Leveraging an existing BA for another BA?

[ezmac028]

Great update! There are a few things you need to review, here are the following items I would look at. I usually recommend a balanced mix/match trifecta of certs, degree, experience.  Basically, you want to work with these and customize it to your liking, go at your pace and get things the way you want.

1) You have a Bachelors, adding a second bachelors won't really help you unless it's in a very different field. Do the Masters instead as it trumps a Bachelors any day of the week.
2) You mentioned "I also feel like an MBA or MPA would limit my options" - "business operations, government administration", that's basically the same thing, contradicting...
3) You can't reuse the credits for another Bachelors as a max of 90 will go towards the Bachelors, you'll need 30 credits, thus, a Masters would do better.  HAU MBA for $3K flat.

With the $5K, you should complete the HAU MBA for $3K.  For next year, once you finish the MBA with a concentration of your choice, you can do a different Masters of your choice at WGU for example, or even UofPeople as they just got RA status.  You can use the $5K/year and get an additional Masters of your liking, rinse and repeat for the UofPeople degree if you want the following year.

Thanks! I hadn’t heard of HAU and will start researching it now . One concern I have is that I see they require a 3.0 GPA from undergrad. I was a poor student who was interested in just about everything other than school 20 years ago, so I don’t have that. My GPA was below 2.5. 

For that reason, would the second Bachelors make more sense so I can approach grad school later with a stronger GPA? 

Also curious your thoughts on a potential path toward the UMPI MAOL, since it seems to me like the MAOL might be a way for me to hedge my bets between an MBA and an MPA.

[bjcheung77]

Good questions and here's the reason I recommended HAU MBA as your first choice.  Just like many institutions, they've got what you call conditional acceptance, which means, the first semester/term, you're authorized to take classes and you need to get at least a B on them to continue in the program.   You've got to prove to yourself and the institution you can get the GPA required to continue onward, excel, and be proficient in the subject matter.  Furthermore, I kind of had an idea of your pending GPA, thus, I wouldn't recommend WGU as they're mainly pass/fail without a GPA.  

Last but not least, the HAU MBA is at an astonishingly low price of $3K due to scholarship, this may end anytime, you may not be able to get the deal, the MAOL at UMPI on the other hand had their tuition bumped up recently, but it's still amazingly affordable. That can wait... So, even if UMPI bumps their pricing again, to say $2500/session, two sessions would only be $5K for the entire MAOL, but if HAU MBA bumps their price back to $12K, you've lost that option and won't have the option to do the MBA at HAU, you'll have to go for WGU or UofPeople, with extra proctored testing!

And to answer your question in regards to getting the UMPI BA to MAOL, it'll help you with the GPA overall, but the thing is, you're looking at a different balanced trifecta of cost, ease, speed to get to your main goals - multiple masters! Yes, not one, but multiple Masters.  It really depends on you and how you want to play things, there are going to be people providing advice, you take them, process it, and determine your own pathway using the info provided, you'll be swayed in all directions as it will pretty much get you to the destination you're looking for - graduate school completion.

The final straw in this pile, a controversial one you'll really like, ENEB Double Masters with the Classic Method of writing your assignments to get graded credits, do not take the exam option as you're paying for more, to get an exam to complete the degree, they'll all come with just 50 questions and the grades are all the same.  When being evaluated, these would probably not be favorable nor positive, but if you do the classic method, you'll see what they come in from my signature - recognized as a Bachelors and/or Grad Certificate.  These again are international equivalents, thus, you get a GPA to bump up your knowledge and fill in those knowledge gaps.