What do you think of the FREE online college degree?

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

Jennifer, are you saying a degree from U of P would be okay for someone just looking for a checkbox degree? Can a person get into graduate school in history with it?

PrettyFlyforaChiGuy, let me see if I understand. 76 hours from 25 CLEP, DSST, and TECEP (do they take all of these?) exams would cost $2,500. 45 hours from 15 courses would cost $255. Would this hypothetical $2,755 degree actually be worth anything?

I found this information on their website:

Transferring to UoP shows that they will accept CLEP, but ACE Credit/CLEP in their course database only reveals three different course equivalencies. I may have just searched incorrectly, though, or no one has previously done the transfer. Either way, the cost of any course transfer still seems to be only $17, averaging out to $5.67 per credit hour. No UoP exam fees show up in their FAQ page. You can only transfer in 50% of your degree requirements, so 90 credit hours total. With Modernstates grants, these would be more easily attainable. Tuition is $100 per exam at UoP, so I'm unsure where the $255 value is from.

I'm not Jennifer, but ultimately, the reality for employment or enrollment at most regionally accredited higher education institutions will remain having a regionally accredited degree. I've read studies which indicate that as employers in general become more aware of online programs due to an increasing amount of people pursuing them, their acceptance of them increases. However, with graduation rates sometimes approaching single digits in some of these programs, you'd also likely at least wonder what kind of issues are creating barriers to the very people that these unis ostensibly are intending to reach, which can discolor many people's perception of overall quality. Within academia itself, the bar would be higher.

If you just want a checkbox degree, I guess it would be fine, depending on if any particular accreditation requirements had been spelled out. If you are one of the speedy types, this would be a slower option for you anyway, though.

I don't believe that pursuing a nationally accredited degree would necessarily preclude you from every regionally accredited graduate school program, but I know I would look deeply into your curriculum and coursework at UoP if I was considering your application for a grad school program. I'd be especially curious about the novelty of their curriculum, where students appear to do an out-sized amount of assessment of each other.