldn’t really be possible in a purely academic environment in which students only went to school.
“Talking about issues we were dealing with on the job enriched our class discussions,” she said.
The Changing Face of Education
For Wachowiak and millions of others, the trend toward distance learning has opened up opportunities that didn’t exist just a few years ago. And it offers supply chain and material handling professionals the chance to earn advanced degrees so they can improve their chances of getting promoted.
“Take the time to read the posts and join the exchange,” she said. “Otherwise it’s easy to put your education on the back burner and focus instead on work and more urgent needs.”