Hello, overseas online degree issue

Hello everyone, my name's Alex as you can see. I recently moved overseas and was very close to completing my degree at a Texas university. I have 114 credits with a 3.5 GPA but simply don't see a possibility for me to return to complete the remaining 18 credits for my degree(my uni doesn't offer online classes). I also changed majors once.

I want to teach English overseas. For this I need a bachelor's degree. Any bachelor's degree.

I would prefer to transfer all my credits to some American/Canadian/ whatever universitythat has a 90 credit bachelor's degree and that lets you transfer them all in. (We're talking general studies here)

If not then the closest thing to it and take some silly online classes to complete my "education" at their institution.

Basically I want an accredited degree (whatever that means in different parts of the English speaking world) as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible.

I put a lot of work into my bachelor's in Texas but life led me on another path apparently, so I'm reaching out for advice on what I can do now. Returning to my uni is not an option.

 

It's not clear why you cannot finish your requirements at another school and transfer them back to your original university. You're leaving out some salient information that could really affect what information and advice is to be offered.

It is not clear how "any bachelor's" will do for what you want.

There are no 90-credit bachelor's programs in the U.S.

If you transfer to another U.S. school, expect to have to do a minimum of 30 semester hours to finish your degree. (Big 3 excepted, natch.) Probably a lot more to meet the receiving school's specific requirements.

Please don't call those classes "silly." If they were silly you'd be done by now, right? And when you put "education" in quote marks, it makes it clear that your cynicism is way out in front of your sense-making.

Ah, cheap and fast. You have that already, since you're not concerned about "good."

Why isn't returning to your university not an option? (Relevant, as I led off with, since many reasons that cause this condition will also prevent you from transferring your credits elsewhere.)

Look at:

www.excelsior.edu
www.tesc.edu
www.cosc.edu

Good luck.

 

The Texas state university system has one of the biggest sets of DL offerings in the country. There's at least some chance that you could find the courses you need right there at home and transfer them into your original program.

 

The Big3, which Rich linked above are good places to finish an interrupted degree. One problem you might face is that most schools will only accept up to 90 credits from a single source. In addition, most schools will have a residency requirement of anywhere from 15 to 60 credits. I'd recommend looking over the degree offerings at each of the Big3 and see if any of them match up well with the courses you've taken. The application fees are so reasonable you could even go ahead and apply and send your transcripts and see exactly what courses would apply.

I also think contacting your old uni and seeing if you can transfer credit in and finish your degree is a good idea.

 

Athabasca University has a BGS program with 0 residency and 90 credits

Undergraduate Calendar :

 

Not sure why you couldn't just give a non-condescending answer like the rest of the people on here. But thanks, I guess.

 

Best answer so far. Thank you.

People I didn't come on here to ask you to change me into who you think I should be. I am cynical about the US Education system, and western education in general. That's another discussion. I'm just seeking answers from those that know more than me about a particular topic.

Again, thank you to all that gave good answers.

 

Well, this is turning out well.

Just a quick comment on:

There are a good number of fields and other opportunities where a bachelor's degree is the requirement. Field of study? No one cares. In fact, outside of engineering and accounting, my company is one of those employers who doesn't really place much emphasis on the major area of study at the undergraduate level. We have marketing people with degrees in non-marketing things. We have a pretty hefty concentration of salespeople who have degrees in non-business topics (degrees in secondary education are well represented there, in fact).

A degree is needed to apply for OCS and the major doesn't typically play into things for unrestricted line officers. A degree is needed to get into a program like Teach for America or Teach for NYC and, again, they don't seem to care what the major is (though Teach NYC is often hard pressed to find people with STEM degrees who can teach math and science). And some people just need to check a box because they've hit a ceiling and "a" bachelor's is necessary.

But, I think everyone has covered everything else pretty well.

1. Big 3
2. Athabasca
3. Look into completing the courses elsewhere and transferring them back to your old school and finishing up there

The only thing I'll add is that you might consider also pursuing your studies in your new country. Will all of your Texas credits transfer? Probably not. But you may find opportunities to teach through the connections you make there that you can take advantage of more immediately such as private tutoring engagements. Years ago I had an acquaintance who was working while traveling using Language Spirit where you tutored people online. I don't think LS is still around but maybe there are things that replaced it that could get you working right away while you fully weigh your options. Getting paid in USD might also prove a bit more profitable than relying on local language schools. Assuming, of course, that these websites weren't all put out of business by Duolingo.

 

It wasn't condescending. It was responsive. You're welcome.

(Still waiting to hear why you cannot finish at your school. This is extremely relevant to the kind of feedback you will get. People don't like giving advice made useless because a poster isn't forthright. Your defensive reaction makes things more so.)

 

A word on OCS: college major often matters in the selection process. This goes for ROTC, too. Having gone through one and taught (and recruited) for the other, I've seen this first hand.

 

Different branches have different priorities and different methods for selections. Engineers, Nurses, Physicians, Lawyers and Chaplains receive direct commissions and so they don't go through OCS at all.

Business majors are attractive to the supply corps. For unrestricted line officers (the most common pathway for a Navy OCS candidate) , the pool is much more open. History was a very common degree in this area. Granted, the Navy also loves recruiting people with engineering degrees in fields that don't justify a direct commission to the civil engineer corps (they place caps on how many mech and electrical engineers they'll take, for example). So yes, they can be attractive in the selection process but it's a situation where a handful of degrees are attractive (some engineering, accounting etc) versus a very large number of degrees where major doesn't matter.

That's true. And I spent a significant portion of my four years pushing through applications to these programs and seeing the outcomes. Both of us have experience in this realm though from different perspectives (including time period and branch differences).

There's also a lot more nuance than "Accounting majors have an easier time getting into OCS." The selection process differs when dealing with civilians who are applying directly to OCS versus enlisted personnel who are applying. For the latter, the major is likely to take a backseat because there are numerous other points upon which a person can be evaluated such as their performance evaluations, PFA results, awards and commendations, military specific training etc.

There is a general expectation that an E-6 with 10 years of service is going to complete OCS. At a minimum, they've already adapted to military culture. Taking a 22 year old fresh out of college into OCS is a bit riskier.

So if a person says "I just need a degree in whatever because I want to be an officer" then I'd say that's a perfectly fine attitude to have. If they are already on active duty then there are many more factors at play that are likely to hold them back or cause their application to advance than college major; at least, for the Navy and as recently as 2005. Because you have a significantly better shot at becoming an officer with 100% of a BALS than 75% of a BSBA or a BEng.

And also, I'd say that major seems to matter a bit more for Limited Duty Officer selections but that's a whole different world and, even back to 2005, if you didn't have a Masters you likely weren't even making the short list.

 

Like I said, I speak from first-hand experience.

There's no reason to believe NPS (non-prior service) candidates do better at OCS. There is a great deal of "un-learning" NCOs and petty officers must do to make the transition to officership. Again, I speak from my experience making that transition myself--I was a staff sergeant when I was sent to officer training school--and my four years training hundreds of cadets in ROTC, many of them with prior enlisted service. And it's not just about completing the course; it's also about performing well in it.

Taking a degree in "whatever" just to get selected as an officer candidate might work in some services. It does not in the Air Force.

The concept of "limited duty officer" is not universal. The Air Force, for example, doesn't have them, nor does the Army. All of their successful prior-service officer candidates become line officers with no distinction between them and their NPS counterparts.

 

Interesting. I had no idea that any school in the U.S. offered a non-professional 3-yr Bachelor's degree. I know there are programs that have a 3-yr completion time, but the work is usually stated as equivalent to 4-yrs.

 

Well Rich, I'm glad you had the experience. There is no reason to believe that a non-prior service candidate does better at OCS (I never said anything to that effect). But the Navy, justly or otherwise, tends to feel that prior service candidates DO perform better as officers. That's the reason they created STA-21 (formerly the Seaman to Admiral Program) where enlisted personnel receive their full time pay and benefits and are billeted to a university to complete a bachelor's degree full-time. They train with the ROTC candidates and upon completion of their program are commissioned. In the original incarnation, they trained with ROTC and went to OCS at the completion of the degree.

So, just to clarify, your experiences from, what was it, 30 years ago are enough to convince you that you have a good handle on the current needs and trends of the Air Force? I had no idea that the USAF was so static.

The Air Force also eliminated their Warrant Officer program. The Army allows for people to apply directly to their Warrant program (or did in early 2000, at least) to become helicopter pilots with no prior service. To become a Warrant Officer in the Navy you have to have at least 12 years of service and be an E-7 (minimum).

In the Navy, you can advance all the way to E-6 without a promotion board. You just take the written exam and advance if you score higher than the multiple. My understanding is that, at least the Army and the Marines, hold promotion boards at much lower ranks (I believe E-5 for the Army and E-4 for the USMC as these are the lowest NCO grades in these branches). While we're on the subject, the USAF and Army consider you an NCO at E-5 (exception to this being the fairly rare contemporary Army Corporal). In the USMC and Navy you have NCO, or Petty Officer, authority at E-4.

The Navy "frocks" for enlisted promotions. When I made E-4 and E-5 I was "frocked." I was authorized to wear the higher rank insignia and exercise that authority even though my pay remained the same for nearly 9 months. That also means that had I received an Article 15 NJP (or, as we called it "Captain's Mast") and been busted down one paygrade my rank would have dropped twice because I was an E-4 wearing E-5 insignia and thus reduction to the next inferior paygrade would mean I became an E-3. I am unaware of any other branch doing this.

My point is that there is very little by way of universal concepts that hold true across all branches. The ranks and paygrades are aligned according to a common scale. An enlisted Marine is required to salute a commissioned Air Force Officer. But the manner in which those ranks are administered is pretty drastically different across all branches. And all branches have experienced quite a bit of change over the past decade alone. While I will freely speak from my own experience I will also readily admit that the Navy has changed drastically since I left.

The bulk of fresh out of OCS NPS officers I encountered, and let's remember that every single new Officer to my command had to come to my desk to check in, had degrees in the humanities. This wasn't a mistake. Recruiters targeted young people with few employment prospects. When reality finds you standing just off-campus with a degree in Art History and no idea where to go, there's Petty Officer So-and-so willing to show you a better life. The types of degrees you saw coming out of ROTC were largely technical. LDOs tended to earn degrees in Business Administration regardless of their field.

I can also tell you that it was very rare for a junior enlisted person to have a bachelor's degree. If you walked into a recruiter's office, again at least during the time that I served, and said you had a bachelor's you were automatically sent to the Officer recruiter (who maintained a separate office from the guys who sit in the mall). But when I talk to people who served in the Army and AF during the same time they indicate that it was actually fairly common for enlisted personnel to have undergrad degrees.

The branches are different. The rank administration is different. And, as much as you might not like to admit it, the Air Force is very different from the time you retired and certainly very different from the time you went through OCS.

So I respect your anecdote. I'm simply asking you to respect mine. I acknowledge the limits of my experience and their applicability to contemporary issues. I'm simply asking you to do the same with regards to your own experience.

 

You're still correct. Athabasca is Canadian.

 

Totally forgot about it at the time. However, after I posted that I found Delta College (NY, SUNY system) and The National Graduate School of Quality Management (MA) both have sub-120 credit Bachelor's degree programs. Delta has a 99-credit Bachelor and NGS has a 90-credit one. Both regionally accredited. The NGS one is most notable in that it can be completed with just 10 courses in 1 year.

I doubt there are a lot, but I'm interested to know how many more are out there.

 

I recommend the Excelsior BS in liberal studies - it requires 120 semester units; so if all 114 of your units are accepted then you only need 6 more units. Memory says you have to take three mandatory Excelsior credits and the other three might be electives.
https://my.excelsior.edu/documents/78666/292073/SLA+BS+Liberal+Arts/c48f36ae-653b-48a5-bb7b-95b19936b2c3


The other big three colleges have similar programs.

 

The NGS Bachelor's degree is not a 90 credit degree. From the website:

What NGS offers is a bridge program intended for people who already possess an associate's degree (or comparable coursework). If you don't have the required credits then they require you to get them elsewhere. Again, from the website:

So, you are required to have 60 credits coming in. They will transfer in a maximum of 75 credited from an "approved college." You can get up to 30 credits from work experience.

Don't get me wrong it's a very nice bridge program and it looks very flexible. But you still need to hit 120 to get the degree.