College For Vagabonds: How to Use Old Credits, Equivalency Tests, and Work Experience to Get a Degree Online at a "Credit Collator" School

It's tough for working adults to find time to go to college. It's particularly frustrating when you already possess much of the knowledge and skill required for the degree you're seeking.

Most accredited schools have a rigid process that requires you to take two academic years of irrelevant prerequisite degrees, which the school may force you into even if you've completed similar courses in the past. With many colleges having problems with overcrowding, it can be tough to get into these "bottleneck" courses, let alone at a time that is convenient for you.

And then, of course, there's the cost of it all. College is expensive even if you're just paying for the classes you need. By the time you get through all the bureaucratic padding, the price (and the time it all takes) may have doubled.

There is an alternative to this process: an online "credit collator" university that has more liberal policies than usual about transfer and testing credits. By transferring old credits, taking free and low-cost courses at your own pace (that culminate with a final test for credit), and taking equivalency exams like the CLEP for the material you're already deeply familiar with, you can shave a considerable amount of the time and cost off of the traditional degree process.

How Credit Collators Work

The main difference between the "credit collators" and typical online colleges is that they are much more generous about accepting transfer credits and credits that come from equivalency tests.

A credit collator college still needs to be regionally accredited for the degrees it issues to mean anything, however. That's the tricky tightrope that universities of this nature have to walk. There are a lot of "diploma mill" scam schools out there that are not accredited, will gladly accept any credits you send them, and print you out a degree that is entirely worthless.

A set of schools known as the "Big Three" have managed to maintain regional accreditation while also being able to take the majority of the credits for their degree program from somewhere other than the school itself. There indeed may be other schools that are accredited and legitimate, but these three are the originals in this space and are the most established and reputable at present. They are:

* Excelsior College (Albany, NY)

* Thomas Edison State University (Trenton, NJ)

* Charter Oak State College (New Britain, CT)

These three colleges accept online applicants from all over the United States. Readers in Canada might look into Athabasca University, a somewhat similar distance learning school for residents of that country.

There are four main factors in the handling of degree credits that make these schools stand out from the typical online-only degree program.

* They accept a wider range of transfer credits from other institutions than is usual

* They offer more ways to "test out" of classes with an equivalency exam and get immediate credit

* They have free and low-cost course options that can lead to credit by passing a final test administered by the school

* They have some means of translating relevant work and life experience to college credit

No accredited school will grant a degree solely from credits obtained outside of its walls, but when all of these methods are used to the fullest, you can reduce the number of credits you have to take at the school (in the form of online classes) to as few as 20 credits (doable in one semester in person). If a liberal arts bachelor's degree meets your needs, Excelsior allows you to transfer in up to 117 credits, which means you would only need to take four at the school to get the degree.

Degree Limitations

One limitation of these schools is that they only offer a relatively limited amount of degree options, and your transfer credits must be relevant to one of those programs.

Excelsior offers degrees in business, health sciences, nursing, criminal justice, public administration, IT, and electrical and nuclear engineering.

Thomas Edison State has degrees in accounting, communications, computer science, criminal justice, English, international studies, history, mathematics, psychology, sociology, nursing, and marketing among others.

Charter Oak offers degrees in most of the areas listed above, with the addition of a 36-credit paralegal program and some certificate programs.

There are also time limits on transfer credits. Each school has its standards, which vary by degree program. However, in general, the credits can't be more than 10 years old. In a few fields where things change quickly, like health care technology, transfer credits may have to be no older than five years. Credits in fields whose fundamentals don't change much, like English and basic math, can be good for as long as 15 years.

Sources of Credits

Aside from transferring your eligible college-level credits in, you can earn credits from the following external sources:

* CLEP

* DANTES

* APUS/DSST

* American Council on Education (ACE) approved exams

* National College Credit Recommendation Service (NCCRS) approved exams

* Various IT certifications (ex: CompTIA, Cisco, and Oracle)

* New York University Foreign Language Proficiency Exams

Credit granted for work and life experience, or previous education not covered by transfer credits, is usually handled through a formal learning assessment conducted by the school.

How Well Does "Credit Banking" Ultimately Work?

Each employer places a value on the quality of each degree they see. The degrees granted by these schools are regionally accredited, however, which at least puts them on the same footing of legitimacy of any other college or university.

Students will also ultimately have to take some classes at the college, at the cost of around $300 per credit for a regular online course. However, in some cases, the school facilitates an "open course" alternative that is either free or costs much less than the standard per-credit rate. Students use a well-regarded program such as MIT Open Courseware to take the class at their own pace, then take a test administered by the college when they are ready to obtain their credit.

Going to a "credit collator" college is ultimately better for a degree or certificate that is more about satisfying a standard requirement than competing on quality of education in a crowded field. It also can work quite well as a faster and cheaper means of breaking through an annoying career ceiling.