Is it possible to get a BA in Philosophy from one of the Big Three Fast?

[DavidHume]

Hey NoahJ, I'm also trying to earn a BA Philosophy from TESU.  There aren't many of us on this forum so searching around didn't yield much results (or they're out of date and the online sources are gone).  I cannot tell you that my plan has worked since I'm trying to do it now but here's what I was thinking of doing (I'll defer to the senior members of this forum who have more experience):

AOS 33 Credits:

9 Required:
Intro to Philosophy  - Intro to Phil (StraighterLine)
Logic - Intro to Logic - (??????? local community college?)
103 Ethics - (Saylor Phil 103 or Sophia Intro to Ethics)

6 Lower Level:
Philosophy of Religion (local community college)
History of Ancient Philosophy (local community college)

18 Upper:
310 BioEthics - UExcel
304 Existentialism - Saylor
405 Intro to World Religions - DSST
3301 Philosophy of Plato - Univ New Orleans (UNO) delivered via iTunes ($881)
3333 Philosophy of Kant - Univ New Orleans (UNO) delivered via iTunes ($881)
495 Capstone - TESU

This isn't cheap but that's because online Philosophy RA accredited courses are hard to find. I know I included local community college in there, and that's to keep the costs low. And you can always take the other online courses concurrently since you're already well read in philosophy.

As for U Texas Austin, they have 2 self-paced classes for $850 each:

PHIL 301 Intro to Philosophy
PHIL 312 Intro to Logic

The thing is those courses are listed as 300-level which is strange since I've never seen an UL class that's "Intro" to anything.  If they really are UL classes then that knocks out BOTH the core course requirement AND the UL requirement at the same time? I don't know, so I didn't include as satisfying the requirement in the plan above.

As for UNO, they have a LOT of online Upper Level classes delivered via iTunes if you don't mind paying the $881 per class.  You may be thinking that if you pay that much then why not just take the TESU courses. Yes, that's true, it just depends on the subject matter you prefer is all.  For example, I chose the Philosophy of Plato class from UNO because it already overlaps with the History of Ancient Philosophy from the lower level class.

Hope this helps and if there's anybody on the forum who can help us, please let us know. If you've already accomplished your goal, let me know how you did it. Thanks.

UT uses a different numbering system for courses: the 3 at the beginning indicates it is 3 credits. To determine upper or lower level, they use the last 2 digits. 00-19 are lower level, 20-79 upper, and 80-99 are grad courses. So both those are lower level.

If you really want a BA in philosophy, you could take as many philosophy courses as you can cheaply find to fit into the BALS and then go for the postbac program at UNO. They have quite a few scholarships specifically for that program. There aren't a lot of grad programs in philosophy you can get into without a good chunk of upper level philosophy courses. If you don't want to do the postbac, you could try for a MA in liberal studies somewhere that offers philosophy courses. I've looked at open admissions programs in Europe, but even those require completion of roughly 6 upper level courses as prerequisites before actually getting into the required coursework.