Associates Degree Online - Advice?

Greetings;

I've been lurking here for awhile, and need some advice that I can't seem to easily find. I'm hoping you can throw a shoe at me to point the right direction.

Husband and I are both eligible for FAFSA and other financial aid and loans. We have college credits, but no degree. We originally thought to go with Kaplan, but at about 17,000 per Associates, this seemed excessively pricey.

Online seems to be our best option due to work schedules. As well, we are about 60 miles from the nearest community college.

I looked into Aspen U, but their Associates degrees are not eligible for financial aid. Liberty is up there as well (about 14,000). Same with U of P. Is this fairly the norm (over 12K for an associates)?

I've also seen Clovis mentioned - does anyone know whether they are 100% online and/or had good experience with them?

Any other recommendations are much appreciated. Also, if there are threads or phrases I could search, please feel free to advise. I've scoured through stickies, searched on a variety of concepts, but haven't seen this particular issue arise.

Many thanks in advance!

Lis

 

Hi Lis - It's hard for people to make recommendations when they know nothing about your interests, goals, etc.

 

Clovis has a lot of courses available online but I'm honestly not sure whether they offer a degree via distance learning. Clovis also limits you to six credit hours per semester to get the super-low tuition deal.

How many credits do you and your husband each have? What are you interested in earning your associated degrees in?

If you already have some college credit, one very affordable option you might consider is to test out of the remainder of your associates degree with CLEP or DANTES exams and then transfer to one of the assessment schools. These schools include:

Charter Oak State College
Thomas Edison State College
Excelsior College

And don't forget, you can take somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 1-credit FEMA courses at no cost and then transfer them directly to Thomas Edison State College.

I have a feeling you and your husband are much closer to completing a degree than you realize....and for much, much less money than you think.

 

Yes, you can complete an Associate in General Studies from Clovis.

You can also use inexpensive Clovis classes and transfer them to one of the Big 3 (COSC, TESC, Excelsior).

I would also point out that is you take 15 credits from Clovis, the cost is $75.60/credit hour. (I included the $50/course online fee). If you are thinking about Clovis, classes start Monday.

Also, look in your backyard. What online community college options do you have in your state?

A for profit for an associates degree (Kaplan, Phoenix, etc.) BAD IDEA! Too many less expensive options available.

Shawn

 

WOW! That's hard to imagine. First off, you are going to get tons of good info here- plus using the search feature will help you. You can get your bachelor's for under $5,000 from an accredited college, so the idea that someone would pay double that for an associates blows my mind.

When you get your credit a la carte (some here, some there, etc) you can "build" a degree from the most efficient and/or economical sources. The trick is finding a school that accepts a lot of transfer. Many here talk about the "big 3" which essentially allow almost all of your credit to come from outside sources, they are talking about 3 Regionally Accredited (the highest) colleges: Thomas Edison State College, Charter Oak State College, and Excelsior College. All are online schools. PER CREDIT, these schools are not cheap- so the reason people attend them is not with the intent, necessarily, of taking a lot of classes there - but rather to shop elsewhere and transfer in. *I earned an associates and bachelor's through Thomas Edison.

The other option, is to look at brick and mortar colleges, because 98% of all public schools now offer online courses. Within those, MANY offer online bachelor's degrees, and darn near most community colleges offer associate degrees which can be fully completed online. This is in spite of it not being an "online college." The advantage of this, is that you can generally get cheaper tuition than the schools you mentioned- which are mostly for-profit high debt low yield institutions. Two other advantages. First, CCs are all regionally accredited, so that takes off the worry of that. And secondly, nearly any AA in General Education will give you the option of going into a 4 year school in that state with a 100% transfer. These are called "articulations" and VERY worth looking at as you start to plan.

The perfect marriage, is to use both of these in your own recipe. For instance, many brick and mortar schools allow transfer credit and or CLEP, allowing you to save big $$$ on many (15-30) credits. And, the big three allow you to take your classes at schools like Clovis (or locally) thus saving more money.

It's going to be like planning a big vacation. You can go to a travel agent and say "make it happen" (admissions counselor) or you can spend a little time planning and get the most for your time and money. This is my suggestion!!

My questions for you:
what state are you in? *some states have SUPER SWEET community college online consortiums, and instate is generally cheaper.
what ending degree would you eventually want- even if it's 20 years from now? *you don't want to close doors as you plan
do you know if your existing college credits were from an AA/AS or AOS/AAS program? *AOS/AAS credits will be electives in AA/AS programs

 

I say Clovis as well, you could knock it out fast if you have FA or the money.

 

I would save your money, drive the 60 miles to the community college, and schedule all of your courses on the same day so you only have to make the drive once a week.

My .02 cents

 

There is some wisdom in this statement. You could get your AA really cheaply and only have to drive in once a week. Why blow that much money when you don't have to. Two extra hours of driving per week could save you thousands of dollars. Plus, your CC is bound to have some online courses.

Also, how about doing some self directed study in some of the subject areas and then taking CLEP tests to test out of some subjects. That is even cheaper than community college.

 

Don't use financial aid on your AA. Save it for later, or try not to use it at all. Student loans have high interest rates. Go to a CC, most if not all CC's have online degrees plans available.

My wife and I both received our AA degrees from a CC. Zero debt. Plus, we took a couple of upper division courses (usually a CC has one or two that will transfer to a 4 year).

My wife currently applied to Aspen U. She received 90 credits/units for her college work, CLEP test, DANTES, etc. She has to complete 30 units and she is done. No debt.

Abner

 

Oops, I should have said my wife applied to Aspen U for a BGS degree (4 yr degree).

 

Just to clarify Abner's statement, while you should avoid student loans for the AA, if you are eligible for a Pell Grant, then by all means use it, since Pell Grants are not available for graduate school.

Shawn

 

Good catch.

Also, books are a huge percentage of the cost of going to college. This may seem elementary, but obtain the ISBN number of the books from the bookstore, then purchase the books online at AbeBooks Official Site - New & Used Books, New & Used Textbooks, Rare & Out of Print Books, half.com etc. Abe Books has International Edition books (IE) that you can purchase for a fraction of the price. Just make sure the seller states "Exact same as US edition". Many times at a CC, the books are more than the classes themselves, at least here in Cali.

Abner

 

Can you list the credit you currently have and give a general idea of what you want?

In the end a mixture of CLEP, FEMA, ALEKS, NFA, SL, and the credit you have could result in an extremely cheap degree. I would start with ALEKS if you don't have a lot of math credit already. It's damn near free!

Search out threads concerning the keywords above to learn how exactly those credit methods can be used and with what schools, also, learn about residency requirements and the three schools that don't have them (TESC, EC, COSC).

Clovis has come up several times, it seems like a great option, I and others have used Penn Foster's ACE reviewed courses which are 100% self paced and are $90/credit (you should learn about the DETC and ACE if you go that route). If you go to EC you may want to take PF's Info literacy and one other class to save some money.

It's a lot of research, but the previous poster that said "under $5000" for a bachelors degree is correct. I'm getting my A.S. degree for about $3000 (less) and I'm not even implementing CLEP or DSST (two of the cheapest ways) because I'm afraid of all-or-nothing tests.

EDIT:
And Abner is right about books. I also like CLEP, DSST, FEMA, NFA, and ALEKS because no books are required, the price of the class/method = 100% of costs (and some of those are free!).

 

Good job Ricky, you are a quick study!

Abner

 

Thanks Abner! I really am pushing the ALEKS and NFA thing, there is really no disadvantage like you will find with FEMA. It's just a great alternative/supplement to CLEP/DSST. In fact, it's even cheaper. People know about CLEP but nobody knows about these great alternatives, I wish I could tell everybody.

 

Hmmm....the original poster seems to have disappeared. There's a lot of great info in this thread. I hope the OP reads it.