The first university to offer correspondence degrees was the University of London in 1858. Its external programs were mostly aimed at less-affluent people who couldn't afford to travel to London or pay for accommodations and the expense of attending traditional classes. During the 20th century, a large percentage of students were soldiers stationed abroad during the war. In the U.S., the first correspondence degrees were offered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison almost a century later. Both are still offering degrees today.
Most correspondence degrees base their coursework on print material, delivered in the form of books, tables, annotations and special booklets. Depending on the field of study, they may also include tapes, VHS/DVDs or CDs to enhance the learning process. The delivery of material and the interaction with instructors is done exclusively via regular postal mail and excludes things like forums or social networking, which are intrinsic to online learning.
Testing for correspondence degrees is often done as an open-book examination, where students are required to analyze problems and come up with creative solutions, rather than expecting them to repeat some specific data that can easily be found by going through textbooks. Some schools have eliminated quizzes altogether and instead require the student to write reports using the information learned in previous lessons. Others have established a system of controlled testing, where students need to select a proctor to watch over them as they take the examination or must attend a pre-determined venue where teachers watch over the examinations.
Correspondence degrees have some major issues. For starters, delivery time is longer, both when it comes to receiving the original material and to communicating with instructors to get feedback, ask questions or receive a grade. If packages are lost or misplaced, students may need to request a replacement, which slows down the process even further. Another important consideration is that only a limited number of professions can be effectively learned at a distance. Anything that involves medicine or that requires hands-on practice will not be available as a correspondence degree. Even with respected schools that have been around for decades, distance-education degrees are not as well-received by employers as traditional ones, so this may prove a roadblock when trying to secure a job.
Diploma mills, which offer a degree in exchange for a one-time payment, have become a major issue in long-distance education. Warnings signs to look out for include no real address or contact phone number, no real studying time, degrees based only on life experience, one-time fees and no names of real people (such as teaching faculty or dean) are mentioned. Degree mills are also notorious for not having any entry requirements, such as an academic background or a GED. Many allow for things that would be considered illegal in a standard diploma, such as backdating the degree, choosing your own grade point average (GPA) and obtaining a degree in a week or less.