This article explains why employers are reluctant to accept potential employees with online degrees. The results of several surveys of those who evaluate potential employees and make hiring decisions indicate a bias against online degrees, even as more and more colleges are offering programs online. To those officials, the words "online education" conjure up images of those spam e-mail messages that promise a Ph.D. in exchange for $5,000 and a bit of "life experience." According to Jonathan Adams, an associate professor at Florida State University's College of Communication, hiring managers just perceive these degrees to be of a certain quality of education--a lower-quality one, unfortunately. Acceptance of online degrees may be growing among managers, however. The employers who are most skeptical of online education are the ones who seem to know the least about it. The more they learned, researchers found, the more comfortable they were. Also, because many traditional colleges offer online degrees, graduates of those programs can often apply for jobs without the hiring manager ever noticing that the courses were delivered over the Internet.