Looking for college with little or no resident requirement

I have a friend that took all of his general education requirements (Math, Humanities, History, Science and English) at a local community college back in the mid 80’s then stopped and went into the work force. He has since accumulated an additional 50-60 Lower / Upper division level credits through the US Navy via his SMART transcript (ACE guide recommended credits).

Is there a college that has little or no minimum resident requirement? How would he go about turning this into a AS degree in the quickest means possible.

 

The Big Three would be:
Charter Oak State College www.cosc.edu
Excelsior College www.excelsiorcollege.edu
Thomas Edison State College www.tesc.edu

Maybe Rich Douglas or Steve Levicoff could tell you more. They both did their undergrad degrees with the Big Three before becoming Union Institute PhDs.

 

Just got off the phone with Excelsior College, no resident requirement. If you can transfer in the credits that meet their requirements just pay the fees and get the degree.

 

This should also be true of both Charter Oak and Thomas Edison. I would consider which had the most direct path, along with the associated expenses. Finally, one should consider which bachelor's would best suit one's needs and consider getting the associate's from that school--with an eye on continuing on and finishing the bachelor's.

(I did my AA this way. I had taken quite a few DANTES and CLEP exams, complaining that the school I was starting to attend--WNEC--would only accept 30 s.h. in testing. A colleague told me about Regents, so I sent in the admissions fee ($75 at the time, IIRC) and had a transcript forwarded to them from ETS. A letter showed up congratulating me on completing my AA. This was a good thing.)

 

What fees do you have to pay besides the application fee if you transfer in all of the required credits?

 

$430 for AS in Aviation

 

As an ex-Navy guy and Excelsior College alum, I am biased when it comes to Excelsior. I don't know anything about the other big three. Excelsior got me the BS and now I've earned my Masters.

Excelsior offers quick turn around on AS and BS degrees since they confer degrees quarterly. Your friend should have your AS conferred at least 3 months if all distribution requirements have been fulfilled.

 

The Big 3

I wish I had journaled all my experiences when I went about getting my undergraduate degrees. I know I checked out "Regents" but chose Empire State College instead; I think the main reason was because I saw a pathway to becoming a certified teacher, which was my goal. Now New York laws have changed and I would have had to transfer to a teacher college after getting my AA from ESC in order to get certified, but it worked for me at the time even though I had to take plenty of courses at "teacher colleges" but my BS was still from ESC. ESC Center for Distance Learning offers a completely online program, but ESC has been about "non traditional learners" from day 1. I am surprised that I never hear of ESC mentioned on this board. Of course, this was and is much more for New Yorkers, and if I didn't live in NY, I doubt I ever even would have heard about ESC. (alas! I had no Internet access in 1989!) . Anyway, ESC accepted experiential learning credit and all the same things that the big 3 offer (I think!) In addition to that, they had course offererings that were self-designed, at least with the guidance of a professional mentor in the subject area. NY State had a list of "correspondance schools" that they would accept credit from for some of the education requirements. I got the Peterson's guide of the day and my obsession with finding accredited schools that offered courses I needed was born! ESC accepted all this "cross registration" credit but there was a limit on how much credit you could get outside of ESC courses (can't remember how much). I do work for ESC now, teaching online for the Center for Distance Learning, but that has nothing to do with why I'm sharing my experience. The tuition for ESC CDL is the same for in or out of state, for anyone who is interested. CDL does not offer the same flexibility as the "face to face" program I was in, though, and of course the disadvantage to the face to face program is that you need to live near an ESC unit in New York State. If you do live in NY, this is an option that can be just about as flexible, schedule-wise as "online learning," and even more flexible in course options. If anybody wants to know more about ESC, you can PM me if you want.

 

I tried to fix some spelling errors in my previous post and wanted to make some other changes ..the phone rang and I took too long and so I just want to add a couple of things ...I know correspondence has an e not an a..
I guess that is all!

BS - SUNY Empire State College
MAT - Marygrove College
Ph.D. - Northcentral University (working on)

 

Actually, I believe that Excelsior confers degrees monthly....

 

guitarmark2000 is correct. After a call I was able to verify Excelsior does confer degrees monthly. It can take up to six weeks for a credit evaluation. So I guess it is possible to get the whole process completed in under 2 months.

 

Excelsior Lessons Learned

The factor that could slow someone down is getting all your transcripts to Excelsior. BTW you can send them your transcripts before you pay them a penny and they will file them away. If anyone knows they are going the Excelsior route, start sending them transcripts as soon as you can. I did it this and it made the conferral process go much faster.