This paper plays a critical role in the identification of perspectives and perceptions related to the view of online courses reimbursement versus traditional face-to-face class reimbursement. It’s no secret that online education has become much more popular in recent years, allowing busy professional to gain an education from a convenient, remote location. Colleges and universities have jumped on board to capitalize on this trend with approximately 96 percent of universities offering some form of online courses. With the massive increase in online offerings, it naturally raises the question of what current HR perceptions exist related to the treatment of students with an online education versus a traditional education, specifically reimbursement of those students.

Companies were seen to reimburse their respective workers for traditional face-to-face approximately 44 percent of the time, online from a traditional brick and mortar institution about 36 percent of the time, and online via an internet-based institution only 28 percent of the time. So there is a clear descent from brick and mortar to internet based colleges. The most surprising, and perhaps most important findings in the study point to the fact that engaging in online classes in the past or even having graduated from an online based program was not associated with the positive viewpoint of reimbursement on behalf of the organization in terms of an online program compared to traditional face-to-face classes. Approximately 17 percent were viewed as paying back employees for tuition in face-to-face but not at an online college. It is worth noting that larger organizations were perceived as equally reimbursing face-to-face compared to online programs. Further research is needed in several areas such as looking into the accreditation of online programs, studying smaller cities and organizations and not just bigger cities with large organizations. To go further, other aspects which might deserve attention would be whether programs are purely online or if they are hybrid in nature (online only versus a physical location with online programs). Lastly, taking into consideration whether a school or university is for-profit or non-profit, and public or private could shed a greater light into the analysis at hand. Because of the limited scope of this paper, future research must be conducted delve deeper into the perspective of reimbursement for online programs versus traditional programs.