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Degree Hack: Cobbling Together Credit Hours For Cheap
McGruber writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has a web episode about Richard Linder, a US college student who was determined to do the impossible: earn a U.S. college degree while not taking on any student debt. Mr. Linder cobbled together an associate degree in liberal arts for a mere $3,000. He did it by transferring academic credits to Excelsior College, a regionally accredited institution that doesn't require students to take any of its own courses. Mr. Linder's earned his transferred credit hours from an array of unexpected sources: from high school Advanced Placement courses to classes taught by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Fire Academy. He even managed to get one credit hour from Microsoft." I find his creativity in breadth and sources of credit-worthy instruction more interesting than the pricetag, though the commenters on the linked story are sharply divided on the value of the courses taken. While $3,000 is cheap for an associate's degree compared to many U.S. colleges, it's not unheard of; tuition for locals at a community college near me wouldn't be too far off that, even without transferring in any credits.
I'd hire this guy in a flash. This kind of stunt shows a level of creativity, commitment and out of the box thinking that's worth more than any college degree.
Sounds like it's worth as much as a typical associates degree. We're not exactly setting the bar high, here....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You can get a degree for very cheap, even a decent one.
1. Find a good state school
2 Pick a degree and read all the requirements for that degree very carefully.
3. Look in the transfer database for that school. Take every course that can transfer in exactly from a local community college
4. Take the rest of the courses from that state school.
I got my Engineering degree without taking a single general elective from the school. Everything came from online/summer community college courses for 1/4 the price. Most people spend to much at college because they go where it is convenient and they don't pick a degree until the 3rd or 4th year.
Hell, Harvard is free too, if your family makes under $60k (about the 60th percentile). Well, assuming you can get into Harvard.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Is not just "regionally" accredited - it falls under the SUNY accreditation, and is a real, valid college degree. I should know: I have a BS from there (or rather, from when it was called Regents' College). You get accredited credits from colleges, accredited tests, etc, and when you have the right point spread, you get your degree. None of this crap from every other college about "oh, well, yes, you took compiler design there, but they have a different *emphasis*, and so we'll only call it an anonymous in-program upper-level elective, and you'll have to take it again", as UT at Austin told me in '91.
There's also no more of this "you have to take the last 30 or 60 credits of your degree *here* (and pay us the money), and those credits aren't transferrable....
It was created in '72 specifically for nursing and... can't remember, another program - students who were in the military, and "yes, we know you're three months from your degree, but Uncle is sending you to Germany for the next two years."
Note this is *not* U of Phoenix, or some such, nor just a "credit bank".
mark, BS, CIS '95, and proud of it.
Here come the degree snobs.
"You didn't really get an education unless you paid a fortune for it, like me."
Or
"You didn't really get an education, unless you are massively in debt, like me."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I decided that my music degree wasn't going to give me the career I wanted, I decided to get an accounting degree. I used Thomas Edison State College in NJ which is regionally accredited but was all non-resident at that time. I was able to use CLEP, ACT, and other similar tests to test out of 75 accounting and business credits over 2 years. TESC combined those with my liberal arts credits from my music degree to award my accounting degree. When I went to Trenton State for graduate study I was prepared to explain my degree, but I didn't need to. The admissions person said that they had very good luck with Thomas Edison grads because they knew how to study on their own.
I got my PhD without any debt along the way or money from my parents. Go to a good undergrad that gives grants instead of loans to cover most of financial need (the annual price tag was $30+k, but few people actually paid anywhere near that...). Work a summer job to cover the rest, which doubles as gaining experience by working in a lab, etc (which often would be enough to cover most state university programs without any grants). Then most engineering and science programs will pay you to go to graduate school if you work as a TA, or better, as an RA essentially be paid to get your thesis done and papers to pad your resume.
I received a BS in Liberal Arts from Excelsior College without having taken a single college class, for a total of about $600. I took 30 CLEP, DANTE, and Excelsior exams and transferred some military credits.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The route described in the article is kind of arcane, and he leaves out one of the easiest ways, not just for getting partial funding, but even getting all of your costs funded: High SAT scores.
There are plenty of fully accredited 4-year universities out there who will pay for everything just based on SAT scores or a combination of GPA and SAT scores.
We're talking "Full Ride", like tuition, room, board, and books in many cases:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ridescholarships.html
or significant scholarships that can get the net 4-year cost down to varying levels:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=automatic
All based on quantitative measurements alone.
It's hard to say why Richard Linder went through such obscure means in order to get his credits rather than just studying his ass off for the SAT's, but I suspect the reason why he went for "cheap credits" is where the real untold story is.
Hell, Harvard is free too, if your family makes under $60k (about the 60th percentile). Well, assuming you can get into Harvard.
Yep. One thing to get that free ride, another to have a place to reside during those years (notice how I didn't use the mythical word 'sleep')
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Any society that does not enable citizens to persue higher education if they wish fails at civilization. We do not exist merely to eat sleep shit and fuck. No everybody doesn't need to go to college, everybody shouldn't need to or have to go to college. But everybody deserves the chance to better themselves, and society as a whole benefits when they do.
It's deeply troubling that the response to "tuitions are too high" is "not everyone needs to go to college" these days. Education is not a luxury that we can afford to go without, it is civilization itself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Quite right! Much better to go for philosophy. You won't be able to get a job but at least you will know "why".
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
No but you DO get what you pay for in life.
A Bachelors in Liberal Arts is "almost" worthless in terms getting a job(avg . A associate degree is worth less then less half that...
Degrees only make the Filters in HR deparments happy when screening job applicants.
I've been on interview committees where we've scanned portfolios and been mildly impressed until we asked a few questions to see how the applicant uses that hard earned knowledge. Beats me how some people get their degrees. Some have been utter frauds. Meanwhile, some of the brightest, most energetic people I've known only have a high school diploma, associates degree, certificate from a technical school or spent some time in the armed forces doing the sort of work which is largely being outsourced by the DoD these days.
It's what you make of it and how you spent your time while pursuing it. On the evening of my 21st birthday I was pulling an all-nighter in the computer lab while my friends were all getting drunk at a party in my honor.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Two ways to get a free/cheap post-HS education
1. Smart enough to get a schollarship
2. Join the military.
While in the military, any classes you take in the military at any college, are paid for by the military.(still have to do your duties as a solider in the mean time). University of Phoenix specializes in doing this for soliders.
Two, GI Bill, 3 years of active duty or more, and you get the New GI Bill, which gives you 36 months of education in an accredited school, payed for %100, by the army. in addition the government gives a stipend for living expenses.
In 30 years it has changed dramatically. Given how common degrees are, many HR departments will simply filter out any resumes that do not have one.
I have an Excelsior bachelors degree. It was inexpensive and the credits were cobbled together from all over the place. The main value I got from the degree was that I was able to use it to enter Graduate School. While I learnt a lot of stuff in the course of getting my BS in Liberal Studies, the knowledge I use for my job I got from my Grad School education. It seems to me that this country has a liberal arts based education. To get a bachelors degree you have to take a lot of courses in stuff like languages and social sciences that I was not interested in. I understand that the colleges want students to have a broad educational base, but I feel that that is a decision best left up to the students to decide what they want to learn. I think we should have a more a la carte education system with a vocational focus. We should give more power to the students to let them choose what they want to learn while still giving employers a good idea of the skills that come with a given degree. In essence I used my Excelsior degree to bypass the part of education I didn't like and to focus on the parts I did like. I am grateful to them.
Liberal Arts will not typically give you a set career path like EE, CS, or Medicine, however, it does give you a real leg up in wide array of business fields. An English major has better chance of getting that marketing rep position (you know, the one where you do nothing but go out to fancy lunches and get hammered with clients all the time), than the CS grad which most HR people assume (incorrectly) directly translates to "borderline autistic". BTW, I definitely do not mean to bash the engineering jobs. I dreaded the thought of a typical "humanities" career path after double majoring in Poli Sci and Philosophy, and ended up in software engineering. Clearly not every employer thought it was worthless...
Education is still very affordable in most fields for anyone who bothers to take the time to plan it out before committing. The problem stems from people also wanting a big screen TV and all the major consoles at the same time as working for their degree. I can't speak for most other states, but NY's state university system offers a huge range of degrees and the vast majority of the population lives within a short distance of at least one - often more - two-year state school. Four-year state schools are only a little less common and still very affordable.
I went to a four year state school, got a great education, and am almost out of debt after 30 months of paying on loans in spite of making some horrible financial credit card decisions the six months right after school. It's definitely do-able for anyone willing to put forth just a bit of effort... not even exceptional effort, just a bit.
That is the price of not having 32 years of .NET experience.
Or
"You didn't really get an education unless you completed a full degree program."
In the U.S., associate degrees are generally two-year college degrees. They are NOT the equivalent of a university degree. They are the kind of degrees you get if you want to go into specialized professions, like being a lab assistant, or some types of nursing (though many hospitals now require four-year degrees), and various other things.
Don't get me wrong, it can't hurt you to get an associate degree. But an associate degree is not generally what most employers want to see when they're looking at your CV.
Breakfast served all day!
Don't know about that. I dropped out of an associate's degree program, so don't have any degree, and my career is doing just fine. There are plenty of people with the same amount of experience and a bachelor's who are well below me on the career ladder.
There are always exceptions to the rule ... and I'm not even sure I agree that it's a "rule" that you need a degree.
But, not having a degree myself, I can say that it does make things harder for you in some ways. You're going to have to struggle a bit. Your career might progress more slowly than if you had a degree. But then, on the other hand, college takes at least four years of your life to complete and it can be pretty hard, so isn't it sort of a toss-up?
Maybe the only real rule is that if you want to get anywhere in life, you're going to have to work hard, one way or the other. Some people make the wrong choices and end up doing their hard work on a factory floor.
Breakfast served all day!
What part of 'tends to' was confusing?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Although community colleges are often low-cost, it is hard to find one that gives more than a 2-year degree. One of the reasons is that private colleges, such as University of Phoenix, have lobbied against it, since it would hurt their profits.
Reference: University of Phoenix' plot to corner the cheap education market
I don't mean for it to appear "whoosh-like", but I found a BA in Philosophy to be something that was fairly useful.
Much like high school calculus and chemistry don't teach anything about calculus or chemistry, but give you tools to solve problems; philosophy equips you with the ability to quickly wrap your head around things that you don't already know much about, and appreciate your own shortcomings enough to realize that you can learn something from almost everything.
It's may not be worthless.
Some universities will take an associates as part of a transfer compact agreement to knock out the 2 years of bullshit gened's everyone has to take. I don't know that the school he used would qualify.
I have a community college up the street from me that's much larger, nicer, and well funded than many universities in the country, and it starts at about $110 per credit hour. So it's a great way to knock out all the garbage a university makes you do just for added revenue, but on the cheap, with a much higher quality education than you were going to get in a lecture hall of 8,000 sleeping students and a disgruntled professor.
So if he's halfway to a bachelors for $3k...
Just something to consider.
Wrong.
You can get one through a vocational school but they are also part of university programs as well. Also, there are different types of associate degrees.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On a college campus and you can't find a better gig then minimum wage?
Seriously?
Start a birth control delivery service. 30 minutes or it's free. All you need is a phone, inventory and an unusual sleep pattern.
Sell pot. Make fake IDs. Start an underground brewpub. Buy an old slushy machine and rent it out for parties (get deposits). Not your job to keep tequila out of it.
A very large percentage of college kids are suburban rich kids following a script provided by the rents. They are often flush with cash and short on sense. Take them for all they are worth before they flunk out. It's a life habit that will serve you well.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The HOPE scholarship is a scholarship for people who would have likely gone on to college anyways.
Where is the scholarship for repletion who happened to have fucked up once? or take into account that person was also supporting a family and an alcoholic mother?
Another divide to prevent people from getting out of a low income hard life.
How about a universal education program?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And they are all completely useless, except for as transfer credits to a 4 year university.
Alright. I took between two and three classes a quarter, worked full time as the Information Systems Director for a non-profit, and have a one year old (he was one when I started). I was able to do it, with the required study time, papers, projects, etc. I also volunteer with a non-profit that takes me out of the country for a couple weeks at a time every six months or so.
Was I tired most of the time? Yep. Was it hard to balance everything sometimes? Yep. Was I able to do it? Yep. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm tired of all the kids out there that whine about having to work hard. Nobody owes you anything. Get out there and work hard for the things you want in life.
A friend of mine is having his PhD entirely footed by the university he's performing research work at. How sweet it can be!
That's how I did mine ... combination of TA and RA = no grad school debt plus ~$1500-1800/mo income (back in the mid-late 90s) to scrape by on.
The Harvard version actually covers the full "cost of attendance", including the price of staying in the dorms and buying a meal plan.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I participated in a contest held annually in Phoenix called the Avnet Tech Games. In the event I was doing, which included not only practical lab work, but also a written test, the community college students scored 90% and above. The university students were all below 70%.
It only makes sense too when you think about it. Universities focus on the theoretical while community colleges focus on the practical. That, and community college teachers are there to teach, and genuinely care for the success of the students. Most university professors on the other hand are there to do research, and have upwards of 300 students to a class.
I've mentioned on slashdot before about how I have zero debt and the benefits of community college, and the replies I often get are from people with terrible grammar (I've only taken one English class before, by the way) who tell me that I got a cheap education because community college sucks, though they can never offer any reason why they say that. I mean if it was Harvard or MIT, sure, but most public universities that most people attend aren't anything special, yet are still expensive.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
It depends.
On the one hand, an Associates Degree by itself is about as useful as a solar panel in northeastern Ohio. It doesn't qualify you for anything that you weren't already qualified for with a high school diploma.
On the other hand, many schools will accept a larger number of (undergrad) credits in transfer if you have an Associates Degree than otherwise. That is, after all, the main purpose of an Associates: to bundle up the two years' worth of gen ed courses you've already taken, from a school that doesn't offer the major you want, so that the school where you want to complete your four-year degree will take most of those credits, allowing you to finish in another two years.
Of course, even with an Associates, the credits you transfer in are still only worthwhile if they count toward any of the requirements for your four-year degree. Many schools are willing to be a little bit flexible with this, though there are usually limits. For example, maybe the school normally requires Western Civ and US History plus one other social studies course, but if you're transferring in an Associates they may decide to accept any eight credits of history and four additional credits of social studies that you happen to have taken.
So an Associates can be useful, e.g. if you live near a community college that offers a halfway decent Associates program. You can knock out a lot of your gen ed *before* going to the better, more expensive four-year college where you intend to complete your degree.
All of this assumes that you are a returning adult student (e.g., someone who went out after high school and got a job to "save up" for college; after several years you have now saved up just about enough to cover your textbooks and maybe the occasional dorm sweatshirt). Anyone who just graduated from high school, with even remotely acceptable grades, is likely to be better off, financially, going straight to the four-year school the very next fall. You can often get a LOT more financial aid that way, and it's typically all renewable, so it will take you through all four years (assuming you keep your grades up and meet whatever extracurricular requirements the school has). Admittedly, this depends somewhat on the school, but your total debt for four years this way can potentially be less than what you would have paid just for the last two years, not even counting anything you had to spend to get the Associates in the first place -- because, transferring in from a community college with an associates, the financial aid department in most cases will basically tell you to see Uncle Stafford and Cousin Perkins. If you're fresh out of high school with reasonable grades, they're far more likely to hand you a package that includes grants and maybe the odd minor scholarship plus a work study option in addition to Stafford loans.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I agree he's hirable...but he demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of learning...
You didn't go to college unless you studied *all* disciplines as a survey and study *most* of *one* subject under the supervision of recognized experts in the subject..
If you didn't do that you didn't get a *college education* you got a *piece of paper*
However, he does demonstrate intelligence and more importantly persistence. He followed through with his stupid plan to the end...that means something.
I wouldn't consider him for a research or analytical thinking position, but he'd make a hell of a manager.
Thank you Dave Raggett
> You can knock out a lot of your gen ed *before* going to the better, more expensive four-year college where you intend to complete your degree.
Assuming that you, unlike roughly 97% of your peers, have the *slightest* idea what you actually want to do for the next 40 years when you're 19 or 20. That's the whole problem with the "get your general education credits out of the way" plan of community colleges... by packing all of your "major" courses into two years, and by extension DEFERRING nearly all of them until years 3 and 4, you've raised the stakes considerably, and made changing your mind about your major a much, much more disruptive and expensive process.
If you wait until the fall semester of your third year to take your first real courses in your major, then discover you don't actually LIKE your major after all, you've just *incinerated" at least one semester... maybe two. In contrast, if you've taken the first 4 courses in your major by the middle of your sophomore year, then discover you don't really like it after all, you've only REALLY wasted one or two of those classes, because the others ended up satisfying your general-ed requiremends anyway.
That's why most private colleges and universities encourage you to spread out your general-ed classes, and to begin taking your "major" classes early and often, and why they encourage you to satisfy many of your "general ed" classes with classes that do double-duty as the "intro/survey/101" courses for other majors. They have every incentive to help you graduate in 4 years... they're expensive, they know it, and they know there's a nontrivial chance you might not graduate at all if they seriously derail you. They know that 70% of their students change their majors at least once before year 3, and most of them have had more than a hundred years to refine the formula and get it right.
The generic community-college scenario only really works for two groups of students... those whose only goal is "a degree", regardless of what it might be in, and those for whom community college is a second chance to shine, catch up, and redeem themselves. A student who's already at the top of his high school class and a shoo-in at just about any university is basically just wasting his time, and is actually INCREASING his odds of stumbling and losing his way before graduation.
The fact is, the "2+2" formula just doesn't work for the majority of students.
Education is still very affordable in most fields for anyone who bothers to take the time to plan it out before committing.
My bullshit-o-meter just broke on that. Seriously, you killed it. Let's roll some numbers, mkays?
Now tuition doesn't cover the cost of books (That'll be another $600), or supplies ($250), or any incidentals you may need like a computer, car, furniture, etc. But we'll ignore those incidentals -- you're still looking at about $20 grand a year. Most of these things you aren't going to have at 18 unless your parents were affluent and gave them to you. Which means... you're gonna have to buy them to live on your own. Even with a roomate. Or several. Oh wait... you have no employable skills -- that's what you're going to college for!. Say hello to minimum wage at $9.50 an hour. And from 18-25, the student loans you can take out are capped, and although most parents do not contribute to their child's education, outdated calcuations based on your parents' income still determine eligibility for a wide variety of assistance programs. Your first year of college will be capped at $5,500 in loans. That's only a mere $14,500 short of what you need to survive your first year. But hey, let's say you take that summer job and you work a full 40 hours a week for three months straight (ahahahaa! Crazy, I know, but Republicans believe it's possible, so let's play along)... Congratulations! Your full time job has earned you... $4,936 gross. Oh wait... forgot taxes. That'll be $4,066.. net.
OH NOES! You're still short $10,434. So about that "very affordable" and how you were "not even exceptional effort" bit? How about a nice resounding Fuck you from the Department Of People Who Can Do Basic Math. There's a reason there's a trillion plus dollar student loan crisis out there, and an entire generation going bankrupt. You don't get to just handwave and say "Well, I was smart. Everyone else was just stupid." It doesn't work that way. You got lucky. Most people didn't. Statistical. Factual. Truth.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
That's a lot less doable now then when you did it in the early '90s. In Ohio full-time minimum wage during the summer (call it 12 weeks), plus half-time the other 40, earns les then $10k. Tuition at state schools starts at $4.5k per semester. If you get a $5k scholarship you have $6k to live on, all year. It has to cover taxes, car repair, food, gas, cell phone, parking, books, rent, and clothes. This will not work.
Granted change some assumptions (16 weeks of summer, slightly more then minimum wage, 25 hours during school) and you can get that $6k up a couple grand. But rent is gonna be $350 a month minimum ($4,200), gas is at least $100 ($5,400), a cell is at least $20 ($5,640). Books are a couple hundred (call it $6k, even). And you still don't have car insurance, a parking pass, or food. A couple grand might cover it. But God help you if your car isn't 100% reliable.
Keep in mind that when people say it's "impossible" to get through school without debt they are exaggerating. What they mean is that it was trivial for baby boomers to do it, but given that a) college costs have skyrocketed, b) minimum wage is down in real terms, and c) kids haven't magically become better planners/workers/etc. it's much more difficult for Millennials.
I'm calling bullshit on bullshit. My associates has landed me two decent jobs (sys admin).
To be fair - all my electives were geek classes - like network security and various programming. School is entirely what you make of it. You can float through, get your paper, and learn nothing. Or you can rock the fuck out and learn a lot of cool, useful, shit.