Want to teach English abroad but only have Associate's Degree, need quick Bachelor's!

Greetings everybody,

As the title of this thread mentioned, I want to teach English abroad. However, many countries that I'd like to go require a Bachelor's degree, and I only have an Associate's at the moment. I also have quite a bit of life experience and a few certifications from the two careers I've enjoyed up to this point, and hope that all of this combined would allow me to quickly and inexpensively finish a Bachelor's degree online from a legitimate accredited college, preferably in English or Teaching/Education. Some countries (like Indonesia) require you to have such a specific degree to legally gain a work VISA, and besides, I might as well study those subjects anyway since this is what I want to do for a career! :bandit:

I was hoping to get your thoughts on how much credit I could get for my current qualifications and experience, and how much I'd have to do to finish this degree. As I mentioned I have an Associate's degree from a well known Community College in Michigan with about 90 credits total completed (I took a few non-degree related classes), and this degree is a Liberal Arts degree. Also, I have a few credits from one of the Universities here. I also used to be an airline pilot and flight instructor and have many certifications as well as over a year's experience teaching people how to fly (including ground lessons). Currently I am in IT doing systems support and have A+ industry certification.

What would be my best bet? I'd really like to finish this over the next 3 years or so but since I don't get paid too much, money is definitely a factor. Considering the qualifications I listed, would I still have a pretty long way to go to finishing my Bachelor's online? Or would I be able to use a lot of my life experience and credits from my Associate's degree to significantly shorten the amount of courses I'd have to take to complete it?

Can you recommend any good schools? I know that TESC has an English program, however they are still quite a bit pricier than I'd like to go. If I go into a lot of debt I'll have to wait a lot longer to begin my TEFL career and travel to other countries, as pay for such an endeavor usually isn't too great and I might not be able to make ends meet. I'm 35 at the moment and hope to be on my way and established teaching somewhere before I hit 40.

I look forward to your input. Thanks in advance!

 

I am not sure if you will find many cheaper then TESC if you transfer in everything and do not take classes there. I went from an AA to a BS from Charter Oak in about 4 months and it cost about $1,000 in admin fees. Have you looked at CLEP and DANTES exams? They are a quick and cheap way to earn credit. There were days where I completed 9 credits before lunch!

 

Thanks for the reply Randell! My main concern is that however I finish the Bachelor's, when it comes time to interview/be considered for a VISA that whatever country I go to will accept the degree. I actually tossed around the idea of Ashworth since they have an Early Childhood Education program now, but I am a bit concerned at how a degree from that institution would be viewed.

I'm hoping that my Liberal Arts degree pretty much covers everything that I'd need for the first 4 semesters worth of classes, and maybe even moreso with the extra credits and life experience/certs I've gotten.

 

Definitely look into exams for credit, such as CLEP, ECE, and DANTES/DSST exams. You have 90 credits... which is only 30 or 40 credits short of most bachelor's requirements!! If you can transfer your life experience and these credits to a school like Charter Oak or Thomas Edison state colleges... you will only have a few exams to take before completing the requirements. If all works out, I wonder if you could have what you need in as short as a few months!

Once you have this degree done, you might want to think about looking into TESOL certification of some kind. This will GREATLY help you in your career as an ESL teacher overseas. The only distance education TESOL certificate that I know of is online through Anaheim University... which is not regionally accredited, but it is accredited by the DETC. But if you are teaching overseas, I don't think that regional or national accreditation will be an issue.

P.S. Where on the mitten?

 

Hadashi,

Thanks for your input. I have 90 credits but some of those are not related to the Associate's degree I got (such as ones for flight training that I got credit for). Would something like that still transfer? I know at least for the English degree TESC has a bunch of English-specific classes required as well as free electives. I assume I'd have to take those regardless...?

As far as the TEFL certificate goes I plan on getting my CELTA cert. My plan would be to finish my degree, have all my debt paid off, then save up a few grand, quit my job, go to a month-long intensive CELTA program and then find a job and start my adventure!

I'm in Southeast Michigan, Metro Detroit area.

Randell,

Thanks for the reply! That would be great if I could do it that quickly and inexpensively... though I wonder how much credit I could actually get for my life experience. I guess I can break it down as follows:

- Associate's Degree from Oakland Community College, about 90 or so credits completed there total. Started in 1994 and finished in 1998.
- About 9 credits completed at Oakland University in 2002.
- About 4 ears as a professional pilot, including 2.5 years as an airline pilot and a little more than 1 year as a Flight Instructor
- About 8 years as an I.T. professional doing systems and network support and a little programming, have A+ Certification

Where would you guys say that I stand in terms of completing a Bachelor's?

Thanks!

 

I would say pretty close. How many upper level classes (300-400 level) do you have? I think one school gives credits for flight training,

 

Randell,

I have 2 level 300 classes from OU, 7 credits -- MIS 300 - Management Information Systems and MKT 302 - Marketing. The other one was a 210 accounting class that I had to do for their program. According to my OU transcript 64 OCC credits had been transferred, so I assume the number would be similar for other online institutions.