Central Texas College is awesome!

[sanantone]

I've already met the residency requirements for an associates in CJ at the Alamo Colleges, but I'm no longer interested in that degree. My plan is to use general education courses to fulfill the residency requirements at the Alamo Colleges and CTC. That way, I could get as many degrees as I want without taking anymore courses with them because most degrees have several gen ed requirements in common: Texas or U.S. History I and II, American Government I and II or Federal and State government, English Comp I and II, College Algebra or higher, Speech, an extra social or behavioral science, and humanities. With CTC accepting CLEP and the Alamo Colleges having a partnership with LearningCounts, I could be like that guy with umpteen million associate's degrees.

[clep3705]

You have to have 18 unique hours in residence (online courses count) per associate's degree in Texas. If you have 35 hours in residence and 200 hours transferred in or from CBE, you get one associate's degree.

[sanantone]

Is there a law on that? The Alamo Colleges and CTC say that 25% of the degree must be earned in residence. Most degree programs are 60-63 credits meaning that they would only require 15-18 credits in residence. The residence requirements have to be met at that college; they can't be earned at any Texas college. I did find some additional information on earning a second degree at CTC.

A person may initially be awarded one degree from Central Texas College. If you wish to be awarded a
second degree, satisfy all requirements for the second
degree, including at least 12 additional semester
hours of coursework in residence at Central Texas College which were not applied toward the first degree.
The Associate in General Studies degree may not
be awarded more than once to any student.

http://www.ctcd.edu/sacs1/Unduplicated%2...chprep.pdf

[sanantone]

I cannot find the second degree requirements for the Alamo Colleges anywhere, so I'll call them tomorrow. I did, however, find out that the residency requirements have to be completed at the college granting the degree. For example, you can't get an associates at San Antonio college if you only completed 9 credits there and completed the rest at the other Alamo Colleges. I should have known this because, with the exception of Northeast Lakeview being attached to San Antonio College until it becomes separately accredited, each Alamo College has its own accreditation. Under SACS rules, 25% of the degree has to be earned at the degree-granting college. The Alamo Colleges are treated as separate institutions. A few years ago, district leadership was thinking about putting the whole system under the same accreditation, but communities protested because they thought the campuses would lose their unique qualities.

There's another interesting program they have. It's called the Reverse Transfer Degree. If the associate's degree is supposed to be in the same subject, I don't know why someone would want one if they already have a bachelor's degrees.

Students who transfer from the Alamo Colleges to another Texas college or university, may qualify for an Associate’s Degree. The Reverse Transfer Degree Program is designed for students who have accumulated 25% of the Associate degree (usually 15 credit college-level credit hours) at one of the Alamo Colleges and who have subsequently completed the Alamo Colleges degree requirements at the transfer institution. Earned hours must include the courses required by the Texas Higher Education Act as set forth in Subchapter F, sections 51.301 and 51.302 (six [6] semester hours in U.S./Texas government and six [6] hours in U.S./Texas history).

Students seeking the Reverse Transfer Degree must:

submit a reverse transfer degree application for graduation to the Alamo Colleges
submit an official transcript from a public Texas college or university indicating the award of a baccalaureate degree

I don't see any reason for this program. Students can already transfer the core curriculum from one public, Texas college to another and the 15-credit residency requirement is there regardless.
http://mysaccatalog.alamo.edu/content.ph...avoid=2151

[namwen]

I'd like to give an update concerning CTC. My son has the following ACE evaluated credits:

Penn Foster - 12 hrs
ALEKS - 6
SL - 9


RA - NMJC - 15

They seem pretty sketchy on accepting ACE evaluated courses. They won't even consider them until you have completed 6 credits in house. It took several transfers and conversations to even get them to understand what I was saying. I don't know what the process is going to be like. Almost everyone didn't have any idea what I was talking about concerning ACE.

I'm not saying that it couldn't be challenged successfully but I am doubtful. That is too bad because I really REALLY would prefer a texas junior college AS for him for Texas college transfers. He really wants to graduate this summer.

On another note NMJC seems easier to work with concerning ACE credit.

[sanantone]

If I can find the email address for the evaluation director, I will send you a message with it. She knows exactly what ACE is and will send the courses out to the appropriate departments for approval. I do have to admit that some departments never responded or didn't evaluate all of the courses. I found a list of courses they pre-approved for me.

ALEKS Statistics
Straighterline Nutrition
ALEKS College Algebra (...if you add additional topics, but I don't know how one would do this or how they can tell you did. They said something about a content editor in the Teacher Module. )
ALEKS Pre-calculus (same as above)
Straigherline Medical Terminology

[namwen]

He has the following courses:

SL - Eng I & II, Nutrition
ALEKS - Intermediate Alg & College Alg
Penn Foster - Psychology, Earth Science, Econ I & Art Appreciation

Please do find the evaluators email. That would be awesome. Like I said, I really would love to see him do a Texas AS.

[Life Long Learning]

I guess that's fine if you're credit laundering, but do you have conferred degrees from HCC? I have over 100 credits at CTC, but I would still have to complete 15 CTC credits in order to graduate.

100 CTC credits and no graduation?  Darn?  That does not sound like a good deal!  

[jsd]

zombie thread!