Best path for interior design (NCIDQ exam) for bachelors in another field?

[spohara]

Have you looked into community colleges in your state? I know a few have ID programs. It's not a big field in online degrees because you'll have studio courses.

Yeah, I took a look into this as well, no CC options, just one smaller state school at around $340 per hour for in-state.  I get the studio issue, but there are online options for some programs, plus if the degree were hackable, paying out of pocket just for studio wouldn't be bad, around $1k per course.  But the big thing is, there don't seem to be a ton of alt credits available, and while the minimum is 60 hours of design courses, every program I see is 70+ with most of them requiring 80+ credits in design.  Even if you assume the first bach gives you everything outside of that, 70-90 hours at full price is still expensive.  There is a lot of independent training in stuff like CAD, Sketchup, Revit and others - it would be nice if there were programs out there evaluated for academic credit, but it doesn't appear there are.

Another RA option I've dug up is https://www.seminolestate.edu/catalog/programs/intds-as
60hrs of design courses @ around $380 an hour for out of state, and it looks like at least some semesters they offer studio classes online.  This still comes out to nearly $23k, yet it is one of the most affordable out there. Transfer policy here is also unclear.