My daughter who recently graduated high school is thinking about enrolling in a certificate program then moving up to an Associates degree through Heald College. Can't quite determine if they are an RA school or not, but does anybody have any good or bad experiences with Heald College? Thanks kindly in advance! Heald College website: http://www.heald.edu/
Heald is a good school in my location in California and one of the schools my wife was looking at when she went back to school. One thing you might want to consider is to get with the admissions rep and find out how many credits your daughter can transfer from the local community college. Reason being, I think the tuition is like 1,000 per course. I couldn't see spending 1k per course for general ed courses like math, english and sciences, where you can get the same courses completed in California community college for 26 per unit, or zero tuition with BOG waiver. If she is firm on going to Heald, she can cut her tuition almost in half by transferring to Heald after she completes her preq. and general ed classes and take her major at Heald.
I don't have any personal experience with them and haven't even looked very closely at them in years. But my impression here in the SF Bay Area is the same as Joel's in Sacramento, Heald is a completely legitimate regionally accredited, proprietary vocational college. It seems to compete with community colleges pretty much, training students for technician-level careers, promising students more personal attention and better placement services than the CCs. I can't speak to how well it delivers. My biggest problem with it is probably price. It's expensive and the CC's are inexpensive (in my ancient day, completely free). Of course, if Heald graduates find jobs at a much better rate than CC graduates, then it might be worth the difference. I don't know that though.
Thank you for your replies!! All I can say is "zoinks" as far as their tuition costs are concerned. I'll ruffle through their catalogs and see if my daughter can take some classes with the CC as you guys recommended to cut costs. Heald College is a unique school offering those 2-year vocational degrees and certificates, hoping I could help my daughter cut some corners towards her educational goals! -Again, thank you everyone for your kind insight!
I have a good friend that graduated from Heald with her Associates in Business degree. She earned good grades and was then accepted at New York University in New York state. She was happy with the route that she took. After graduating from New York University she earned a BA degree and she is now employed with the government. Her job consists of her doing research in the field of psychology. Her ultimate goal now is to earn her Ph.D from an accredited, reputable online university
I found this in about 30 seconds: http://www.heald.edu/about_heald/about_heald.htm and then there's this: http://www.accjc.org/pdf/accjc_directory_of_accredited_institutions_august_2009.pdf
Thank you again! - Great info! I noticed that Heald has quite a reputation as well being arounf for 140+ years. Going through some of their curriculums, I noticed that most of their classes are "4" credits long - not sure if Heald is on a quarter credit system or not, but this could be challenging as far as transferring credits in if they aren't on a quarter system. Again, thank you all for your kind insight!
Although Heald is RA, be sure to double check on transferability for some credits in some programs, if your daughter anticipates rolling the credits into some specific bachelor program. Sorry to be so vague about the topic of specificity, but I seem to recall some Heald programs not being judged equivalent here or there... Still, they claim to have articulation agreements with schools we've heard of (I'm surprised though to learn that someone else has heard of Wayland Baptist University...): http://www.heald.edu/programs/partner_colleges.htm
I would not think this would be a problem except they may lose 1/2 a unit (3 SU = 4.5 QU). I've only done the reverse (QU to SU) and received full credit (at Excelsior where my transcripts lists some credits as decimals (such as 1.3 semester units).
I will definitely look into the CC route This should help cut down on costs and give her a good headstart on some of the gen-ed classes that she will be needing w/Heald. Thanks again everyone and have a Happy Thanksgiving!!