Hey guys,
I'm glad I found this forum so many people are on the same path as I am.
Short background:
German citizen, 23, airborne enlisted 4 years, enrolled in B.S. Computer Engineering Technology @ Grantham University since Aug, 2014. Goal: Immigrate to US and work and live there
I know I can get free degrees in Germany but we don't have 100% online education here. Besides, schools here are ridiculously difficult to pass (no surprise since education is free).
So I'm currently in my second year and have taken almost 50 credits at Grantham. Unfortunately, I hardly knew a thing about the educational system in the USA (except that it's expensive lol) when I started so I have taken almost all of the introductory courses through Grantham @ 265$/credit. I know accreditation is probably the most important thing when it comes to 100% online education. I started learning more about the differences in educational system and finally got to know about straighterline and the fact that they offer accredited online course for college transfer!! Recently, I found more companies like coursera and propero or clep etc but I can't find any more courses that I need that are listed on my degree plan at Grantham University. You can imagine I'm super mad I could have saved over $6000!
My question is does anybody here have any advice for me regarding
1) my general current path
2) free/cheap and accredited courses that I can still take for the degree plan I attached? (I'm currently taking PreCalculus and C++ at straighterline)
Thanks for your help! Btw. I love how they teach in US schools!
05-12-2015, 10:58 AM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2015, 11:03 AM by sanantone.)
The higher education system in the U.S. is difficult to understand for Americans and non-Americans because accreditation is not really controlled by the government. The U.S. Department of Education merely recognizes accrediting organizations it considers to be legitimate. It also considers any accreditor recognized by CHEA to be legitimate. There are two main categories of accreditation: institutional and programmatic. Institutional accreditation is for the whole school; programmatic accreditation is for certain types of programs. Whether or not you'll need programmatic accreditation depends on the field and your government's requirements for licensing.
There are two types of institutional accreditation: national and regional. Intuitively, many Americans and non-Americans assume that national accreditation will have wider acceptance, but it is regional accreditation that has the widest acceptance. Grantham University is accredited by DEAC which is a national accrediting agency. Some foreign governments/schools will only recognize degrees from regionally accredited U.S. schools. I don't know if this will be an issue in Germany.
In the U.S., ABET accreditation is important in a few fields of engineering, but not so much when it comes to computer engineering and computer science. Again, I don't know if this will be an issue in Germany because Grantham doesn't have ABET accreditation. For a computer program, it most likely won't be an issue.
The last time I checked, Coursera was no longer in the ACE National Guide. It could be that they started listing credits under a different name, but I believe they gave up on ACE evaluations. They only had a few courses evaluated anyway and some were only offered annually or biannually. Companies like Straighterline, Propero, and Sophia offer courses that are ACE-recommended for college credit. They are not accredited institutions of higher learning. ACE is not an accrediting organization. Some schools are very open to accepting all kinds of ACE credits, but most will only consider ACE credits for military training.
The advantage of Straighterline over other similar companies, other than being cheaper, is that they have formed partnerships with about 80-something colleges that guarantee the acceptance of at least some of their courses. You can see which courses are accepted by each school on their website. Grantham is not listed as a partner college, so you would have to ask them if they would accept ACE-evaluated credits for non-military courses. Saylor offers two courses so far that are ACE-recommended for college credit. They also have courses that are NCCRS-recommended for college credit, but NCCRS is not as well-known as ACE. Saylor has partner colleges; but, again, Grantham is not one of them.
Edit: I looked at Grantham's policy, and it says that they accept ACE-evaluated credits. However, you will still want them to pre-approve each course before you take it to make sure it will meet requirements. Credit Transfer & Other Credit Sources | Grantham.edu
Graduate of Not VUL or ENEB MS, MSS and Graduate Cert
AAS, AS, BA, and BS CLEP Intro Psych 70, US His I 64, Intro Soc 63, Intro Edu Psych 70, A&I Lit 64, Bio 68, Prin Man 69, Prin Mar 68 DSST Life Dev Psych 62, Fund Coun 68, Intro Comp 469, Intro Astr 56, Env & Hum 70, HTYH 456, MIS 451, Prin Sup 453, HRM 62, Bus Eth 458 ALEKS Int Alg, Coll Alg TEEX 4 credits TECEP Fed Inc Tax, Sci of Nutr, Micro, Strat Man, Med Term, Pub Relations CSU Sys Analysis & Design, Programming, Cyber SL Intro to Comm, Microbio, Acc I Uexcel A&P Davar Macro, Intro to Fin, Man Acc
All that accreditation stuff really gave me some headache but it is very interesting to see how other countries' educational systems work. Germany hardly accepts any degrees at all from foreign countries and I don't think USA is on the list of accepted foreign degrees but I don't care because as I said I want to move to the USA after the military. I see accreditation is really important. Some jobs even require ABET accredited degree for certain jobs (such as Boeing)! What you said really makes sense that it would be better to get an ABET degree when you do things like Engineering (or becoming an actor or sth) because you would really need a lot of classroom work and equipment etc. I agree degrees in computer science or computer engineering or IT etc are probably the perfect online degrees to choose where ABET is not necessarily a pro or a con. I found a list on abet.org (Online Programs | ABET) of ABET accredited online degrees and most of them are related to Computer stuff. I hope I can find a job and get a job offer with my degree so I can get a visa and immigrate into the U.S. Most of my friends live there and it's like home to me.
I already took a Precalculus class and I'm currently taking a C++ and will be taking the Physics class through straighterline and I checked with Grantham before (obviously) and they said they accept it and even if I just got a C it wouldn't even lower my GPA (there's either pass or fail and Grantham does not count the grade to your GPA). There are classes at straighterline.com that are on my degree plan but the credits do not match with the classes on my degree so Grantham said they wouldn't accept this (except I go the PLA route but that's not a guarantee). I also saw CLEP tests but I don't think that's for me because the content is a little different in the USA than it is in Germany. So far, I haven't seen any new things in college that I haven't already done in high school in Germany but the thing is they do things different so my German class knowledge does not help much. I saw study.com offers an ACE accredited course in Calculus 1 but they don't say how many credits it's worth on their webpage so I sent them an email and I'm waiting for a response.
Anybody else know where I can get credits for the courses listed on my degree plan that Grantham accepts?
Penn Foster. I think they charge about $237 per 3-credit course. You won't have to worry about ACE-approval with them since they are accredited by DEAC just like Grantham. For courses that aren't listed individually, you can just call up Penn Foster to purchase them.
Graduate of Not VUL or ENEB MS, MSS and Graduate Cert
AAS, AS, BA, and BS CLEP Intro Psych 70, US His I 64, Intro Soc 63, Intro Edu Psych 70, A&I Lit 64, Bio 68, Prin Man 69, Prin Mar 68 DSST Life Dev Psych 62, Fund Coun 68, Intro Comp 469, Intro Astr 56, Env & Hum 70, HTYH 456, MIS 451, Prin Sup 453, HRM 62, Bus Eth 458 ALEKS Int Alg, Coll Alg TEEX 4 credits TECEP Fed Inc Tax, Sci of Nutr, Micro, Strat Man, Med Term, Pub Relations CSU Sys Analysis & Design, Programming, Cyber SL Intro to Comm, Microbio, Acc I Uexcel A&P Davar Macro, Intro to Fin, Man Acc
Thank you for the links. I checked out the Penn Foster course catalog and they do have classes that I think could translated to my degree plan. However, they are not the same amount of credits which is the same problem I have with the calculus classes at straighterline. Grantham told me they won't accept the class if they do not have the same amount of credits. I didn't ask why, I guess that's just how it is in the US?
I saw Penn Foster offers a 4 credits class called Analytic Geometry and Calculus but I'm not sure if Grantham would accept this. I'll definitely ask because 79$/credit is definitely worth it. I didn't know you can actually take single course from other Universities. I thought you need to enroll in a whole program.
Thanks for telling me!
Even though Grantham is on the semester hour system (where most courses are 3 credits), it looks like a lot of their tech courses are 4 credits. Courses with labs are often 4 credits in the semester hour system. I've also seen many 4-credit math courses at community colleges on the semester system.
Graduate of Not VUL or ENEB MS, MSS and Graduate Cert
AAS, AS, BA, and BS CLEP Intro Psych 70, US His I 64, Intro Soc 63, Intro Edu Psych 70, A&I Lit 64, Bio 68, Prin Man 69, Prin Mar 68 DSST Life Dev Psych 62, Fund Coun 68, Intro Comp 469, Intro Astr 56, Env & Hum 70, HTYH 456, MIS 451, Prin Sup 453, HRM 62, Bus Eth 458 ALEKS Int Alg, Coll Alg TEEX 4 credits TECEP Fed Inc Tax, Sci of Nutr, Micro, Strat Man, Med Term, Pub Relations CSU Sys Analysis & Design, Programming, Cyber SL Intro to Comm, Microbio, Acc I Uexcel A&P Davar Macro, Intro to Fin, Man Acc
05-16-2015, 03:20 PM (This post was last modified: 05-16-2015, 04:18 PM by mhenkes.)
What if I decided to go for a masters degree on campus after the military? Would it be a problem to get accepted by regionally accredited universities since I'm coming from a DEAC accredited university which is nationwide accredited? I found some schools that specifically mention ABET accreditation but I also found some that say they accept both. Is there a list of schools that shows who accept the broad variety of accreditations? Like I'm looking for a table that says this school accepts DEAC andABET or this school only accepts CHEA and that only ACPE etc.?
Since my goal is to get a job related to computer engineering, would it be necessary to get licensed by NSPE or similar and gain internship experiences and certifications (such as Cisco etc) in order to be more successful in my job search? Are there any other things you can recommend that would be beneficial?
mhenkes Wrote:What if I decided to go for a masters degree on campus after the military? Would it be a problem to get accepted by regionally accredited universities since I'm coming from a DEAC accredited university which is nationwide accredited? I found some schools that specifically mention ABET accreditation but I also found some that say they accept both. Is there a list of schools that shows who accept the broad variety of accreditations? Like I'm looking for a table that says this school accepts DEAC andABET or this school only accepts CHEA and that only ACPE etc.?
Since my goal is to get a job related to computer engineering, would it be necessary to get licensed by NSPE or similar and gain internship experiences and certifications (such as Cisco etc) in order to be more successful in my job search? Are there any other things you can recommend that would be beneficial?
With a degree from a nationally accredited school, your options for graduate school at regionally accredited colleges will be limited. Some people have attempted to compile a list of colleges with online degree programs that accept national accreditation, but those won't help you for on ground, computer engineering programs. If you want to go to school on campus, then you should compile a list of programs of interest and look at their admissions requirements. You can also contact them for further clarification.
The Council of Higher Education is not an accrediting body; it's an organization that recognizes accrediting bodies. First, you need to find out which graduate programs accept degrees from nationally accredited schools. Then, you will need to find out if they require that your bachelor's degree be ABET-accredited. NCEES is an organization of licensing boards of various states. All they do is administer the licensing exam; the state you're in will determine the requirements to become licensed (this is where ABET accreditation is important and Grantham doesn't have it). You would have to look at job openings and see whether or not they require those in computer engineering-related positions to be licensed professional engineers (most of them probably don't because they'll have you working under a PE). Does a PE License Matter for a Computer Engineer? | Chron.com
Graduate of Not VUL or ENEB MS, MSS and Graduate Cert
AAS, AS, BA, and BS CLEP Intro Psych 70, US His I 64, Intro Soc 63, Intro Edu Psych 70, A&I Lit 64, Bio 68, Prin Man 69, Prin Mar 68 DSST Life Dev Psych 62, Fund Coun 68, Intro Comp 469, Intro Astr 56, Env & Hum 70, HTYH 456, MIS 451, Prin Sup 453, HRM 62, Bus Eth 458 ALEKS Int Alg, Coll Alg TEEX 4 credits TECEP Fed Inc Tax, Sci of Nutr, Micro, Strat Man, Med Term, Pub Relations CSU Sys Analysis & Design, Programming, Cyber SL Intro to Comm, Microbio, Acc I Uexcel A&P Davar Macro, Intro to Fin, Man Acc
I love this forum. I normally do all the research on my own but I get good advice here.
Do you know if somebody in this forum was successful in getting accepted by a masters program in computer engineering that is ABET accredited with a bachelor that is DEAC accredited?
mhenkes Wrote:I love this forum. I normally do all the research on my own but I get good advice here.
Do you know if somebody in this forum was successful in getting accepted by a masters program in computer engineering that is ABET accredited with a bachelor that is DEAC accredited?
We don't have many current or former students of NA schools here. You might want to try DegreeInfo.com.
Graduate of Not VUL or ENEB MS, MSS and Graduate Cert
AAS, AS, BA, and BS CLEP Intro Psych 70, US His I 64, Intro Soc 63, Intro Edu Psych 70, A&I Lit 64, Bio 68, Prin Man 69, Prin Mar 68 DSST Life Dev Psych 62, Fund Coun 68, Intro Comp 469, Intro Astr 56, Env & Hum 70, HTYH 456, MIS 451, Prin Sup 453, HRM 62, Bus Eth 458 ALEKS Int Alg, Coll Alg TEEX 4 credits TECEP Fed Inc Tax, Sci of Nutr, Micro, Strat Man, Med Term, Pub Relations CSU Sys Analysis & Design, Programming, Cyber SL Intro to Comm, Microbio, Acc I Uexcel A&P Davar Macro, Intro to Fin, Man Acc
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