Credit for Industry Certs

[spazz]

I promise I'm not making this stuff up. Many (hundreds+) colleges take more than just CLEP. DANTES and ECE are widley accepted. Yes, you can test out of an entire degree at an accredited school, Regional Accrediation infact, often called the gold standard. The three schools I'm aware of are Excelsior, Charter Oak State College, and Thomas Edison State College. DePaul seems to have a very liberal acceptance, as does Athabasca (Canadian). Two of the three are indeed state schools. As for the GRE, the GRE Subject exams can count towards credits at various schools. Excelsior awards from 3 to 30 credits depending on score (very high score for 30 obviously), and Charter Oak also awards a very high number. Would these be worth as much as a traditional degree? Well, first off lets break it down to which degree and assume it's that Liberal Arts degree you've already said has no value. So we've got a LA Bachelor in General Studies from say Indiana University or a BS in General Studies from TESC or BS in Liberal Studies from Excelsior. All 3 are Regionally Accredited degrees so the HR person that just wants to know if you have a legit degree can check the box, all 3 can get you into a graduate program (many graduate programs look at GPA, but don't care what your major is) so you're safe in academia, so yeah I'd say they do have pretty close to the same utility given the same major. Given the 3 schools I mentioned someone would probably only go with Indiana first for employment just based on name recognition. But if my example was some small, but traditional school, vs one of the other 3 I'm not sure that the traditional school would really have any more utility. They aren't going to know 'how' the degree was obtained any more than your future potential employers are going to know that you CLEP'd out of a few things. Those of us with online degrees don't have to put 'online degree' on our resume and it's not on our transcripts, or our diplomas. The 'bias' some HR departments have would never impact us unless said HR person was very familer with the schools we listed.

and now lets say someone questioned my use of CLEP's to obtain a degree (though I haven't done that many), your school has given me cover. I can say hey.. you know Spazz's school is pretty awsome and all take a look at them they also accept the same CLEP's I've taken, so they must agree that the CLEP's are equal to their own courses, they just disagree with my school on how many CLEP's a student can transfer into their program. I could then show them a copy of your schools minimum passing score's for CLEP, whip out a copy of my transcript with my CLEP scores and perhaps even impress them with what your 'traditional' school required as the minimum and what I recieved on my exam.

As for where I'm going. Excelsior (as my sig says), my goals were to

1. Have a degree, any (legit) degree. I'm happy where I am with employment, not having a degre has never held be back, but it could in the future. Perhaps one day that employer just won't look at my resume without checking that degree box.

2. Be in a format I could accomplish without hurting my current work load. This meant online, or very minimal part time traditional, at the very least, exams for some courses has really helped out a ton.

3. Cost. I'm not taking out loans for a degree program, I'm to cheap for that.

4. Get into a graduate program if I want to. This impacted the accrediation of the school I wanted to go with. I've looked into many graduate programs (MS in Management, MS IT, MBA, and so on). I've yet to see any requirements that would exclude a degree from any of the three schools I've mentioned. Normal requirements include. GPA, Regionally Accredited undergrad, specific course pre-req's. Additional requirements for some programs include: letters of recomendation, entrance exam. Not a single program said anything about the learning method if the undergrad degree. Could this bias happen? Sure, but it would have to be at the level of the admissions office, and unless it's a very difficult program to get into that isn't likely.

If you want to tell me where you go I'll look, or you can look. I'm guessing that if your school has graduate programs I'd qualify for some of them with a degree from one of these schools.


Am I missing out on some traditional experiences? Hell ya I am. I don't get to party all the time, I never had professional training in chugging a beer, I never got to call my parents for money, I'm not under a huge debt load (infact no school debt and I'm a few months from being able to write a check to pay off the balance of my mortgage), and my resume doesn't have 4 years of my professional IT experience missing. All at the same time yes I have friends in traditional education (I'm 28), they don't come back to me and say how awsome their teacher was because he researched all this stuff, they complain about the fact that they're in debt, or they have a degre now but don't know what to do for a job, or they talk about their frat and some awsome party they had. There are certainly things you'll get in traditional education that you won't get in a non-traditional format but a big part of it seems to be social, not educational. You can't tell me that in your traditional programs that you don't know students who seem to be slackers most of the semester but cram for tests the night before, that happens everywhere. Are those people more educated than people who study hard for a few weeks and take a CLEP? If they aren't, then what's the harm in taking that CLEP (or other exam) for more than just a few courses.

Schools do not put the real requirements on the site. They are forced by the state or by public relations to give every candidate an equal chance. But when it comes down to it, people discriminate. Think about it, I have gone for many job interviews in different states as an admin. The people who get the job are the kids who graduate from the guys school (Alumni respect).

Employers look down on distance learning degrees and certainly testing out of whole degrees (I still do not believe this is possible). This just proves that the degree is worth nothing. Put yourself in a position from a traditional school and think about it. Getting one of these degrees to maybe open a door for you is fine. But do not expect anything else out of it. Almost all jobs above the poverty line requires a 4 year degree. If you apply for a job in IT with other candiates from traditional state schools, and you went to a distance learning, you will never get the job.

As for graduate school, the only graduate school you will get accepted to is online. No traditional school would accept a degree from a distance learning program where you tested out of all your classes.

Cost really is not a problem for kids coming out of highschool. In most states there are scholarships awarded to most of the kids who support the kid in-state. If not then you can take out government loans with barly any interest (inflation exceeds the interest rate).

I understand the reasons you chose the distance learning, and I respect your work etc. But you have to understand that by choosing distance learning, you have limited yourself. It is a trade off you took by enrolling in distance learning.

Another thing to think about, would you want a surgeon operating on you when he simply tested out of his under grad and graduate school? This means he would have no experience and absolutly no knowledge on what the hell he is doing. Might as well pick a bum off the street. This is the same thing for any degree besides liberal arts (just maybe not a life or death relationship).

I am sorry I'm being very blunt with you.