you’ve got a few college credits you need a degree to go and make a career change and it’s time to go back to college but the hardest part of going back to college is knowing.
what college to go back to that or chemistry i hate chemistry so i’ve researched every single online american college and i have found the best ones for busy adults who want to go back to college quickly and inexpensively number five is charter oak state college charter oak is historically one of the most hackable and transfer adult learner friendly schools out there they’ve been helping adults graduate college quickly and inexpensively for years .
How do they do this well they’re very transfer friendly and they love alternative credit like clep and dsst and uxl exams and even some sophia and straighterline they even have prior learning assessment at their school where you can get credit for things that you already know they have an awesome degree program called general studies about two-thirds of it is either gen ed’s or free elective so it’s really easy to transfer credits or bring alternative credits like clap and dsst into it .
so that you can graduate quickly and you know what even though it’s fifth on this list charter oak is best at one thing among all of the colleges that i’m going to talk about today and that’s at graduating students they have a 51 graduation rate the online college graduation rate average like that industry is somewhere south of 40 percent but what brings charter oak down on the list well first of all they charge 419 dollars per credit hour which is kind of a lot for online school and while they accept some sophie and straighter line they don’t accept a ton because of all of this you can still graduate from charter oak within a year but it is going to cost you around like sixteen thousand dollars.
so it’s a pretty good school tied for fourth on my list are liberty university online and southern new hampshire university these two schools are very similar like all schools on this list neither is a for-profit and both are regionally accredited both of which things are pretty important both schools love transfer credit and both of them have very flexible degrees to choose from so like with snhu their general studies degree is is very very flexible and with liberty university their interdisciplinary studies degree is really really good because of the flexibility of these degrees.
it’s really easy to transfer credit into them or use a lot of clap sofia dsst uxl stuff like that to be able to you know hack and earn some of those credits outside of the classroom in fact those degree programs are so flexible and the schools both only have a 30 credit residency program which is fairly standard for the schools we’re talking about today because of that you could potentially hack 75 of each degree even better though both schools give a lot of credit for prior life experience especially military experience.
so if you go to one of these schools like with charter oak you might end up you know showing up and just having college credit waiting for you i mean there’s usually like a vetting process but i mean you get what i mean plus both schools are among the cheapest online colleges out there though one is cheaper than the other luo charges 390 dollars per credit hour but if you go through straighter line you can bring that down by 15 to about 331 and then snhu is hands down one of the cheapest online schools i’ve seen with just a flat price of 320 per credit hour .
because you take a minimum of 30 credit hours through their school and their courses you know if you hack it right and bring enough transfer credits and clep credits and things like that i mean you’re looking at under fifteen thousand dollars for either one of these schools now the reason that these two schools aren’t higher on my list is that they both have really bad graduation rates luos is at 31 and snhu is at 37 and these low rates aren’t because these schools are so challenging or difficult sometimes a low graduation rate means that a school has unnecessary blocks to graduation or like kind of useless difficulties sometimes it means.
that they don’t provide all of the support that they could to students who struggle with learning but in this case i would say it’s probably a lot to do with the fact that they have very very open admissions rates which means that they accept a ton of students who apply and not all of those students are ready for college so they start the classes realize i’m way in over my head and they quit and drop out whatever the case about two-thirds of students who go to these two schools don’t graduate and end up with more student debt or less money than they started out with at the same time though those stats don’t predict your success.
if you can follow instructions you have a good work ethic and you have the free time to be able to take the courses i’m not even worried about you you’re gonna be fine so for the right student these two programs are really really good at number three we have excelsior college excelsior college is a really dynamic school and there is a lot of reason for them to be on this list .
i mean first like the fairly obvious they accept a lot of alternative credit like clap and sofia and you know they offer credit to you for experiences that you have in life but they’re particularly cool for two unique reasons first off they advertise that only seven credits of every degree plan has to be completed through their school no other school offers this or advertises it i mean that means that you could put a ton of sofia and clap and all sorts of like you know hacking options into this and end up taking like three classes that’s insane and the second reason they’re .
so cool is because they basically designed their own clep exams called the uxl exams there are about 58 of these exams and you know they’re good because almost every other single school on this list that we’re talking about today accepts those uxl exams for credit just as if though they were clep exams now some of those schools don’t accept every single uxl exam but excelsior does so if you go to excelsior there are more options for ways to hack a degree than at any other school because of this you can test out of almost an entire degree program which makes excelsior incredibly affordable like we’re talking under seven thousand dollars .
if you play your cards right but why is excel so you’re not higher on this list well first it’s because their graduation rate is pretty low at 34 percent and second because they charge 510 dollars per credit hour which is a lot for an online school but if you’re only having to take seven credit hours maybe it’s not so bad there are two schools that tie for second place the first one is university of maine at presque isle and the second is western governor’s university governors is one of the biggest online college programs in the entire world right now.
University of maine presque isle is almost completely unknown but they both offer something really really cool and that is subscription-based competency model learning basically what that means is that you sign up and pay a flat dollar amount for a certain portion of time and then you can take as many courses as you can make it through they give you the course material the videos the textbooks whatever for that course you go through it and as soon as you feel ready you take the final test or project or essay or whatever and.
if you do well enough they say congrats you passed you get the college credit move on to the next one like guys that’s an amazing system that’s the way learning should be not hey you have to sit in a class for 16 weeks and prove that you learned something by like sitting there and listening for a certain amount of time no you should have to prove that you know the skill and once you know the skill then you can move on like that’s the way .
it should work both schools are very inexpensive presque isle charges fourteen hundred dollars for eight weeks and governor’s costs thirty seven hundred dollars for six months so technically governors is cheaper per week because you basically buy in bulk but if you only need like one or two classes through the school or you think you can do them super super fast then technically presque isle is going to end up being a little bit cheaper between the two presque isle seems to be a little bit more alternative clep dsst sophia straighterline credit friendly western governor’s process is a little bit more on a case-by-case basis where they don’t share their equivalency.
so much online and you have to submit your transcripts to them and then they’ll let you know what they accept so it’s a little bit more mysterious and a little bit riskier but they are still going to accept a lot of that kind of credit the other big benefit for presque isle is that they have one of the single most hackable degrees that i have ever seen i mean sure you still have to do the 30 credit residency requirement of courses through their school but like everything else can be tested out of so easily there’s so much flexibility so much choice in what credit you want to apply where and if you’re trying to knock out 30 credits i was talking to the dean of that program and she said that some students will knock out 15 credits in an eight week term which means you’re only paying for two terms which means that your overall price is coming in somewhere around like five or six thousand dollars for a degree governors .
on the other hand has a very rigid system and very specific courses they want you to take with them it’s basically their way or the highway but their way is really good if you went at an average college student pace you’d graduate from western governors in about three years for around 22 000 but with a little bit of effort some alternative credit and you know some work ethic you could pretty easily cut that down to like nine thousand dollars in one year it’s just going to be a lot harder to know exactly which alternative credits are going to come in is which courses the other big plus for western governors is that they graduate 47 of their students and from all i’ve seen they have a pretty hands-on advising process so western governors is a really really good school for you if you don’t want to do like a traditional hacking of college which i realize is an oxymoron .
but if you really want to hack school and go through it really fast really inexpensively presque isle is one of the best that i’ve seen all right let’s hold up for a sec before i reveal number one a caveat i need to give is that hacking college or going to college is about more than which college is the best what it’s really about is finding a college that will help you accomplish your goals and that’s why i always you know coach my people to backwards plan like where do i want to be once i graduate college and then we ask the question which college will help me get there otherwise who cares if you have a college degree if it’s the wrong major or doesn’t have the right courses you have to go to a school that’s going to help you get to where you want to go knowing where you need to be is vital before you can take the first steps if a coaching consultation with me is something you’d be interested in .
i would be happy to help my information is in the description and i can help you save tens of thousands of dollars years of your life so that you can build a career that you love the number one best online college for busy adults is thomas edison state university and there are so many reasons first off they accept so much transfer credit and alternative credit clap dsst uxl exams types of credit i’ve never even heard of before so many different options second they have one of the highest graduation rates on this list at 46 percent which is pretty awesome.
third they have several very flexible degree programs at least one or two where you can test out of at at least 90 credit hours and fourth while they do like most of the schools on this list have a 30 credit residency requirement of courses that you have to take through the school they let you do it in a unique way because like excelsior they homemade their own sort of version of clep exams called the tcps and that 30 credit hour requirement you can fill up with tsep exams .
so it’s basically like taking clep exams to fill up that 30 credit requirement there are about nine credit hours in any degree program that you can’t really test out of but that means that in some of the degree programs there are only nine credit hours you have to actually take courses in and their liberal studies degree program is one of the best ones to make this happen with now the one negative about thomas edison is that they are slightly on the more expensive side for out of state students they charge 519 per credit hour which yes is a lot so for nine credit hours that’s 4 700 but .
if you pay the flat fee for a semester the flat semester rate is 4 639 so if you take 12 credits in a semester or 15 and you use that semester fee all of a sudden the price gets a lot better and all in all the whole degree comes out to graduating for under eight thousand dollars easily within a year so just to make sure that nobody thinks i’m biased because you know.
i went there which let’s be honest i wouldn’t go to the second best school would i like you can trust me thomas edison is really good i know because i’ve been there .
so the reason that tsu is at the top of this list is that they graduate students better than most of these schools they’re cheaper than most of these schools they’re more transfer friendly than most of these schools they have a more flexible degree program than most of these schools and they let you test out of the 30 credit hour residency requirement all of that together means that thomas edison is an incredible school for busy adults looking to go back to college .
now i think that thomas edison is the number one school but any one of these might actually be the number one school for you based on your needs and what you’re looking for so review them all do your research and if you want some help picking out one or putting together a personalized step-by-step plan to graduation i’d be happy to help happy hacking
