Degree/Planning Advice: Retired LEO Seeking BA and MA after life-altering injury

[Dnightowl]

UMPI: Has a BACJ and an MAOL that are CBE, “YourPace”. Self-paced CBE sounds well suited to my situation. I like that it’s a State school. They state that “previous college credit, certifications, and work—as well as life experiences—are considered and help you graduate faster” but I’m not sure what that would mean specifically for my situation. Would they give additional credit beyond my 90 transfer units to apply towards the CJ requirements and electives based on my certifications and work experience?

UMPI's Prior Learning Assessment page for YourPace helps explain how certifications and life experience learning could yield credit there.

No matter how many units you bring in from outside sources, you will have to complete 30 semester hours in coursework from UMPI. This "residency" requirement a hard minimum at almost every known accredited school in the US (except the three schools we call the Big Three). You could transfer more than 90 sh, but that would be running up your career total beyond 120, as you'd still need 30 sh from UMPI.

LUO: Offers a 25% tuition discount for First Responders and “Personalized service throughout your college experience from a team of knowledgeable academic advisors”. LUO has a wide variety of degrees to choose from including Masters and Doctorate Degrees but it doesn’t appear to have an equivalent to the CBE self-paced curriculum.

Correct, no CBE program at Liberty.

As a general rule, don't give many points to a school as your undergraduate choice because it has a graduate program you're interested in, unless you're going for a specific bachelor's-to-master's provision that save you significant time by counting courses towards both. Most schools don't have such provisions.

Liberty's integration of religious material into maybe every course, and social and political associations attached to its brand and history, are material to some prospective students.

Excelsior: Accepts Credit for Professional and Workplace Training and accepts up to 113 transfer credits for a BSCJ degree. This doesn’t appear to be Self-paced CBE. I don’t see myself attending this school if I need to take more than 7 classes and I’m unsure if I could handle 7 classes in this format.

Correct, no CBE program at Excelsior.

Clarification: Each regular course is 3 credits (semester hours). The 7 credit residency requirement at Excelsior means only 2 regular courses and one 1 sh mini course on information literacy.

TESU's Criminal Justice degree is similar to Excelsior's but completing TESU's requirements might well be a bit more convenient than Excelsior's.

Purdue: Offers an Accelerated Masters in Psychology while obtaining BA in Criminal Justice. They offer up to 25 Credits for POST training and credit for work experience.  They have an “ExcelTrack” that purports to give you to “the same degree faster and for less money.” This school has a for-profit feel to it and they require 180 credits for a degree, not 120. A Master’s in Psychology is far more interesting to me than an MAOL but either will work for me.

Purdue Global's degrees are the same length of academic credit as each school above. The difference is that most schools count credits in semester hours, with most bachelor's 120 sh. Purdue Global is part of the minority of schools that count credits in quarter hours, with most bachelor's 180 sh. If you take a 5 qh course from a quarter-hour school, it will transfer as 3 sh to a semester-hour school, and vice versa.

ExcelTrack is a CBE program. Conventional wisdom is that PG ExcelTrack requires more writing and is less accelerable than UMPI YourPace. The BA in Criminal Justice is offered by ExcelTrack but the MS in Psychology is not. I'm not sure what they mean by this bachelor's to master's plan. If they mean that some of your BACJ ExcelTrack courses would apply to an MSP, that's great. But my guess is they mean you can enroll in the BACJ and though you could do much of it ExcelTrack, you could also take some non-ExcelTrack courses that would apply to both degrees. But those non-ExcelTrack courses would be non-CBE, traditionally scheduled and priced.

Purdue Global used to be the for-profit Kaplan University. As part of the agreement by which it was acquired by the Purdue system, the for-profit company Kaplan Higher Education continues to be involved in operations as a contracted Online Program Manager.

Tuition assistance/reimbursement: I will be funding out of pocket without loans.

You might be eligible for a Pell Grant. Might help.

Also research various scholarship websites to see what their requirements are. This would also help in funding your degree.