Easiest school

On behalf of a friend:

He has only a diploma from a foreign high school. Came to the U.S. when he was 19 and thus speaks English with an accent. He is employed at a beauty salon as a hairstylist. His only post-high school eduation is a one year beauty school. He is now 35.

What is the "easiest" RA DL college degree he can get? In this regard, I am talking about (1) "easy" assignments and/or exams (if any), and (2) lax standards in determining whether one has passed a class. He has no credits to transfer so that is not an issue. He just wants an accredited college degree (any "easy" major will do, he is not picky). Tuition costs are not a factor for him either.

I've read Univ. of Phoenix is not all that difficult. Is this true? Any others?

This is a serious question; I am not trying to start trouble or anything of that nature. Thanks for any help.

JB

 

The key question here is what he plans to do with it. If going on for a further degree is not an issue, then it is very likely that a school accredited by the recognized DETC or ACICS agencies would be a better choice. California National, Columbia Southern, and Andrew Jackson come first to mind.

In the long run, an even easier option might well be assembling a collection of 40 of the least demanding courses, from among the several hundred RA schools with on-line or distance learning courses, and applying those toward an Excelsior or Edison degree.

He should also consider credit for prior learning. His second language skills could be worth a moderate amount of credit, for instance.

Bottom line, however, is that it may be easier but it won't be easy. It is reasonable to think of at least 100 hours of work for a 3 unit course. 40 of those equals at least 4,000 hours, or 20 hours a week for four years. Credit for exams and for life experience learning could reduce this a lot, if relevant.

From all I have read, the University of Phoenix is not among the easier options.

 

Good Morning, I hesitate to answer you under this heading because I don't believe TESC is the easiest School. I would recommend portfolio to your friend. With your help I think he might make quite a dent in his credit list. I did a small check of the credit bank and found one course in make-up design. In New Jersey people who work in the image industry have to hold licenses and certificates. They may have ACE approval. I'm not sure. I'd do a search of community colleges that offer courses for a stylist and start matching them up. I'm also wondering if he could take courses in his native language for a less stressful experience. Have a great day. Hille

 

thanks

Thank you Dr. Bear and Hille for your suggestions. I'll soon be looking into the options you mentioned and attempt to assist my friend.

To answer Dr. Bear's question, my friend does not intend to do anything with the degree. He simply wants the degree as it would be a dream come true to have an American college degree. He doesn't care about the major as he only intends to continue his career as a hairstylist (he is quite good and makes more than sufficient money). His time is limited so wants a school that would take the least amount of effort to graduate from.

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

JB

 

Roger Williams University Independent studies this very user friendly but will cost over $1,000 per (3 unit) class. TESC Guided Studies also is good, you can get up to (9 units) taking one course - they will break them down as 3 separate courses on your transcript - great for your general education requirements.


Look it any one-night-a-week (RA) programs in your area. UOP will kill you with those study groups - UOP might be okay for any topic that would be difficult for you such as the general education requirements relating to communications, math, science, etc. I would only take those classes that you'll need to fill in the gaps. Don't forget to CLEP/Test when you can....

Then take your credits to Excelsior

 

A different path that would achieve the same results would be to go to a Community college for an AA degree in Cosmetology (such as Santa Monica college - which is mostly doable by DL) and thencomplete a BS in Liberal Arts or General Studies.

Note I am not recommending Santa Monica but it has a program that I found by a search on google.

 

My take, FWIW (all of this written as if it were directed at him, just because second-person is easier to read):

- Enroll in TESC.
- Get as much portfolio credit--_especially_ upper-level portfolio credit--as possible.
- Find a community college in your state (online or residential) to fill in the gaps as far as lower-level courses are concerned.
- Fill any upper-level course gaps by attending residential night or weekend classes at your nearest four-year college.

Good luck.


Cheers,

 

One can build a good DL degree through University of New Orleans, (the Met. College) using some JC transfer courses (as others have well suggested here) and very inexpensive courses offered through LSU. It would be a solid RA degree. I don't know about the "easy." That is a pretty relative term. If your friend wants a relatively easy, but not diploma mill degree, he might be a great candidate for one of the better unaccredited schools---because as you indicate, he sees this as a terminal degree. Cal Coast is very inexpensive. It is not at all well liked around here, but Pacific Western (CA, not HAWAII) has a lot of alumni in positions much like your friend. I don't know much about it as a school, and am not recommending it, but they seem to have a very loyal following. I think Dr. Bear's suggestion of Andrew Jackson and Columbia Southern represent a much better and probably the easiest meaningfully accredited degree rout you could find. Someone on this board, and I can't remember who, said Andrew Jackson courses were pretty undemanding. At any rate, it is better than a non-accredited option and about the same price and most likely not much "harder." Good Luck.

Craig

 

I'm going to be blunt here. If your friend is flat out unable to do the work expected in order to earn a bachelors degree, then he simply doesn't deserve one. If he can do the work, then he needs to. Trying to find an accredited degree mill for him is not doing him any service at all.

Now I'll be less blunt. You need to help your friend to grow more confident and competent (which is the whole point of higher education, isn't it?), otherwise he will just crash and burn again when he seeks a job. If he has problems they need to be overcome, not swept under the rug.

If your friend does have some native ability and intelligence, but is suffering from poor secondary level preparation and perhaps from poor self-esteem, and (this is crucial) if he is willing to make the effort, then he should probably try to ease into higher education.

I'm going to second Mike Albrecht's suggestion that your friend investigate a local community college. Probably an on-campus program would be preferrable, since they offer more support services. Community colleges are open admissions and tend to specialize in educating people who are poorly prepared.

So I'd say go with a JC. Start out part-time, perhaps with just a class or two in a subject that your friend likes and feels especially confident in. As your friend develops more confidence and direction he can start thinking about choosing a major and perhaps transferring into a four year program down the line. And tell him to talk to the college's counselors. Giving struggling students advice and helping them find direction is what they are there for.

But no "easy degrees". That's just an insult to your friend.

 

Craig makes the distinction between Pacific Western in California and the one "in" Hawaii. There is no distinction to be made because they are the same school.

There was a time in California (before 1989), when unaccredited schools were allowed to operate under Section 94310(c). This was called the "Authorized" category. A school had to submit an affadavit covering 13 areas about its operation, and it had to claim at least $50,000 worth of assets towards the school. (Presumably, this was to ward of fly-by-night degree mills, but it didn't work. And the state didn't do much verifying of the value of these assets.) There was no qualitative evaluation or review done by the state. The schools were simply allowed to operate. Pacific Western, owned and operated by the no-doctorate-holding Philip Forte, MBA.

A few schools had one or more of their degree programs evaluated and Approved by the state under Section 94310(b). The state didn't do institutional evalution; it evaluated individual degree programs. There were some schools with one or a few of their programs Approved while the rest of the school operated as Authorized. It didn't seem to matter too much, except where state licensure was required (like in counseling or psychology).

Pacific Western didn't have any Approved programs.

When California went to institutional approval, it eliminated the Authorized category. This created quite a stir in the no-questions-asked degree-selling business. Some schools really moved (like the University of Beverly Hills). Others simply re-located their licensure to a more friendly state. (Kennedy-Western, Century, Golden State). (Some continued to operate from California anyway.) Still others went out of business entirely (La Jolla). Some made the grade at the Approved level and later lost it and/or went out of business and/or relocated (Columbia Pacific, International College). Some are still around (California Coast, California Pacific, University of Santa Monica, University of Santa Barbara). And some, like Pacific Western, split the business. They pushed a few programs through Approval, then pushed everything else "off shore" to Hawaii. But their operations continued to be run from California.

Who's going to make a distinction between which operation awarded which degree? Pacific Western in California and the one in Hawaii are the same school, run from California. The same staff, faculty, etc. They just set up a smaller PWU for California Approval while continuing to award just about any other degree from their Hawaiian license. But it's the same school.

I suspect California feels powerless over this dispicable practice. IIRC, they've said as much, that the two are to be treated as separate businesses, and that they have no say in what PWU/Hawaii does. But consumers do. How can a person have confidence in a school that participates in this scam?

Rich Douglas

 

Re: Re: Easiest school

I really agree with this sentiment, but here's the alternative argument: If the minimum wasn't good enough, they wouldn't call it the minimum.

Q: What do you call the person who finishes last in medical school?

A: Doctor.

Rich Douglas

 

I basically agree with what Bill Dayson posted earlier but I have a slightly different response.
If your friend is looking for the "easiest" RA DL program he can find then he probably shouldn't go the DL route at all. It requires too much intrinsic motivation, too much drive or ambition. Someone who's looking for the "easiest" way probably isn't going to be able to stay the course. I'd suggest that your friend take a few night school courses just to see if he's really interested, can do the work, and understands just how much time/effort is required before he signs himself into a DL degree program.
Jack

 

Re: Re: Re: Easiest school

Look at it this way Rich:

If I take a university class somewhere, it has a syllabus of material to be covered. That material is supposed to be covered at an expected level.

If I take first semester calculus, I expect to learn about limits, continuity, derivatives, applications of derivatives like finding maxima, minima and points of inflection, and a bunch of stuff like that. I expect the problem sets that I'm assigned to be equivalent to what people at other schools are getting.

All this is implicit in the idea of accreditation. The regional accrediting associations are associations of universities that accept each others credits in transfer. They do that because they believe that the other associated schools cover all the expected material at a suitable level.

Here's something from an old catalog I have from a rather well known southern California school:

The Institute has a program with 12 relatively local public junior colleges, whereby a student in one of the junior colleges may follow a certain pattern of courses, maintain specified grades and grade-point averages, receive the recommendations of the junior college science faculty, and be considered for admission to the junior year without the necessity of taking tests.

Which JCs are those? Places like LA City College. What is the "Institute"? California Institute of Technology. I think that if Cal Tech accepts undergraduate transfers on face value from LACC and waives placement testing for them, it indicates that Cal Tech thinks that LA City College calculus classes cover all the expected stuff at the expected level.

So, my response to you is that unless you can find an accredited degree mill, in which case you have serious problems, you are still gonna have to do similar work anywhere you go. An equivalent class is an equivalent class. Obviously you will find better teaching and stronger students some places. But you are still gonna have to cover the material wherever you go.

That suggests to me that it is fundamentally mistaken to look for an "easy" college that lets you skim over part of the material and then gives you credit for having mastered all of it.

What a weak student should be looking for is a college that gives them lots of remedial support and hand-holding as they address the necessary material. Lots of personal attention, faculty contact and student support services.

That makes me wonder if DL is appropriate for weak students. The nature of the DL medium itself calls for students to be self-motivated and able to function well with less attention than is normal.

Finally, I consider it foolish to suggest that weak students who fear that they will be unable to handle a normal university course try portfolios or credit by examination. Challenging a class is for *strong* students who feel that they have already mastered the material, not for weak students who fear that they never can.

 

Actually, this time, I agree with you Rich. I don't know if hairspliting is worth the effort here (PW is more or less PW regardless of address) but I thought one of the (at least) Ca approved programs might be better than something in the unaccredited realm that is completely unevaluated. PW, Ca does appear to have at this time a few management related Ca approved degree programs. I think that if ever there were a person who might be satisfied with a non-RA option, or even one of the better unaccredited options (I am not here including PW, but might well include Cal Coast) it would be a working hairdresser who plans to stay in that profession, and who simply wants a legal college degree. Where it is very true that many might not consider something like PW-CA a valid degree, the state of California does; it is legal, and state approved. Unfortunately our country presents the very strange situation in which one state determines a degree approved in a nearby state to be actually illegal for use in said state. That, of course, is a very bad situation. While many would not be at all comfortable or satisfied with this (CA state approved) level of credibility, many people are. (That they are right or wrong is not my point.) I would certainly say, with Dr. Bear, that something like Andrew Jackson poses a much better compromise between the (assumed or here feared) rigors of an RA program and the (assumed) lack of rigor in an unaccredited degree. At least it is legal in all fifty states and is recognized by agencies representing the government. As to why, Bill, the potential student would not just hunker down at a residential JC and really "go to college," and I very much agree with you here--well, "only the hairdresser knows for sure."

Late,

Craig

 

Many thanks

to all who replied with their ideas for my friend. This weekend I plan to do some investigation of the options and try to come up with something for him.

In reply to BillDayson:

>>I'm going to be blunt here. If your friend is flat out unable to do the work expected in order to earn a bachelors degree, then he simply doesn't deserve one. If he can do the work, then he needs to. Trying to find an accredited degree mill for him is not doing him any service at all.<<

I never said he was unable to do the work expected to earn a bachelor's degree. On the contrary, he believes he is ABLE to do the work necessary to earn the degree. He is simply looking for a program that he can "easily" complete, given his language deficiencies and time limitations.

Have you considered that "easy" to him may be unsurmountable for someone else? Who are you to judge the cutoff point for a college degree?

Further, what is exactly wrong with trying to graduate from an "easy" program? It may not often be spoken (or written in this case), but it happens every day.

I haven't been around here too long so I don't know anything about your educational background. But, its probably safe to say that you do not have a bachelor's degree in physics from MIT or a math degree from Harvard. Correct? And why not? Couldn't get into MIT or Harvard to begin with? Were those subjects too difficult? Now lets assume you went to an "average" college and majored in a subject not considered extremely difficult for most "average" people. Are you any less worthy of an undergraduate degree than the graduate of MIT or Harvard who majored in physics or math? Should the MIT or Harvard "hard" science major thumb his nose at you and not consider you to be a real college graduate. Of course not.

So why do you look down on a guy who found the "easiest" college and "easiest" major (for him)? It is a personal choice and if he can graduate, then he is worthy. Simple as that.

>>Now I'll be less blunt. You need to help your friend to grow more confident and competent (which is the whole point of higher education, isn't it?), otherwise he will just crash and burn again when he seeks a job. If he has problems they need to be overcome, not swept under the rug.<<

I am not a school or career counselor. Nor am I a psychologist trying to help him "grow more confident" and solve his problems.

>>If your friend does have some native ability and intelligence, but is suffering from poor secondary level preparation and perhaps from poor self-esteem, and (this is crucial) if he is willing to make the effort, then he should probably try to ease into higher education.<<

Agreed.

>>I'm going to second Mike Albrecht's suggestion that your friend investigate a local community college. Probably an on-campus program would be preferrable, since they offer more support services. Community colleges are open admissions and tend to specialize in educating people who are poorly prepared.<<

A good suggestion but he wanted to stay out of the classroom due to time limitations (having to drive down to the school, attend class, drive back, etc.) That is why he was seeking a DL program, so he could study at home when he was able.

>>But no "easy degrees". That's just an insult to your friend.<<

I don't think its an insult to him in the least. Coming from a foreign country and then graduating from a college, albeit DL and "easy", calls for him to be proud.

What if you were forced to emigrate to a foreign country when you were 19. Lets say you had to go to China for some reason, had to stay there and were unable to return to any English speaking nation (and English-speaking DLs were unavailable). And lets say you wanted to get a college degree. Should I assume you would apply to the "hardest" college in China? Would seek the most difficult major as well? Would you thumb your nose at a lower tier Chinese school? Or perhaps you might just try to get by and get a degree any way you could.

JB

 

Gee, James:

It seems to me that you posted a question in relatively controversial terms--how one can get an "easy" college degree. Various people have offered you various solutions, ranging from regionally accredited DL options, to getting your (I mean his) feet wet in a JC, which by the way is an exceptionally good path, to unaccredited but CA state approved schools, which offer by far the easiest legal degree solution, to DETC schools which offer a nice compromise between the two other possibilities.

It seems these ideas have been offered in good faith, by well meaning people who know their stuff.

And nobody suggested the sarcastic, but obvious response: Easy degree?--print one up.

Craig

 

Do you live in America?

>>So, my response to you is that unless you can find an accredited degree mill, in which case you have serious problems, you are still gonna have to do similar work anywhere you go. An equivalent class is an equivalent class. Obviously you will find better teaching and stronger students some places. But you are still gonna have to cover the material wherever you go.<<

Ideally, yes, this is what we should have. Practically, speaking, no, nothing could be further from the truth. An equivalent class is NOT an equivalent class. Perhaps I waws mistaken in my last post and you have only attended the best institutions in the US and have no experience in this area. Good or bad, I do first hand experience and can tell you that an "equivalent class is NOT an equivalent class". I attended a top national liberal arts college (according to USN&WR) for 4 years. During two summers I took courses at the local university where my parents' resided. While the classes were supposed to "equivalent" to those offered at my college, in no way were they the same. For one, they were much "easier". The material covered was not the same. The exams were hardly the same in difficulty. For instance, I recall that my German II final exam took 20 minutes to complete. At my college, it would have been 3 hours long and you would need the entire 3 hours to complete it. And this was not at some community college or "bottom of the barrel U." Last time I looked it was ranked in the 2nd tier of national research universities, according to USN&WR.

You need to wake up from the Utopian world you appear to live in.

 

Oh no!

After my last post about my experience taking "easy" classes at the local U., I realized (17 years later) that perhaps I shortchanged myself and insulted myself by taking a couple of "easy" courses at an "easy" school. Further, after receiving my grades, I should have refused them and asked the school not to place these on my record -- as they were too easy and an affront to the BillDaysons of the world.

Gee, I hope administrators from my college don't see this or it they may rescind or revoke my degree.

 

I think Mike Albrecht's advice (community college for an Associate's degree) makes good sense. Relatively easy, he might actually learn things of use in his career . . . and when he tells his friends and relations, "I earned my degree at San Francisco City College" (or whatever it happens to be), they will be suitably impressed and probably not even ask, "And what level of degree was that?"

As for Pacific Western -- I wonder how Pacific Western graduates felt (for instance) when one of the major national TV tabloid programs (I can't recall if it was Inside Edition or Extra) did quite a detailed 'expose' of them 7 or 8 years ago -- showing the empty room that was their Hawaii umcampus, and telling the story of one of their staff members who, they said, got a Master's degree in a week. Pacific Western told me at the time that the TV program got it all wrong, but they never brought legal action.

 

TV exposes are not good.

But an MA in one week--that IS easy!
That would make a two week BA--still pretty easy.

Since the fellow wants to go DL, my final suggestion is to put together fifty or sixty units at a JC that offers telecourses and internet classes; get a few upper division classes at LSU distance education (not far from the Big Easy), then transfer to a DETC school into a small enterprise management degree.

Craig