BA From Thomas Edison - Finished

Hello all,

I have received the letter from Thomas Edison stating my academic record has been certified for the December 2 graduation, and I (with unixman - congratulations!) should receive my diploma by the end of the year.

I am graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Sciences and Mathematics. I transferred in twenty-year-old credits earned in my misspent youth along with more recent credit from two universities, sixty credits from a local community college and two CLEPs.

My observations:

1. I seem to remember (but cannot provide the links to the posts) that Thomas Edison has been occasionally called out on this board on account of poor customer service. That has not been my experience; every time I telephoned I received prompt, complete and attentive service. Emailing, however, is a fifty-fifty bet.

2. The cost was in the neighborhood of $2300, which breaks down to $2000 for a year's tuition, a few bucks to get all the transcripts mailed and $210 graduation fee.

3. I chose the Natural Sciences/Mathematics program on the basis of having accumulated enough math, computer science, physics, biology and chemistry classes to satisfy that program (but not enough in any one area to warrant pursuing a degree in any of those subjects). I work as a database analyst (HP NonStop) for a regional retailer; I do not have a vocational need for this degree; after all, it is a liberal arts degree. Having finished with a 3.6 GPA, I might nonetheless make good use of this degree should an attractive Masters program catch my fancy (e.g., Ashworth or AJU starts an M. S. in MIS; though the Sturt program with the Microsoft certs looks pretty interesting). With this degree, I was able to tell my aging parents (this morning!) that I finally have a bachelor degree, plus it just feels quite good to have finished one.

4. In the case of Thomas Edison's liberal arts programs, it is indeed possible to obtain a bachelor degree with 100- and 200-level courses only. The trick would be to present enough courses to satisfy the core requirement of your desired program and to not have more than eighty credits from community colleges. I had a minimum of 300- and 400-level courses and they were applied in an elective area; I had enough 'left over' 100- and 200-level classes not used in the program that they could have composed the degree entirely out of lower-level classes.

5. My chief complaint is that the program evaluation process is very hand-off from the perspective of the student. My associate degree - Individualized Studies - required me to present a proposed program, show how the general education requirements will be satisfied and explain the content and integrity of the classes to be used to fulfill the degree. I understand Charter Oak does something similar. With Thomas Edison, you specify a degree, present your credits, then you WAIT. Once the degree audit was completed (~45 days), they can be somewhat flexible if you call them and discuss better ways to satisfy requirements. However, likely for the same reasons I engaged distance study, I would rather have gone in myself, done the evaluation and presented it to them for approval or revision. Waiting weeks on a bureaucracy to do something I could knock out in an afternoon was frustrating.


Thanks to all on the board, particularly John Bear (whose book I read ten years ago while laid up with a back injury) and Steve Levicoff who gave such a clear account of the PLA process at TESC, although I didn't need to use that option.

If readers have any questions about my experience at Thomas Edison, I welcome the follow-up posts; the sharing of information on this forum has been indispensable to me.

Cheers,
Mark Sykes

 

Congratulations on a fine achievement, and I'm pleased that my book was a small factor.

My best advice now: Take at least three days off before you start your search for the Master's.

John Bear

 

Congratulations Mark!

Enjoy your hard earned degree.


- Tom

P.S. Now would be the time to look for an attractive frame to house your diploma in.

 

Mazel tov!

Matt

 

Congratulations!~ I do have a question: Once you pay for tuition, and they have all your transcripts... if you have all the credits required, do you have to request yet another audit (grad check?) or do they let you know that you've completed the requirements? TIA

 

Congratulations!

 

Mark,

Congratulations!!!

Did you transfer any courses from Unisa?

 

Corn-grad-ulations! Thanks, Mark, for your informative post on TESC process; your comment on telephone vs. e-mail is most helpful.

 

reply

Congratulations! I'm so proud of you. You kept yourself motivated and now you'll have a degree. Keep us posted on whether you'll be going to Ashworth or somewhere else for your Master's. Good job!

 

Mark,
Congratulation!
All the best

 

Thank you all for your kind words.

Laura,
After you've paid for a year's tuition and administrative support and after they've received and evaluated your transcripts, you can always access your degree audit online. If, during the year, you complete a few classes somewhere and have the updated transcripts mailed to TESC, they appear on your online degree audit after a few weeks.
Once all the empty slots are filled, you can apply for graduation which triggers a final degree eval to make sure everything is there. Throughout the paid year you're free to speak with a counselor to make sure you and TESC are on the same page with respect to what credit remains to be taken and when you can call it quits.

Charles,
I never did finish the UNISA classes so there was no credit to transfer, unfortunately. There was at one time a "Memorandum of Agreement" signed between UNISA and TESC; my understanding is that TESC would offer its students classes from UNISA to fulfill degree requirements. I can find nothing current about that on the TESC Web site.

Tom,
The commercial diploma frames are pretty outrageous - >$100. This will just hang in the hallway here at home, so a simple frame from Wal-Mart should probably do very well.

 

Congratulations Mark!

What a satisfying feeling to finish a degree program!

 

I just called them up and they were kind enough to expedite my evaluation. According to the nice lady it should be done by Thursday. Assuming all is well I'll send in my grad request next week and it looks like we'll share a graduating class!! B.A. Social Sciences!! My only fear is that my college credit math class was 4.00 quarter hours. So I'm hoping that they aren't going to make me take another to satisfy the 3.00 semester hour GE requirement.

 

Laura,

Your 4-hour math class will satisfy the three-hour College Mathematics requirement. The extra credit will probably reduce the number of BA electives required in the general education section of the degree.

TESC was slightly flexible with the number of hours required for each category of the degree. The BA core requirement, by the book, is 33 hours; I had 32.67 hours and was over the free electives by 1/3 hour, so they called it even.

 

Congratulations Mark! It's always great to hear a real DL success story. I hope you'll stick around degreeinfo and be a source of information and encouragement for people who are just beginning that journey.
Jack

 

Congratulations!

 

Just wanted to clarify that that's 4 quarter hours which means the class is only worth 2/3 of that or 2.67 semester units. But that does round up to 3 so as per your experience here's hoping they just take the extra natural science classes for the difference for that section.

 

Laura,

I didn't catch the quarter (versus semsester) hours. I can't speak to that; I had bunches of math classes so they selected a 5-quarter-hour class (which equals 3.33 semester hours) to satisfy the math requirement. If I had no math at all and were doing this over, I'd probably go for CLEP college algebra credit and be done with it.
I bet they'll take care of you one way or another, though; best of luck and keep us informed of your progress!

 

Congratulations!!!