Thomas Edison State College's accreditation (College-)

[SisiL78]

Its important to note that accreditation does not make a school good or worth the money. TESC charges nearly 25k for an Associates degree. At a community college you can get the same Associate degree for about 6-8k or even less. They might be teaching the basic facts necessary to keep that accreditation but the students are not getting much more. In addition, they rope people who are not ready or able to stick with the program. But, as long as they have money coming in from that student they will pass them until the gravy train finally stops.

And there are quite a few unaccredited schools out there. My only experience with someone who graduated from them was the daughter of my former employer. She ran the company with her MBA from an unaccredited Catholic college. After nearly failing out of the expensive private high school she was sent to (I know this b/c she bragged about nearly failing out) she went to some rinky dink "university" and then got her MBA. I never felt the need to look up her schools or their accreditation until I stood in her office having a ridiculous conversation about the MBA I was pursuing. She was perplexed by the fact that I had to take Accounting, Project Management, and Probability & Statistics classes. I was dumbfounded as to how she hadn't taken these classes (although having seen her "work" I was wondering how she had the intelligence to pass such a class). After looking up the colleges she graduated from I no longer had to wonder as to how she could be so clueless about basic business related topics even ones that anyone with a shred of common sense would understand without a degree.

I think that these programs rely on people who no other school will take and the loans they get (or their parents' willingness to pay for a degree, any degree, so that their kid can have a few letters after their name). Since they are not accredited they can teach whatever they want, or not teach.

[boysmom]

Their tuition looks much lower than 12 K, not sure where that came from. It says it's 7k'ish for out of state and 5 K'ish for in state, but that is PER YEAR, not semester, not sure why they do it that way.

The biggest problem that I have with Collegeplus is that it's unnecessary. 3000 dollars to teach you to self study to take CLEP exams? There's no reason for that. You still have to buy your own curriculum/study materials, so basically you are paying for nothing. I'm well aware of CLEP and think it's a great option for people who are self motivated enough to do it. But you do have to check the college you want to attend first to see what they will accept. I might encourage my kids to get some credit hours this way, but I won't have them use something stupid like Collegeplus, what a racket.