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Experts estimate the average college graduate will leave school after four years carrying more than $30,000 in debt, a figure that prompted Southern New Hampshire University to offer a much different price point- a $10,000 Bachelor of Arts degree through the school's new College for America.
The program, created as a partnership with employers, is designed specifically for working people, with real life experience who, for one reason or another, never got a college degree. The curriculum is competency based, self-paced and student work is submitted largely online.
It sounds like a great idea. I like the idea that it's self-paced because that means people can do it on their own time. I hope they're is a time limit.
ETA: This was in the comments section:
"We don't need all these college professors who make a presentation and then assign homework. Have THE best educators put an online course together. the students can watch it at the time best suited for them rather than falling asleep in class, let the students pick the best instructors for the field they want whether it's a Harvard instructor at $100 per semester or a community college for $10 per semester. A thousand students could make an instructor every wealthy and they probably won't have to do the daily grind to work everyday
You don't need to buy hard cover books, you don't need a dorm room, you can always ask questions online. Yes it does take away the social interaction on one side but it also takes away the pressure of fitting in or getting in with the wrong crowd and how much money do I have to eat today.
Rosetta Stone on teaching foreign languages is a perfect example, do they need to go to college to learn a language? NO
Do they need to go to a college to take tests, YES, somewhere there is supervision that they are not Goggling [sic] answers.
It's not for all college courses, medical of course not but liberal arts why not?"
1. It's Southern New Hampshire University .
2. It's acting more like a training program than a college program.
I don't see this as a good thing. It's sole purpose is to allow people to satisfy the "degree required" criteria for a job. A Band-Aid to the real problem.
Online education can be helpful, even invaluable for older, working people, or those with families who can't drop everything for four expensive years on campus. But IMHO it will never be good as a full replacement for classroom education.
What someone gains from the convenience of it all doesn't make up from the face-to-face education of being in a classroom and teacher, where you can be put on the spot, called on unexpectedly, schmooze later with classmates, read a professor's tone and body language in person...or yes, just fall asleep in the back row and then learn to suffer the consequences. After class discussions, office hours, midnight bull sessions about teachers--all that stuff that one could call the "real" education that stays with you long after you've forgotten what was on the syllabus--you just can't get online, no matter how sophisticated the video conferencing or Skyping or IMs or whatever.
When possible, I always recommend a community college -- and that experience, I know,can be wildly variable -- to working people who want a degree. Some online courses are indeed, very good. I don't argue that. And like I say, some people just can't do it any other way. But except in narrow instances, the best overall education cannot be achieved by yourself. Getting smart just isn't something you do in solitude with a computer and an Internet connection. Even the auto-didacts I've known seek out other people in some way to talk about what they've read. You need other people for a good education. Unless you're solely interested in a credential to move up the pay scale, you just do.
1. It's Southern New Hampshire University .
2. It's acting more like a training program than a college program.
I don't see this as a good thing. It's sole purpose is to allow people to satisfy the "degree required" criteria for a job. A Band-Aid to the real problem.
It's just paying less for equal amounts of uselessness.
Online education can be helpful, even invaluable for older, working people, or those with families who can't drop everything for four expensive years on campus. But IMHO it will never be good as a full replacement for classroom education.
What someone gains from the convenience of it all doesn't make up from the face-to-face education of being in a classroom and teacher, where you can be put on the spot, called on unexpectedly, schmooze later with classmates, read a professor's tone and body language in person...or yes, just fall asleep in the back row and then learn to suffer the consequences. After class discussions, office hours, midnight bull sessions about teachers--all that stuff that one could call the "real" education that stays with you long after you've forgotten what was on the syllabus--you just can't get online, no matter how sophisticated the video conferencing or Skyping or IMs or whatever.
When possible, I always recommend a community college -- and that experience, I know,can be wildly variable -- to working people who want a degree. Some online courses are indeed, very good. I don't argue that. And like I say, some people just can't do it any other way. But except in narrow instances, the best overall education cannot be achieved by yourself. Getting smart just isn't something you do in solitude with a computer and an Internet connection. Even the auto-didacts I've known seek out other people in some way to talk about what they've read. You need other people for a good education. Unless you're solely interested in a credential to move up the pay scale, you just do.
I agree it will never be as good - especially a program like this which doesn't really teach so much as let people clep out of courses (there aren't many details, but that's what it looks like to me). I teach in a college, and no self-paced online course without any instruction could ever equal what I do. Not even a tenth of it.
That's lovely and all, but at my accredited State Uni my undergrad only cost me around 12k. The reason the average student debt figures are so hard to understand is because they are skewed by several factors. Some people raise the average by attending private Unis. Some raise the average by using loan debt to fund their housing and COL which often costs twice what the tuition costs. Etc. If you just look at RAW TUITION costs from a State Uni they aren't actually that high.
Most state universities these days charge $6k-10k per year. If you qualify for scholarships and grants, then that can reduce the costs, but hardly any state university is going to cost less than $24k.
State universities in Florida and Texas have started creating $10k degrees, but these rely heavily on community college credits and only pertain to a very limited number of degree programs.
SNHU is able to offer a $10k degree because of its College for America program, which is not a program that depends on CLEP. Only people who work for a company that is a partner can enroll in the College for America program.
On another forum, I advise people on how to complete a degree from a state college for less than $5k. Many people who don't know very much about higher education and adult learning may not think this method is as good as being in a butt-in-seat program, but I know many people who have done this (as far as the method, their degrees were closer to $10k than $5k) and have gotten into competitive graduate programs.
Last edited by L210; 09-10-2014 at 11:32 AM..
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