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The cost of going to college has gotten out of control. But it is possible to go to college for the cost of a monthly car payment. You just need to get creative.
There are a number of sites that have free online courses. While most will not earn you college credit or a degree there are some that will provide a certificate showing that you completed the work. This could be used with an employer or possibly with a college. Here are a few sites to check out.
Free Online Courses
The other thing I love about using these classes is that you can find out what interests you. Look at it this way if you like science and think you want to be a chemist take a few science classes. If you find that you wouldn’t like to do it every day then you saved yourself a lot of money. On the flip side, you may take a class that you don’t think you would like and find that you really do. It may take you in a different career direction.
Free is Great
Even though free is great if you’re not getting credits and a degree then it may not be the best for you. Now getting the credits and a degree for the amount of a monthly car lease is almost as good as free. Here are a few options for that may work for you.
- New Charter University new charter university $299/mo associates or bachelor’s and $499/mo master’s degree. You can complete as much as you can every month.
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Southern New Hampshire University- College for America
$5000 a year, but the catch is that your employer has to join. Luckily, there are many companies that are joining. Companies like McDonald’s, Panera Bread and Best Buy are just a few of the big names involved.
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Northern Arizona University
They offer a flat fee of $3000 every 6 months. This is only for their programs they call “Competency-Based”. There are only 16 programs offered compared with their normal 86 programs, but at a total of $6000 per year, you can’t beat it.
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Penn Foster
They offer three bachelor degree programs. There is Business Management, Criminal Justice and Veterinary Technology. They vary in price slightly, but if you pay in full for the semester you can pay $1049-1099 and if you make monthly payments it will be about $59/ month. You are looking at 8 semesters and the price can change during that time, but I wouldn’t expect too much of an increase in any given year. This is definitely worth a look if you are considering one of these degrees.
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Straighterline
This could be the best site. They charge $99 a month and you can complete as many classes as you want. There is a $59 fee per class. If you can complete three classes in a month then you will only pay $279 for three classes. Their site has a long list of schools to help you with transferring credits. They know you will transferring credits to another school and help you plan it from the beginning. You will need to decide what school you want to transfer to before you get started. Be sure to plan everything out. You won’t get a degree from them. You will get cheap classes to help get your degree.
- Western Governors University (WGU)
They charge $3770 per semester. There may be an additional program fee that is charged for some programs, but they aren’t much. What’s great about them is that they charge for the semester, not the class or credit hour. So you can complete as many classes as you can within the semester. As a bonus, they accept credit from Straighterline. So you can work out the numbers and see which way will allow you do complete your classes as fast as possible at the lowest price.
Takeaways
Be sure that you check all of the details. Not all of these schools have credits that will transfer to every school. If you plan on using this to get the basic classes out of the way and then going to another school you don’t want to find out you did all that work for nothing.
There is another thing to think about. It is called credit laundering. This means that you take the basic classes at the cheap school and then transfer them to an accredited school for your degree. If anyone looks at your degree they will not know that you didn’t get all of the credits at the school on the diploma.
Depending on the courses and your desired degree, you may be able to get all of the credits for cheap. In some cases, you may need to get some classes at the regular tuition rate from the accredited school to get the degree. Either way, you can get it much cheaper in the end.
Many of these schools also include all learning materials in the stated costs. So there are no fees added on. This makes it easy to plan your education. I hope that if you are thinking about getting a degree that you take these options into consideration.