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Accreditation is one of the most important things to consider when choosing a school. Otherwise, you may be paying for a degree that will get you nothing but headaches when you graduate. I've heard good things about Lincoln College Online too. My friend's brother went there and said they were affordable, the classes were interactive, and the professors were really accessible. Their website says that they are an Accredited Online College so that is always a good sign.
I know he didn't have any trouble when he graduated with his Online Criminal Justice Degree. And he was extra happy because it helped him finally moved out of his parent's house! ROFL!
Go to a well established real university. And take a mix of online courses and on campus courses. That is what I did for my Master's degree and it worked out great. The online courses are the best though. On campus learning has become antiquated and tedious. Online learning is the best because you can call your professor anytime you want, you can repeat the lectures and take as many notes as you want whenever you want, you can discuss everything on a forum, you turn in your assignments by email, no public speaking assignments, you get to avoid politics and discrimination (if you are a minority you will know what I mean.) etc.
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Originally Posted by newtoli
I know several people who finished up their degrees online. Just don't go to an online only school, go to a regular college that offers online courses.
I'll be finally finishing my Associates degree through Suffolk Community College next year. The diploma is the same, even though all the courses are online.
Accreditation is one of the most important things to consider when choosing a school. Otherwise, you may be paying for a degree that will get you nothing but headaches when you graduate. I've heard good things about Lincoln College Online too. My friend's brother went there and said they were affordable, the classes were interactive, and the professors were really accessible. Their website says that they are an Accredited Online College so that is always a good sign.
I know he didn't have any trouble when he graduated with his Online Criminal Justice Degree. And he was extra happy because it helped him finally moved out of his parent's house! ROFL!
Accreditation isnt all it is cracked up to be. I have a family friend who is a college professor that use to go to Washington DC in the summer and review accreditation applications from colleges and universities. She said the guidelines are not all that strict and it is more about money than it is about the quality of the education they provide. She quit doing it because the whole process sickened her.
Even though the accreditation process isn't perfect, it still means something and does help to maintain certain standards. Regardless, if you dont get a degree from a college or university that is accredited, the degree really is seen as junk by employers and other schools. Also, if you are in a field that requires a license, you cannot even take the licenseing test unless you have gone to an acccredited program for that degree (e.g; social work, nursing, accounting are three that come to mind).
I also agree with an earlier poster about Empire State College of the State University of New York. It has many excellent courses and you can go to regional center for "face to face" mentoring, individualized degree planning and/or the Center for Distance Learning for online where they have online mentoring and hundreds of courses from associates to some masters. As well, if you are NYS resident you pay the state tuition.
Online universities are, for the most part, complete garbage. The accreditation process is MINIMAL, so if they can't even give you regional accreditation, it's really telling you how awful they are.
Be wary of a lot of BS accrediting bodies too, like the "National Association of Online Colleges" and other junk like that--I could decide to create an accrediting body tomorrow if I wanted, and run around rubber stamping fly by night operations with unqualified faculty. The only accreditations that matter are the regional ones (western, southern, new england, etc).
+1 to the suggestion that you should pursue an online program managed by a traditional college. An example would be UMUC (the University of Maryland, University College). I'm not promoting them any more than anyone else, just providing them as an example. You can get entire online degrees from the University of Maryland, I don't think you ever need to set foot in the state. And when somebody asks you where you went, or on your resume, you can reference a traditional school they've probably already heard of. Again, lots of colleges do that. I know Florida was heavy in to this for a while, I think Penn State was doing this as well--there are probably too many to list.
But places like Capella, Jones International, St. Leo, etc...all garbage.
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Accreditation
