Sophia Quality... Questionable?

[Lacedonia4]

You see JSH, you and I are in the midst of geniuses. Geniuses that are lightning fast at course completion, and signed up for this site long ago and spend a lot of time here, but still don't have a degree.

Strange that...

Oh yeah, cuz nobody ever has issues with money. I had resigned myself to never actually getting a degree until Sophia made it possible. 

Seriously, I never claimed to be a genius. I've even admitted that I had issues with multiple courses. Is it really so hard to believe that someone might have prior experience that might allow them to get through a 9-challenge 3-milestone course quickly? Because that's what Visual Communications is; it's one of the shorter courses. 71 challenge questions. 96 milestone questions. At 2 minutes per question (because, again, I had prior knowledge and didn't need to read most of the text), that's just over 5 and a half hours. Did it take me more than 6 hours? Maybe. But I'm pretty sure that it did not. Seriously, it's a LL class. As has already been established, it's not supposed to take a super long time to finish such a class if you are familiar with the material.

Exactly, money and family commitments are the reason why I found myself studying towards a degree 20 years later. And I am terrified now if I take a break not to be able to resume my study routine, so close to getting a degree. I believe lots of people have the mental capability to pass most of these courses easily, sophia, straighterline, study.com, the real obstacles are always time and money. And yes being familiar with the material makes a huge difference in how long it takes.

[innen_oda]

I've lived in both US and Europe, but think this characterization of U.S. higher education isn't quite accurate. The character of the education depends on the school and major. Someone going for a business or other vocational degree in a U.S. school will likely have the experience you describe. Someone attending a liberal arts college or majoring in an academic subject like physics or philosophy probably won't. Maybe the real difference is that, in the U.S., a single university will usually offer both "career-readiness" degrees and more academic ones. They'll have a department of engineering or business *and* a department of anthropology. In the parts of Europe where I lived, there are two entirely different systems in place for studying a vocational subject vs an academic one.

I've lived in both also, and to be honest, I wasn't considering vocational education, as I have no experience in that area. My studies have all been in academic subjects, with a personal preference towards theory. I'm also drawing on experience in Oceania as well, and based on tertiary experience in multiple subjects across all three continents, all I can offer is my opinion based on that experience - which is to say that on the whole, across a broad range of subjects, the US tends towards more real-world tasks and assessments. This isn't about 'career-readiness' pseudo-degrees, or even the distinction between different types of degrees - it's about the types of tasks and the focus of education.

So even in, say, a philosophy degree, I'd posit that in an American university, you'd spend a lot more time, comparatively, on things like public speaking and networking, whereas a Continental university it'll be, on the whole, far more theoretical. Will there be outliers? Absolutely. Will some universities lean more in one direction or the other? Yes. But overall, there are cultural differences in tertiary education, which reflect the contexts of each locale.

[SweetsugarNL]

So i live in Europe and in my country we dont have gen eds. If you would like to switch you need to restart everything. Also we have a university of applied sciences what means a more practical bachelor (4 years and ready to work) and the more academic university 3 years bachelor and then a master 1-2 years(graduate). But not so much online options. For me is Sophia not so easy but i would like to learn and not "fast" so i read everything.

[jembig]

Does anyone find it okay to complete many Sophia courses and have completion dates on a transcript close to each other, given you devote all the time in a day?
For example- 10 classes in a month? Will the college you are transferring to think these courses have less value value than traditional? I found courses to be easy and some very hard, but I decided to put a lot of effort. I definitely wouldn’t want the college to think it was too easy to complete these courses back to back.

[ctcarl]

Does anyone find it okay to complete many Sophia courses and have completion dates on a transcript close to each other, given you devote all the time in a day?
For example- 10 classes in a month? Will the college you are transferring to think these courses have less value value than traditional? I found courses to be easy and some very hard, but I decided to put a lot of effort. I  definitely wouldn’t want the college to think it was too easy to complete these courses back to back.

Well, if you were trying to get into Harvard Law, yeah, they might actually go through your transcript line-by-line checking completion dates.  But I don't think they take ACE credits, anyway.

If you're applying to the Big 3 or a another non-traditional college, I don't think they concern themselves with such subtleties.

[ss20ts]

Does anyone find it okay to complete many Sophia courses and have completion dates on a transcript close to each other, given you devote all the time in a day?
For example- 10 classes in a month? Will the college you are transferring to think these courses have less value value than traditional? I found courses to be easy and some very hard, but I decided to put a lot of effort. I  definitely wouldn’t want the college to think it was too easy to complete these courses back to back.

In a competency based degree program, many people complete 10 courses in a month. One thing to remember is that the Sophia courses are all 100 level courses so they're introductory courses. They're not meant to be difficult. Some material is a breeze for some people and others struggle with it. When you finish a semester or term at a college, all of your credits are issued the same day. I took 19 credits at a community college more than once. In 15 weeks, I earned 19 credits. No one bats an eye at that. Currently, in the last 16 weeks, I have completed 32 college credits at Sophia and CSU Global. No one has sad anything other than I must not have slept much and just did school which is basically true. I didn't just pass these courses either. My lowest grade at Sophia is an 87 and I have a 4.0 at CSU Global.

[nomaduser]

I agree that Sophia courses are basic introductory courses...
They're typical courses which you study during the freshmen year and then forget afterwards.

[Rustydroid]

Does anyone find it okay to complete many Sophia courses and have completion dates on a transcript close to each other, given you devote all the time in a day?
For example- 10 classes in a month? Will the college you are transferring to think these courses have less value value than traditional? I found courses to be easy and some very hard, but I decided to put a lot of effort. I  definitely wouldn’t want the college to think it was too easy to complete these courses back to back.

Sometime ago Shmoop credits stopped being accepted by TESU and they had ACE accreditation. I never took a course from them but some people were completing a bunch of classes in weeks. Not sure what really prompted TESU to suspend them.

[rachel83az]

Sometime ago Shmoop credits stopped being accepted by TESU and they had ACE accreditation. I never took a course from them but some people were completing a bunch of classes in weeks. Not sure what really prompted TESU to suspend them.

I think it was the lack of proctoring. When I first saw Shmoop, they didn't have proctoring available at all. More recently, they had proctoring available but only if your school required it. I don't think your ACE transcript would distinguish between proctored and non-proctored classes so that wasn't especially useful. If they had made it so that classes were $80 (or whatever they were) per month but you had to pay for RPNow/ProctorU fees (similar to how InstaCertCredit operates), I think that they'd still be accepted by TESU.