Penn Foster New Charter University???

Hi. I am VP Enrollment at NewCharter. Great questions.

a) At New Charter you can actually take as many courses as you can successfully complete in a four-month term, so 4 is not the max. And you only enroll per term, so your only financial obligation is tuition for that term.

b) That is kind of you to say that. Thanks.

c) We will accept up to 75% of the credits necessary for a degree. And if you have more credits, or said another way, you've achieve competency in those other courses, the way our model works, is you take a test at the beginning of a course, and it will tell you how well you have already mastered the material. So if you have mastered that material already, you can proceed to the pre-final and then final. What this means is, while we can only accept up to 75% of the credits towards a degree, you can potentially move quickly through those other courses.

Regarding accreditation, UniversityNow actually has a nationally accredited and a regionally accredited school in our system. Our regionally accredited school is Patten University. They too have an online program and will accept up to 75% of the credits needed for a degree. Tuition is different and there are a few other differences in that model. However if regionally accreditation is what you require, we have an affordable, quality pathway for you too.

Lastly, within the posts below there is mention about charges for text books and finals. That is not correct. There are no additional fees for text books, materials, proctored finals or sending transcripts. Hope that helps you in your decision making.

Good luck. We would be honored to have you as a student.

Best

Tim O'Connor
VP Enrollment
UniversityNow

 

I've known about TESC and their aviation FAA license credits given for at least the past 15 years or so. The turn off was always in the way they structure their tuition. I don't like the way they do business. Regents College, now Excelsior, I had sent transcripts and they didn't even honor the full two years I had of an associates degree at that time, including my FAA license. I paid 100 bucks for them to tick me off. I know all about TESC, testing and the works. I was turned off on the idea of sending an initial so many dollars to enroll, and then pay per sh for courses. I think its a ripoff to be frank. I've been this road before. It's not for me, I never got started on it because I never felt right with it. I've viewed it as a trap. Sorry.

 

Though the big three are great ways to gain credit, gain a degree fast, and liberal with transfers, which I am not contesting, its the money factor. Just to enroll for one year as a non-NJ resident at Tesc cost 3,000 dollars, and you haven't even started taking courses. Nor bought books yet. Yes I know about testing out, clep and dantes, but still doesn't get you away from those exhorbanant fees.
At New Charter University, taking only ten more courses for example, means 797 times three equals less than 2,400 bucks, books included and your done!!! No crazy fees, no debt. It's just doing the time. Maybe a little more at Penn Foster. You can clep there too. You can even pay by the month 199dollars. Why go into debt with the big three? Is it all about RA accreditation? I think I can get along fine with DETC, at those rates and still pound out a good business degree.
If anyone ever calls me out on having achieved my degree by an online school, I'll counter with the fact that all my schools to the current have been in brick and mortar schools, plus all RA accredited. Even brick and mortar schools change their names, mabye not as often, but one, FLORIDA JUNIOR COLLEGE has gone from that to Florida Community College of Jacksonville, to now, Florida State College at Jacksonville. (I know this because I got a degree of aa of arts at FJC, now FSCJ)

 

Just pick an exam, find a reasonably recent edition of the recommended text in its description, or its companion website, or a similar open education course or study guide or lecture on iTunesU or, etc., and just start preparing for one exam at a time.

You don't need to enroll anywhere until the day you're ready to take the capstone course (or cornerstone then capstone which I think you could do in one semester at Charter Oak, or not even a capstone course for the TESC BSBA). Don't get too hung up on the Big Three enrolment or evaluation fees when the Big Three are designed such that you can earn 97 to 100% of the credits needed for a degree without paying an enrollment fee.

What's the next subject, say of representative business major subjects above, you're interested in studying?

Find a free content guide with recommended texts, outline, and sample questions from the ECE, DSST, or TECEP site. Find a text free at your library or a past edition from $3 through Amazon. Find a textbook companion website; they often have flashcards, server-graded multiple-choice quizzes and exams, etc. Pay $15 for your first month with InstantCert (20 minus 5; Google for a coupon code) and start clicking through their flashcards. When you're ready, $95 or so to earn 3 sh.

Or you could pay $796 per semester for New Charter.

If you're resistant to lumpy upfront fees, I hear you, but this would seem to favor the former. The Big Three enrollment fees aren't upfront, they're entirely back-end-loaded, if you simply wait to enroll until you're almost ready to graduate. In this light they're very reasonable service charges that let the schools sustain themselves without requiring 30 sh residencies.

 

That sounds good but how do you connect courses to a degree plan? You have to know a degree plan to know which courses to take right? You may be testing out on subjects you don't need, and they won't tell you nuthin until you enroll right? How do you get around that. I like your plan of attack. Where is the list of upper level testing out courses I would need to follow a given plan?

 

New Charter and Patten Univeristy

New Charter is a pretty straight forward affair. I am CEO of UNOW, Parent of New Charter and can vouch. Credit evaluation is free. Tuition is flat at $796 for as many courses as you can take. (4 monthly payments of $199). You can go as slow or as fast as you like. we just had a student complete 8 or 9 courses in a semester and graduate. He worked around the clock to do it, but he didn't pay New Charter anything extra. He paid with his time.

Patten is regionally accredited via WASC has a similar model payment for its online programs - Flat of $1316 per semester (4 monthly payments of $329). It was recently acquired by UNOW.

Best thing to do is call New Charter or Patten admissions counselor and get a course evaluation done to see what courses you have that will apply toward New Charter U and/or Patten Degree.

Good luck either way.

 

Charter Oak has a Master List of Exams, showing semester hours, which count towards upper-level or liberal arts requirements, and which count to which gen ed requirements.

Excelsior has a Student Guide to Credit By Examination at Excelsior College (2011 edition).

For TESC, degreeplanners.com maintains a helpful unofficial guide [pdf]. TESC has a distinctive practice of bumping courses that were originally upper- or lower-level around between the levels. This seems to consist of bumping up much more often than bumping down. You might be surprised how much upper-level credit you'd be credited with at TESC. (But no guarantees!)

Changes to exam programs and to school policies sometimes outpace these three guides – Excelsior's ECE released four new business exams this month. It's usually easy to read changes in.

There's a great peer support community here, at degreeforum, etc.

Also, in general, all three of the schools are not bad, and are sometimes very good, about answering even specific questions from prospective students. They probably won't sit down and evaluate all your credits against a degree plan and identify exams to fill in every gap. Reasonably specific, targeted questions can generally get answered well and promptly.

 

Just a though, California Coast University has a BS in Business, they will transfer up to 90 credits, you can contract your tuition it may be a bit over your budget or about the same as Penn Foster, but once you have a degree plan and the amount of tuition, that would be how much you will be pay until paid in full, they have 3 payment plans, two which are very popular, $500 down and $100 a month until pay, so you won't have to worry about tuition increases. Second is $300 down and $125 a month until you finish. The books can be rented for $25 for 120 days or you can get very cheap second hand in Amazon. Finally, they are DETC accredited and they are self pace. This way you won't be in the debt. Regards.

 

Thanks for that info on CCU however, why rent books from your school when I can get them free elsewhere? I can do PF for 1 dollar down. I can do NCU for 199 per month. Is California Coast University some better college than PF or NCU?

 

My daughter has an AA from Charter Oak in General Studies. We didn't enroll in Charter Oak until near the end of her studies. We used CLEP/DSST, courses at Clovis Community College and BYU Independent Study for the degree. We used older edition textbooks, YouTube, etc.

Based on the info you provided, I would invest $100 and apply to Excelsior College. Excelsior is the least expensive of the Big 3. When you apply to Excelsior, tell them you are interested in an evaluation for one of their business degrees, as well as the Bachelor of Science in Liberal Studies (BSLS):

Excelsior College | Program Details

So, why the BSLS?

You may be very close to earning a Bachelors Degree - and then you could turn around, and use the time and money you would have invested to finish a bachelors degree...and earn an MBA.

There are several online MBA's available for under 10K, many from state universities. Check out GetEducated.com | Review, Rate, Rank & Compare Online Colleges & Degrees.

I'll also second the advice to check out CLEP Forum - CLEP Study - CLEP Testing - Study Guide and Strategies, post a question on their "Big 3" board. Good luck!

 

We can only show you the door, you will have to make your own decisions base on the information provided. Wish you best of luck in you search for the correct program that will meet your current and future needs.

 

Every college is going to have its own way of charging for "extras" outside of tuition. CCU simply finds that renting textbooks is a better way for their organization and their students to handle that expense.

California Coast is reputed to have a good program that is also (largely) self-paced and inexpensive. They are NA, though, so their degrees will serve you to about the same extent as New Charter's.

 

So far from everything I gather, its a toss up between PF and NCU. I'm leaning more towards NCU, however, certain things there aren't too clear either. If I pay for a TERM as they call it, at NCU, its around 4 courses or depending on how much you can take in 4 months. I'm assuming I can pound out maximum 3 and that may be pushing it. Then, I may want to ease off until I'm ready to pay for another term. I see that they have some kind of thing that if you want to take a break, they make you take some form of leave of absense. Does this apply to even if you paid for the term in full?

 

The thread is interesting. Everyone recommending the big three but no analysis of the cost compare to other schools. I don't find them very cheap to be honest.

The other school that is very affordable and flexible is Western Governors University (Online University | Online Degree Programs, Accredited Bachelor's and Master's) plus they are RA as well.

 

I don't have the time to do a detailed cost analysis or to look up current tuition for the big 3, but it works out roughly like this:

You spend $1500 or so per year to be enrolled (probably higher). You submit as many courses for credit as you can during that period that you've completed-- via CLEP or what-have-you. Let's say you complete only 4 courses by CLEP in that year-- rare by most standards-- You'll have earned 12 units for $400. That's $1900 for 12 units. If you compare local private B&Ms charging $325 per credit hour, the same number of credits would cost you $3900. The Big 3 are still really good deals, especially considering two of them are state schools. Yes, it's hard to beat WGU, but WGU is not for everyone, and still doesn't quite have the same reputation as your average state school (even though it might get there pretty quickly).

 

It certainly does, Steve. No argument there. But whether one's progress is going to be THAT slow or not -- one can save thousands by the simple strategy NOT ENROLLING with the Big 3 until one has most - or nearly all - of the credits in place.

At that slow pace (~12 credits a year) one could save costs of up to $15,000 on a Bachelor's degree by waiting to enrol and credit-bank. This is about the only instance of "work slowly - save big" I can think of. Usually, the reverse applies.

Of course, on the scenic route, as the years go by, and by, and by...one has to make sure that time limitations imposed by the Big 3 don't apply -- making some of the first-earned credits too old to accept.

Johann

 

I'm not sure about all this "Big 3" stuff and it sounds like everyone here knows a LOT more about this then me. The one thing I can tell you for SURE is you DO NOT want to even dream of attending Penn Foster. It is the biggest cluster F##K of a "school" you could imagine. They will sweet talk your ear off and tell you whatever you want to hear to get you enrolled. The second they have that enrollment agreement signed you don't exist. HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE experience and I wish someone would have shared this with me the way I am with you. You've been warned. Don't even think about complaining if you enroll and discover I'm 110% right.

 

BTW you will be lucky to get your first book inside a month. They say it's work at your own pace but as slow as they send stuff it ends up taking 6 months longer then it should to complete a semester. I'm not saying go with the other one cause I've never heard of them but their system sounds a lot more straight forward. Penn Foster is refusing to accept a single credit from my previous ACE approved coursework but they will only tell you that after your enrolled and a few months in. RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!