Are Fast Online Degrees Legitimate?

One of the things that a lot of people pursuing online degrees have in common is that they want to get their degree done as quickly as possible. Usually this is because they are working professionals who need the degree for a promotion or to move into a better job. Not surprisingly since there is a demand for fast online degrees there are now a lot of schools offering them. This does however beg the question of whether or not these degrees are legitimate.

Unfortunately in a lot of cases these fast degrees are not legitimate. This is particularly true of the ones that promise that they will award you a degree based on life experience, real colleges simply don't do this. In order to get a degree you are going to have to put in the work and that does take time. There are however a few options that can get you a degree fairly quickly, at least for some people.

The first thing that you have to make sure of if you want to get on a fast track degree program is to make sure that the school that is offering the degree is properlyaccredited. This means that they must have regional accreditation, any school that does not have this is crap and should be avoided.

Once you have found a legitimate school that will allow you a fast degree you have to look at your options for getting credit. The best way to do this is if you already have credits from other schools. A lot of people have started college programs that they never finished, these credits can still be useful. The big challenge that most people have is fitting them into a coherent degree program and meeting residency requirements. Fortunately there are a few schools that have no residency requirement which will allow you to take credits earned from several other schools and grant you a degree based on them. The so called big three, Excelsior College, Charter Oak State College and Thomas Edison State College are the best options in this regard.

Another way to get degree credit quickly is for work experience. While no legitimate college is going to give you credit for life experience many of them will give you credit for work experience and training that you received at your job. In order to qualify for this you will need to create a portfolio of all of the things that you did and learned as part of your job.

The third option for a fast online degree is testing out. There are a number of tests that you can take that will give you college credit without requiring that you take any courses. In some cases it is possible to complete a full degree just based on these tests. The most common testing options are CLEP, Dantes, ECE, and Ohio University, do a search for them and you will find lots of information. The major issue with testing of course is that you have to know the material, many people however can pass a lot of the tests with just a short amount of studying.