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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.
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.
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
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!
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.