How Online MSW Students Are Driving Policy Change
Social work typically requires a willingness to continue your education. While you can get entry-level jobs with a BSW, management positions that affect the most change are virtually always on the other side of an MSW. For people interested in making a difference, you’ll need to at least consider graduate school. Online programs can be an effective and relatively nonintrusive way to make this happen. Not only are they equally valid to traditional brick-and-mortar degrees, but they have several advantages that will allow you to effect policy change as a professional social worker.
How Social Workers Affect Policy Change
First, it’s important to understand the input social workers have on policy change. This influence plays out in a few ways.
For one thing, social workers are constant advocates for policies that have the highest impact on people on their caseload. The type of policy that the social worker advocates for will typically depend on their role, but it could be anything from health care policies to laws concerning family reunification or even substance abuse.
Social workers will often play a role in political decision-making by partnering with groups that represent causes most relevant to their work. They might lead education campaigns, volunteer for political candidates, or simply publish information relevant to the issue at hand and allow people to make their own choices.
Here’s the next natural question: how does an online MSW help you accomplish these things more than, say, a brick-and-mortar one? The answer is a little abstract because, strictly speaking, one degree is just as good as the next. Subjectively, however, it is much easier for most social work professionals to take that very important graduate step when they are able to do it from home and in a format that better aligns with their day-to-day responsibilities.
Why Online Degrees Won Out
It’s largely a logistical question. Here’s what typically happens: a social worker will get their undergraduate degree at a university, and then they’ll move back home to whatever community they intend to start their career. Now, they’re working in an entry-level social work position, and they’re finding immediately that any effort to acquire additional responsibilities and an increased salary will only be possible if they get a graduate degree. This is a very basic and consistent professional ceiling in the world of social work.
Virtually all of the higher-level jobs do, for better or for worse, require graduate studies. Here’s the thing though: now the hypothetical social worker is holding down a job, they’re possibly living in a community that doesn’t even have a good graduate program nearby, and so they’re forced to get their degrees slowly, maybe commuting great distances to make it happen, all while holding down a job and possibly even assuming many of the life responsibilities (settling down with a partner, buying your first house, having children) that come up in so many people’s late twenties and early thirties. With all this going on, getting a graduate degree can become very difficult.
The Online Alternative
So this brings us to our next question: What advantage does the online MSW have over a brick-and-mortar counterpart? There are a few things. First, simply by omitting the regional requirement of a brick-and-mortar university, the online MSW student is able to vastly expand their options. Now they do need to be sensitive to regional restrictions.
If you simply do an online search for accredited, fully remote MSW programs, you will probably find many dozens of options. However, not all of them will be recognized by your state. You’ll need to do some research on that front to make sure that you’re staying consistent with your local regulations. Regardless, you will still find that there are probably more options available to you than if you are confined to only schools that you can drive to.
The other thing is that many online programs are very flexible, allowing you to complete prerecorded work on a timeline that suits your schedule. This is naturally very attractive to people who are working and just living adult life for the first time.
Many online programs are also more affordable than brick-and-mortar options. This definitely depends on the program that you choose. You’ll find the biggest discounts through online-only universities, where you don’t wind up footing the bill for a bunch of physical infrastructure you never even get to take advantage of.
On the other hand, if you enroll in your local state college’s online-only MSW program, you’re most likely going to be paying their standard price per credit hour, regardless of whether you never get to see their library, their health center, or whatever other big, energy-intensive building they have that drives the rates up.
Is Online Learning Right For Everyone?
Probably not. It is generally true that if you are capable of completing a BSW, you are equally up to the task of achieving a master’s degree, even if the work is more intensive. That said, graduate programs are harder and might not suit every learning style. If you are the kind of person who gets easily distracted in a self-guided learning environment, you might struggle with the realities of online learning. There are also social components to physical learning environments that are harder to replicate online.
Remote MSW students certainly can and do find ways to connect with their peers, but many people find that establishing those connections is harder or just different than it would have been in a physical setting. How valuable are peer-to-peer interactions to you?
There’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer to that question. Regardless, all considerations should be weighed against the goal of degree completion. In other words, what would be the most likely to help you finish this degree in a reasonable timeline? The truth is that neither option is likely to satisfy all of your preferences. If one does, all the better. But what most people wind up doing is picking the requirements that mean the most to them and using those as a litmus test for which learning environment is the right fit.
If you want an affordable degree available in a flexible format, there is no better option than online learning. That said, if you’re not so sure that you’ll be able to complete your studies remotely, getting a degree from a physical location is your better bet. A more expensive and logistically complicated degree path that you finish is better than a streamlined remote option you never complete. Here’s the good news: if you already have a bachelor’s degree in social work, you should be able to complete your MSW in a year or less. Accelerated programs ensure that regardless of how logistically complicated your master’s degree becomes, you won’t have to deal with the discomfort for very long.
