How To Earn Your Legit Accredited Bachelors Degree In Six Months Or Less

SmarttChick Level 2 Commenter 4 months ago

This is really helpful information! I would like to point out a couple things however for the general readership.

When the United States was a manufacturing giant, having a degree - any degree - was a ticket into the managerial classes and a good-paying job. With the advent of the GI Bill, and the subsequent marketization of higher education (see Derek Bok's book on the subject), the bachelor's (and even master's!) degree is not what it once was. In fact, Dr Ken Gray wrote that it is now "a ticket to stand in line".

Indeed, in today's economy, having that piece of paper is no guarantee of anything other than an obligation to pay off student loans, whether you have a better job or are still working at the local fast food joint.

You may benefit from a generic bachelor's degree in the following circumstances:

- you are already working in a firm that is supportive of you and you have an excellent track record with them. They want to promote you but require that degree for promotion.

- you are an established business person with a set of significant skills that are highly-sought-after in the workforce and the degree is the "icing on the cake".

Otherwise, a generic degree with no subsequent body of work or specific skills should be pursued if and ONLY if you can do it for as little financial outlay as possible. In other words, once you finish your degree, unless you are a software engineer from a well-recognized school, do not expect the heavens to open and people to start calling you recruiting you for a job. Even NURSES (RNs) are finding it a tough market in some areas.

Case in point: I worked in a health care environment where we needed the use of some temporary administrative help. We received "Ellen" from temp services, a woman with a BA degree AND a Master's in Organizational Development. She had decent credentials but we had to let her go after just a month because she knew nothing that was applicable in the work environment (general office/business) and she was seemingly untrainable. She could not figure out how to work the fax, even after being shown how to do it multiple times. She was never able to maneuver in the computer environment and opening and using MS Word sent her into a tail spin. She was not knowledgeable about basic business practices and really was an impediment to business because we had to check anything she sent out because her writing was not professional enough to be left unchecked. In other words, her degrees meant nothing at the end of the day, and unfortunately, she is not alone.

Just having a piece of paper will NOT guarantee you a job; make sure you have some SKILLS, and are knowledgeable about the business you want to enter. How do you do this?

Volunteer one day a week in an office related to your area of study. Take an entry-level job in the business you want to work in and get that degree over time, without BORROWING large sums of money. Prove yourself to the employer while you are earning that degree so that when you finish, and have the piece of paper, it has some meaning.

Once you have relevant work experience AND that degree, you will be much more desirable to future employers.

Also, as a long time faculty member and academic adviser, many students come to college with a list of CLEP and tested out courses, but often - in the degree programs that provide students the skills most desirable in the workforce, these "credits" are nice, and appear on the transcript but will not eliminate the required coursework that is needed to grant you the degree.

At the end of the day, do your homework. If you are working, talk to HR or a boss about what the degree will mean. Is it worth borrowing money to attain? If so, how much? Do you know what your potential salary might be once you get that degree? If you borrow $50,000 to finish a BS degree, and you're only getting a 50-cent an hour raise, with no promises after that, will that help you pay the approximately $500/monthly student loans that you now have? Can you leave that work place and land a job that will pay you enough to afford it?

Google the terms "student loan repayment calculator" and look at how much you are going to have to take OUT of your budget each month to pay back that loan, and plug this into your budget before signing ANY loan documents, and remember: your local community college and many public universities offer online/distance education options at a FRACTION of the price of many other institutions and you can "pay as you go" so that if you get that higher paying position, YOU can keep the money.

Wesley Meacham Level 3 Commenter 4 weeks ago

This is an interesting hub. I have often said that if I had to do things over again the first thing I would do is take every CLEP test offered. I would say that most of your hub is factual. However a couple of times you've mentioned not having a HSD or a GED. I'm not aware of any college or University that will allow you to enroll in their school without one of these.