Ridiculously Easy Associates Degree - Purdue University Global

[dfrecore]

Colleges all have a way to lock in your catalog so that additional requirements are not added once you're enrolled.  The key is that you have to enroll.  At the Big 3 (or Purdue or whatever), people are trying to get credits prior to enrolling and then complain when things change.  The ONLY way to make sure that changes don't affect you are to enroll, and send in your credits.

If you don't do that, then you can't complain that they changed the rules. You set yourself up for it.  Lock in your catalog so they can't change the rules (although they can change how they bring credits in for the future, and they can change prices).

That's not true.

There is no way to completely prevent changes from affecting you.  You have been here long enough you should know better.

There is a 100% way to do so - enroll, lock in your catalog, and bring in all of your credits.  Once you lock in your catalog, they cannot make changes to the degree plan (can't add courses, can't change courses), and once you have courses brought in and put on your eval, they can't change those either.  So locking in the catalog is the #1 thing you can do to make sure you don't have surprises in the future.  This is why many colleges have a time limit on how long you can take to get your degree - because they want flexibility on what they can do to a degree in the future, so having people with old catalogs locked in limits them.  It's also why you'll see things like "if you enrolled prior to 8/1/2017, use this chart to determine which GE's you need; if you enrolled after 8/1/17, use this chart."  That enrollment date determines EVERYTHING.

With the Big 3 and Purdue, WGU, etc., bringing in those credits and getting them into an eval makes sure that whatever they decide in the future about your credits, those ones you have are locked in.  Obviously if you bring in an IT cert, and it expires before you finish your degree, then that's an issue (one that you probably could have prevented BTW).  But in general, most credits don't expire, so getting them into your degree plan locks them in, and the school won't go back and take them away if they change how something is brought in IN THE FUTURE.  And example of this: TESU changed the way they brought in credits from CC's at some point; they used to bring some in as UL, then changed it to say that NO CC credit would be brought in as UL.  I had some CC credits that they brought in as UL on my eval, and they did not change MY credits.  It would only have applied to things I brought in later.  It also meant that anyone who hadn't already applied and enrolled in the school wouldn't get those LL credits applied as UL, even if they'd done the exact same courses that I did.

And yes, I've been around longer than you (about 5+ years and 12,000+ posts more than you), so I do have a pretty good idea how this works.