How Valid Are Online Naturopathy Degrees?
Getting your degree or your master's online seems to be the wave of the future. Getting an online degree in many careers is taken as seriously by prospective employers as going to a real world campus. With the rising costs of gas and the dangers to the ozone layers that driving can produce, some also think that online degrees are the environmentally friendly thing to do. But not for naturopathy degrees.
Sometimes Old Fashioned Is Best
Just as naturopathy seeks to be a more natural and holistic approach to healthcare by incorporating ancient and modern beliefs, naturopathy degrees considered best when they are earned the old fashioned ways in real world campuses. If you are shopping for a naturopathy degree, you will lose a lot of money by trying to get your degree any other way except the traditional means.
Sadly, there are a lot of real world schools as well as online courses that offer bogus or really substandard naturopathy degrees at premium prices. This not only hurts the patient, but really hurts the student. If you want to practice in a particular state, you need to check with that state's requirements about naturopathy degrees. Some states like Oregon or Canadian provinces will only recognize naturopathy degrees from certain schools. Check also that naturopathy is allowed to be practiced in your state or province.
Any sort of naturopathy degree curriculum should emphasize diagnostic skills and hands-on experience with patients and any alternative therapies they will be practicing, like acupuncture. Would you want an acupuncturist to work on you if they only got their degree from a correspondence course? Probably not - at least, I hope not.
Struggling For Recognition
Although most careers will allow online degrees as "real" degrees, any medical degree will probably not be one of them. Any medical practice includes vital hands-on skills that can only be learned through practice and not from books. Since all kinds of alternative medical therapies are struggling for recognition in skeptical America, naturopathic degrees must be earned at real world campuses.
A real world campus degree instills confidence in your skills with the public. This shows not only your level of dedication to your craft, but that you are a professional through and through. The people who hate naturopathic degrees you can earn online are licensed naturopaths. These online courses, for the most part, make all of naturopathic medicine look bad. The news is full of doctors of all kinds who wind up being fakes. You don't want to be lumped in with the bad apples.
