RBA degree question

[Jennr2z]

RBA requires 24 hours of credits to be completed in a West Virginia university or community college. Each of the universities has a requirement which is a subset of these 24. West Virginia University requires 6 hours to be completed there; Marshall requires 3 hours be completed there.  There are other participating universities; these are just the two I have researched. 

If you were starting from 0 credit hours, the best thing would probably be to do a semester at a WV community college.  Last I checked, Southern West Virginia Comm & Tech College had the lowest out of state tuition.  http://archive.southernwv.edu/index.php?q=node/12815

If you did a semester there and took a heavy but not unreasonable load, say 18 hours, that would cost around $2,500 (depending on the courses selected and course fees).

I can’t remember if West Virginia Rocks courses count for the university-specific requirement or the more general 24-hour requirement.  Regardless, they are $250 per hour. So, if you needed 6 hours to get to the 24, that would be another $1,500, so your total to meet the residency requirement would be $4,000.

Marshall’s online tuition with fees is $308.50, so a 3 credit course is $925.50. If WV ricks wouldn’t meet the 3-hour requirement, the cheapest way to meet the Marshall 24-hour residency requirement would be:
$2,500 (community college)
$750 (WV Rocks 3-hour course)
$925.50 (Marshall 3-hour course)

$4,175.50 Total for Marshall residency requirement

For someone who doesn’t have any college credits (or only community college credits), the biggest hurdle would likely be the 39 hour upper-division requirement.  Community college credits are automatically lower level. The schools accept CLEP and DSST exams; CLEP is automatically lower level. DSSTs for Cybersecurity, History of Soviet Union, Money and Banking, and Substance Abuse are upper level.

If you passed those, and assuming the 6 hours above from WV Rocks/Marshall were upper level, you would need 21 additional upper-level hours.  If we assume those will cost you around $200 per hour, that is another $4,200. Added to $4,175.50 above, that gets us to $8,375.50 plus the cost of the DSST exams. Presumably, you could knock out most of the remaining requirement with free/Modern States CLEP exams, but starting from nothing as a non-West Virginian, I don’t see how you earn that degree for less than $8,000.00, and that would require transferring in the remaining 21 UL hours at less that $200 per hour.

Beyond the cost, this is also not a degree that can be done super quickly. For that alone, I think I would prefer a Big 3 or UMPI degree. They also would be the same price or cheaper that the Regents BA AND the Regents BA actually says “Regents BA” on your diploma and transcript. I would much rather have a “regular” degree, but you may have a different opinion. 

One final point—there are a number of certifications that are eligible for RBA credit and there is a portfolio available. To get credit for your cert, you have to pay a fee $300 per cert, if I read it correctly) and who knows how successful/difficult the portfolio would be.

Neat program if you are in WV, have attended a WV public college or university, or have a bunch of UL credit. In those cases, it probably is competitive with Big 3/UMPI from a cost standpoint or potentially even cheaper, but almost certainly slower.

Thank you for the research! I will let my friend know that this isn’t an easy route, unless of course you are a WV resident, then it’s less complicated.