Penn Foster courses - that still a thing? TESU Equivalencies?

[kevinmane]

Haven't heard much about Penn Foster courses these days. Can you still get ACE college credits through Penn Foster home independent study?

[jsd]

Looks like they still have at least a handful of courses still ACE approved (they have way too many expired ones so I don't want to go through and check ALL of them myself).

But I think they are not as utilized anymore because so many new alternatives have popped up in just this past year alone. Penn Foster is expensive compared to most providers if you can find the same course elsewhere.

And you have to be very careful to confirm the ACE status of the course you want, since they often do not renew their approval.

[dfrecore]

I keep a list of all of the ACE-approved PF courses, including the expiration dates. It looks like the majority of things that were set to expire in 2017 were renewed through 2020. They come and go in batches, and the next group is set to expire in June/July/August of this year. So I will check again later.

But like jsd said, they are much more expensive than other resources we use here (SL, Study.com, Shmoop, etc.). Also, they used to offer courses that were hard to find, like Principles of Finance if you didn't want to take the DSST, but now you can find that elsewhere. They also offered the Strategic Management course that TESU would bring in instead of the TECEP if you didn't want to test out, but that ended a while ago, so that combined with their increased prices meant less reason to go there.

They still offer things you can't find like Business Law II, Employee Benefits, and Merchandise Planning & Buying, so they're a good place to go if you want some specific courses not offered elsewhere. I also like the customer service there, the fact that the eTextbook comes with the course, the ability to retake exams, the non-proctored final for some courses (Financial Management was that setup for me), and the fact that the courses are self-paced.

[bjcheung77]

Ding Ding, I only recommend having Penn Foster courses if you can't get it from the usual providers...