Fast Degree

I am working in a position that requires a bachelor degree and need to earn my degree as soon as possible. I am in my 50's and this will be last last job before I retire. I have been in the position for 6 months and the non profit agency is satisfied I wii do well in this position but need the degree for future promotions and pay. My Executive Director told me he did not care if the school was accredited or not but of course not from a diploma mill. Can anyone give me some suggestions on a College or University where I could get some credit for life experience but still have to take core classes or enough classes to earn a degree.
Thanks

 

If you would do well with "testing out" procedures (CLEP, DANTES, ECE, PEP, TECEP) and/or if you have significant amounts of corporate training, industry certifications, military training, or professional licensures, Charter Oak State College www.cosc.edu , Excelsior College www.excelsior.edu , and Thomas Edison State College www.tesc.edu are good. Western Governors University www.wgu.edu is a good competency-based degree program.

 

Thank you for the information, I will check out the schools you suggested.

 

Check out www.bain4weeks.com

 

No disrespect but I have hard time to believe that your Director would say such a thing. Is it possible that you misunderstood him.
I run this by a friend who is working the system. The requirement was high school diploma - only form accredited school in the state of employment or GED.
The degrees must be accredited as well.

I think that most of the sheriff or other prison systems won't accept unaccredited degrees.

I'm not an expert but you may be wasting your time and money.

So do what Ted suggested.

Learner

 

I certainly did not misunderstand my Ex Director, I have volunteered with this organization for over a year and now have worked in this position for 6 months. I have 25 years of Management experience without a degree and my Ex Director certainly knows my abilities and qualifications. I was in a management position with an organization in which I managed a department with 10 people with bachelor degrees. Knowledge does not always come from sitting in a classroom, sometimes sitting in a classroom does not acquire knowledge just blisters. I came out of retirement after voulunteering for a year with this organization because for some of us our social values change later in life. I work with teenagers wiith special needs preparing them to transition to life after school. Now to my Ex Director. His point was that i not spend four years in a classroom and spend $30,000 to $40,000 on a degree with with my past knowledge and experience and my age when all my training has or will come from seminars or classes in disabilitys. I finished a 40 week course from the U of Georgia last year as a job coach. The board and my EX Director asked that I acquire a degree when they approached me about working full time for them because the position requires a degree. As the gentleman in the previous post pointed out, I will try and test out in classes where it is possible and finisish my degree in a responsible way. I do feel because some schools are not regionaly accredited doesn't mean all schools are diploma mills. I am not writing this reponse in a negative manor to what you said to me, just trying to give my opinion and explaining my background and reasoning as to why I want to obtain my degree as quickly as possible.

 

Fortunatelly or unfortunatelly that is precisely the prevailing attitude with employers.

I do not, see my statement above.

This is the best advice you can get for free. Even if you don’t see the immediate need for an accredited degree, life is too impredictable and even if you think you this will be your last job, you can not predict were life will take you down the road.

Furthermore, as parts of the portfolio assessment process you may be able to “translate” Life Experiences and many Certificates you may have earned into college credit.

If you insist in getting a state approved/authorized degree proceed with extreme caution. There are a lot of schools out there that are state authorized, but that are so substandard that you will be wasting your time and money.

Take care and have a Great 2006.

 

I sincerely appreciate your advice, and I will try and make my reply brief. I had stated that I had previously retired and if for some reason this wouldn't work out I would just return to retirement and play golf. The degree is not a ticket to employment or knowledge to perform my job but rather a formality agreement with the director and the board. My background and skills are more than enough to continue to perform up to the expectations of my employer. Sometimes we get to caught up in the piece of paper rather than the aquired knowledge in years of working in the real world. I started working in the mailroom and worked my way into middle management of a medium size coporation over the years without a degree which I know would be almost impossible in today's society. I worked through and with a lot of resistance from younger employees with degrees who resented my not sitting in a classroom for four years, but who will never accomplish what I did with hard work and determination. So you see my view of the degree is different than mine! And yes I would tell any young person in today's world to definately get their degree, my 3 children did knowing I never finished college because I came from a very poor family and never had an opportunity to go to college until later in life and then I didn't realize the neccesity of it. As you can see, I guess in relaity I never do anything briefly. Again I respect your opinion but do not neccessarily agree.
Thanks

 

You should check out Alabama, California, Utah, or Wisconsin state licensed schools. There are a lot of state licensed schools in those states. Be sure to ask here about the legitimacy a school before enrolling.

Good Luck!

 

The California Education Code places tight limits on the amount of prior learning credit that state approved schools can award.

So if somebody with a massive sense of entitlement wants a quickie life-experience degree, California probably isn't the place to look.

 

Thanks for all the information. I will check out all the options before I make a decision.

 

Then why don't they just waive their degree requirement in your case?

It really sounds like you work for a larger organization and that you, and perhaps your immediate boss, are trying to dodge some personnel policies.

If your boss won't waive the rule but tells you to get a quickie degree, accredited or not, then he's probably covering his ass. If brown anal extrusions ever start hitting fans, he will point his finger straight at you and say that you deceived him about your education.

So the choice is yours. Investigate TESC, COSC, Excelsior or WGU and find out how you can demonstrate competencies at least theoretically equivalent to a conventional university education. Do the work necessary to document it and end up with an accredited degree that you won't have to worry about. Or buy a phony degree from an online degree-mill, lie your head off and take the chance that your career will crash and burn.

But don't try to convince yourself that because you are fifty and feel entitled as all hell, that a questionable degree wouldn't be questionable in your case.

 

It looks like a DETC degree will meetyour needs. Plus it is an accredited degree (although most informed people consider it less prestigous than an RA degree. Sorry I do not have time to research and list candidate degrees right now but other board regulars might suggest some.

 

I suspect this post is not good for the readers.

Unaccredited degrees are not accepted for corrections officer positions in most of US states.

Learner

 

Hi Tees:

Welcome aboard. Please do follow the pointers to TESC, COSC, Excelsior, or WGU. Ian's suggestion of a DETC degree might also work. Miguel is right--and mutatis mutandis Bill is very right--about the dangers of unaccredited degrees coming back to bite you.

Let us know what your initial impressions of the Big 4 are. I have some parishioners who are getting interested in degree completion for many of the same reasons you relate, so I look forward to finding out what you find out. One other thing: do NOT, whatever you do, let resentment guide you in this. That's emphatically not an accusation, but it's most emphatic agreement with Bill's advice earlier in this thread.

Best wishes,
Janko

 

It would be even more helpful if you'd list the states in which unaccredited degrees are accepted for corrections officer positions.

Thanks!

 

Do you still expect his posts to be helpful? I settled for mildly amusing a long time ago.

Be that as it may, I don’t see were the corrections officer issue comes into play. Did Tees67 mention anywhere he was working as a corrections officer? Just curious.

 

Hi Miguel,

Lerner posts often without much specificity. I used to do this many year's ago when I first entered into the wonderful world of fora and was called on it.

I suppose I didn't see that corrections officer wasn't initially mentioned.

 

Great, I was beginning to be concerned about my abilities to read the posts in this thread. Yet, further proof that most of what “Learner” posts are only figments of his imagination.

 

Don't worry, I get concerned about all my abilities (or lack thereof) almost daily.

It's a pleasure having you on Degree Info. You're a real asset.