Good online school for graphic design or visual communication

Hello all.

I'm a french girl (excuse me in advanced for the errors i can make in this text )

I want to take online courses in graphic design like a bachelor or a MA in fine art, graphic design, visual communication, etc..

In France we don't have online schools that offers online degrees in graphic design !! So that's why i look for an amercan or english school.

But is very hard for me. I don't know which diplomas are good, which accreditation is good, what tuitions and fees is acceptable ...

Could anyone tell me if graduate national diplomas or certificate is good as well as bachelor's or master's ???
What are the best ??

And the accreditations ?? Which are the best accreditations ?

I want to take graphic design courses for myself, because i' very interrested in this, but also for a professionnal way. So i want to have a diploma which is appreciated by the employers.

So, could someone tell me which school :

- have the best courses for graphic design
- have good accreditations
- is appreciate by the employers
- and, of course, not an expensive school becauses diplomas are very expensive in England and America, as i see !!!

I have seen AIU online, the art institute online, westwood college ?
What do you think about this schools ? It's seems a little expensive for me ...but maybe there are not.

If i can't find a cheap and good online school, maybe i can go in the UK to take courses of graphic design. So if someone know a short term formation in the uk, you could also tell me that.

thanks a lot for your replys in advance ( i know i was a "little" long but i search for this kind of forum for a long time;o) )

a french girl who is a little lost in your education system ;o)

 

auto reply;o)

Ok

Whith a little look around the post here, i've seen that national accreditations (of course) are best than regional accreditations.
But when you have only RA what is the consequence on employers and school in case of contuining studies ?

So art institute and american institute online are expensive, that's sure !!
What is the reputation of this shools ?

For my other questions (certificate, national diplomas, cheap school, ...) i don't find anything yet.

So thanks for your help in advance.

have a nice day

 

BS"D

I was also interested in finishing my degree in graphic design. I looked into various programs:

1) Art Institute Online
2) AIU Online
3) Mt Sierra

1)The Art Institute, although expensive, looks great. They give you an online course demo so you can get an idea of what a course would entail. The work load looks reasonable but not too easy. Their website was informative and gave the information I needed. Their program looks long and expensive though.

2) I was not impressed with AIU online and I got a lot of weird signals from them leading me to not pursue them. Here's my problems with this college:

a) Their web page has little information about the degree.
b) The representative who called me was strange, hogged the conversation, and wanted me to make an appointment to talk to her which would happen after I had filled out an application.
c) I needed a password to even look at basic information for their school.
d) Their email didn't get to me; the spam blocker on my server wouldn't let it in and I went to spamhaus.org and its listed there as a spammer; something I find somewhat displeasing.

I ended up with a fairly queasy feeling about this institution. I simply don't understand why they can't outline basic information about their courses, tuition and fees, course oulines, technical requirements, the software they were training in and so on. Its important to know which software they're going to be using (Quark XPress versus Adobe InDesign etc). This really made me suspicious towards the college.

3) Mt. Sierra College
I'm not sure about this although the person I spoke with, answered all my questions and they had a decent amount of information on their web site.

What I've decided to do however is that since I have quite a lot of credits (over 100), but mainly in lower division classes, I'm going to either go to Empire State College or Excelsior College and then take some graphic design classes on the side. As I already mentioned, I really like the Art Institute online. Although it would be expensive for a degree, it might be worthwhile taking a few courses here and there.

All the best

 

I was thinking about what would be a possible solution again and assuming you're still listening here's my idea:

Go to the Art Institute Online. It sounds like its about the same amount of money as AIU but from my short epxerience with AIU and from the threads I've read about AIU it doesn't look promising.

The Art Institute lets you transfer in credits. Check and see which classes they have that you could take either locally or more likely through a cheaper distance learning source. This will be maybe 7-8 classes of about 48 classes but even getting those classes transferred in could save you money.

I haven't gone here so I might be wrong about them but it seems rigorous enough and if its like their demo it sounds like they make you do a reasonable amount of work.

 

Frenchie:

If you're interested in a DL--as opposed to pure online--program, there's an MA program in Graphic Design offered through Syracuse University in New York, which is one of the top 50 or so schools in the U.S. and has an excellent reputation. This would require at a minimum a residency each Summer in NY of a couple weeks, it may also include some other time meeting with fellow students in the program, some of which may reside in Europe, I don't know. Otherwise, the work would be independent study, which could presumably be completed in France.

Also, I haven't compared costs with the Art Institute or AIU (which I would avoid), but Syracuse isn't cheap, it's a well-regarded private school, and the degree would be along the lines of $30,000 USD, exclusive of travel expenses. If you have a means of getting to the U.S. each Summer, it may be worth a look, here's the link:

http://vpa.syr.edu/grad/program.cfm?ProgramID=isdp&SchoolName=art