eLearners Talks to an Advisor
And Gets the Answers You Need to Have!
eLearners:"Su, you’ve advised thousands of adults returning to
college, you have an Ed.D. in Education, you just finished another
Master’s Degree while working full-time (we’ve got a lot of questions
for you about that one later). But where we’d like to start for our
visitors is really at the very beginning for an adult learner. With all
the online degree programs out there now, how can adults figure out
which is the best one for them?"
Su:"Each person is going
to have a slightly different set of criteria that is most important in
his or her life. So the key is, first, understanding what’s most
important to you and then finding the colleges and degree programs that
meet those criteria.
Cost is usually one of the main things
people think about. A wide variation exists in terms of how much
a degree might cost - I've seen cost ranging from $30 per credit to
$700 per credit for a first-year, online English Composition
course. So be sure to check out a number of options.
If
you are thinking about an
associate's or
bachelor's degree and you have
previous credit - from a college, the military, exams, etc. - then
another key issue is how the school might accept that credit in
transfer. Every school has specific policies regarding transfer
credit and every degree program has specific courses it requires.
If you have transfer credit, you might be much closer to finishing a
degree at one school than at another or even between two degrees at the
same school. Why go backwards if you can keep moving forward gaining
more credit?
One of the self-help tools we have at
DegreeSeeker
is a way to compare how your previous credit might transfer to the kind
of degree program you’re interested in at different colleges. You’d be
amazed at how many credits difference there can sometimes be between
one school and the next. Since courses mean time and money, it’s
definitely worth seeing if you can hang on to the credit you’ve already
earned."
About Su
Su Flickinger is the Chief Academic Officer at Learningforce, Inc.,
where she helped create the unique self-help tools for adults returning
to college you’ll find at
www.DegreeSeeker.com Check them out! Su has a
Ed.D. in Education, has advised thousands of prospective adult students
like yourself, and just completed an additional Masters Degree (in
Conflict Resolution) as an adult learner herself! Su and Learningforce,
Inc, are independent and are not affiliated with any particular
colleges or universities.