Met with some banking HR people on campus today.

[sanantone]

Penn Foster is a joke too. Open book finals, ability to take exams/quizzes twice, courses that take a few hours, using openly searchable test banks, no proctors for finals, etc; and it's not like they don't know - they just don't care. Those standards are so abysmally low I think very lowly of Penn Foster as well as I'm sure many do. The only reason why I and others are ok with using their courses however is because once it's on the RA college transcript, graduate schools/employers/etc. couldn't really care any less or don't know/bother. Why? Because all they care about is if the bachelor's transcript is "regionally accredited."

I admit that there are some online college courses through RA colleges that can also be a complete joke, but on a whole, RA colleges are on a whole different calibre than NA ones which really are an embarrassment to higher ed academically at least. Sure, if a student wants a piece of paper to feel better about themselves that's fine I guess, but at least one has to wonder why these schools weren't able to become regionally accredited in the first place and it's because their standards are just too low.

Though there are some RA schools that can be easy to complete a degree, there is still a certain level of academic rigor to it all - including TESC, COSC, and Excelsior. Besides, you can get an RA degree for far less than an NA one, and I believe you can't even get federal aid for NA schools which are also typically for profit.

So will an employer care where you went to school? Maybe, maybe not. State/feds/military absolutely care if it's RA no matter what. But what if it's University of Phoenix which is RA like others have said? It has a bad reputation that it can hold you back and as strange as it sounds, it could be argued that it looks better to have no UofPhoenix degree on a resume rather than one at all.



Eh, I get that some or a lot of employers wouldn't know or check about the RA vs NA distinction, but with so many candidates from RA schools, why settle for less especially when an RA degree can be had for cheaper, will literally open more doors in government and graduate school? In the end you get what you put into something I guess.

Ironically, even the people who work at Penn Foster, as I am sure at most/all NA schools went to RA schools. See the CEO of Penn Foster for instance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fbritt

As to getting certificates from Penn Foster that are RA? I don't really know. I mean I guess it's better than nothing, but I haven't been impressed with the academic quality or lack thereof of Penn Foster courses. I don't know how they could be 3 credits a course. But anyways, if it were me, I'd pocket the money and spend them on certificates from established reputable programs.

Also, I'm only speaking about the academic side, I have no idea what the technical/vocational aspects are like, so I can't really speak much for those, except probably with a hunch that they're not too great either.

The federal government does not care about RA vs. NA when it comes to hiring. They only care that the accreditor is recognized by CHEA and/or the U.S. Department of Education. You can receive financial aid at NA schools. Many dirt cheap DEAC (formerly DETC) schools do not participate in Title IV funding because they believe in not putting students in debt (even though they technically are in debt with the schools). Schools like Penn Foster, New Charter, and Ashworth offer payment plans. The only NA schools that are typically a lot more expensive than RA schools are the ones accredited by ACICS and ACCSC. This includes ITT Tech, Kaplan College (not Kaplan University which is RA), some Everest campuses, Westwood College, Sanford Brown, Full Sail, and Brown Mackie. You can receive federal financial aid at all of these schools. At the tuition rates they charge, no one would be able to afford them without student loans.