All 97 records in this November 2, 2026 snapshot describe online coursework, but their separately evidenced attendance details vary. Required live sessions are recorded for 6 programs and explicitly absent for 19; 72 remain unknown. Campus, placement and other in-person requirements need their own checks. These are catalog-evidence counts, not national attendance estimates.
Four questions hidden inside the word online
A learner may be able to watch lectures from home and still need a live evening class, an approved placement, a university visit or an external testing appointment. Those commitments affect different parts of a schedule. We audited four separate attendance fields in the same 97-program, 25-institution public catalog snapshot instead of letting the online-coursework label answer every question.
This is a convenience sample of our curated program records. It is not a survey of U.S. universities, a census of online master’s degrees or a random sample from the nationwide federal college search. The three held records are not included. Every included program remains in each field’s denominator, even when its attendance details are unknown.
The field-by-field results
| Attendance question | Current evidence: required | Current evidence: not required | Unknown in record | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Required live sessions | 6 | 19 | 72 | 97 |
| Required university-campus visits | 1 | 9 | 87 | 97 |
| Required local placement | 0 | 1 | 96 | 97 |
| Other required in-person activity | 1 | 0 | 96 | 97 |
The four totals each equal 97. The columns should not be added across questions to estimate a number of students or universities. A single program can require both a live session and a campus visit. The 96 unknown placement values do not mean 96 programs have no practical work; they mean that this particular requirement is not established by qualifying evidence in those records.
Unknown also does not prove that a university has failed to explain its format. A relevant statement may exist outside the field evidence captured in our snapshot, or it may need a route-specific interpretation. The results measure what our records can support under consistent rules. They should not be presented as an institutional transparency league table.
How a field becomes true, false or unknown
For each program and each question, we inspect the literal stored value and the evidence attached to that exact field. A true or false counts only if the field has verified evidence checked no later than November 2 and within the preceding 100 days. Missing keys, nulls, unsupported values and checks outside that window are unknown. Evidence that coursework is online does not fill any of the four fields automatically.
Required live sessions concern synchronous participation, which can take place remotely. Campus visits concern presence at the university. Other in-person activity covers a physical obligation such as an external exam appointment. A local placement concerns an approved practical setting, whose permitted physical, remote or hybrid arrangement needs its own source and conditions. These definitions prevent a single broad label from erasing a consequential exception.
Optional meetings are different from required participation. A program may invite students to office hours, a social event or an immersion without making attendance compulsory. Conversely, an apparently flexible course can have required presentations or examinations at fixed times. The question is what applies to the exact route, cohort and activity, rather than whether a website uses the word flexible.
A testing-center exception is not a campus visit
WGU’s Cybersecurity and Information Assurance FAQ states that the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity exam must be taken at a live onsite proctored testing center. The corresponding record therefore has a confirmed other-in-person requirement. We do not relabel the testing center as a university campus or clinical placement. This is why an audit with only a campus-visit field could miss a real physical obligation.
The practical follow-up is specific: establish which exam applies to your route, where an acceptable center is located, how appointments and accommodations work, and what travel or other arrangements are needed. The published program description does not establish that a particular student has already satisfied an external examination requirement.
Campus travel and live virtual classes are separate
Georgia Tech’s Professional Master’s in Manufacturing Leadership FAQ describes three required visits to its Atlanta campus and a hybrid learning arrangement. That supports a campus-travel question at the start of planning. Required visits should be placed on the calendar along with travel and time away from work; an online component does not remove them.
The University of North Dakota MBA page provides a different example: scheduled, synchronous evening classes online. That is a live-participation commitment, not by itself a reason to assume travel. Ask for the current timetable and translate it into your own location’s time zone. A recording should not be assumed to replace required participation unless the program confirms that arrangement.
Mizzou’s MLIS course page combines another set of facts: no required campus visits, some scheduled Zoom meetings and a practicum. Our record can therefore distinguish required live participation from no campus visits while leaving the exact placement-location question unresolved. A practicum’s existence alone does not tell us whether its approved work must be physically local, can be remote or can use a particular employer.
Why the strict no-in-person count is zero
No record in this snapshot has current verified false values in all three of the campus, local-placement and other-in-person fields. Consequently, zero pass the catalog’s conservative no-in-person filter. This is a finding about the evidence needed for that filter. It is not a finding that no program can actually be completed without travel.
Boise State makes the distinction visible. Its Cyber Operations and Resilience FAQ explicitly says the online degree has no in-person requirements. The frozen structured record confirms no campus visits and no local placement, but does not separately establish the other-in-person field. We leave that field unknown in the audit rather than silently adding a new verification. A later, properly recorded source check can change the classification without any change to the program itself.
This limits how the counts should be used. A missing field should prompt a focused question and a source update. It should not become a false promise that there is no requirement, nor a claim that a requirement definitely exists. The conservative result helps identify evidence gaps; it cannot replace a complete program participation plan.
Use the results to build a workable week
For a hypothetical working applicant, an otherwise convenient online degree may become infeasible if a required live class regularly conflicts with a shift. A different applicant may have time for evening meetings but be unable to take several days away for a campus visit. Those are different constraints. Start with the activities the program actually requires, then place them beside paid work, care responsibilities, travel and study time.
For practical experience, obtain the expected hours, approval process, supervision arrangements and responsibility for securing a site. Ask what happens if an approved arrangement is unavailable or changes. For exams and visits, request the dates, location choices, booking rules and any associated charges. Keep optional opportunities separate so they do not accidentally inflate or conceal the minimum obligation.
Inspect the full audit and its limits
The 97-row attendance audit CSV includes every program, the four raw values, audited classifications, current-evidence flags, source URLs, dates and notes. The four questions are independently coded. The frozen collection time is preserved, so a live profile that later changes does not silently rewrite this edition’s findings.
This audit does not establish admission, enrollment availability, an individual placement or professional eligibility. When correcting an attendance fact, identify the exact program and activity, supply the current official source, and distinguish a changed requirement from a newly documented one.
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We record program information with field-level sources, check dates and explicit unknown values. Federal institutional data has a different scope from a current graduate program record.
ExploreCorrections
Report a possible error with its page URL, the exact claim and a current official source. We assess the affected fact and update its status rather than silently treating uncertainty as confirmation.
ExploreOnline Study Formats Explained
Online degrees can use scheduled live sessions, deadline-based independent work, cohorts, individual pacing, placements or campus visits. Check each obligation separately; the word “online” does not describe the whole experience.
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Compare an explicitly stated weekly workload with the time you can realistically protect.
ExploreSources and reproducibility
The analysis uses the frozen public catalog collected on November 2, 2026 in America/New_York. The retained collection timestamp is 2026-11-03T00:39:38.402Z. Individual source checks and applicable price periods are separate from that collection time. The downloadable audits preserve the underlying record IDs, values, dates and source links.