5:29 PM best online colleges | ||||
#The 30 Best Affordable Online Colleges 2014 Posted December 2014 Online colleges have become popular in the 21st century, a time when even thousands of miles can’t keep someone from getting the education of their dreams. Over the past few decades, schools offering distance education programs have sprung up all around the country, opening their virtual doors to students in all 50 states and many other countries. These schools make use of the best that technology has to offer – such as video lectures, group chats, multimedia presentations, and interactive software – to provide distance education students with a quality of education that mirrors the traditional experience. If you’re looking for a top online college, consider our list below. We did many, many hours of research to compile a list of the best affordable online colleges in the U.S. for 2014. Featured Online Schools from this Ranking Our Methodology: The first step, of course, was to create a list of all the online schools in the United States. To qualify as an “online college,” an institution might be entirely online, offer a separate wing or division of its school (such as a “world campus”) through distance education, or simply offer a large number of its degrees online. We then collected data on eight indicators:
The last two indicators were given the least emphasis in the ranking because the data was not available for every school. For the last indicator, the College Prowler student polls refer to surveys that ask attendees to respond to questions regarding professor performance, academic support, efficiency of technology, selection of online classes, and more. Each of the schools was given a score based on its performance and how heavily the category was weighted. For example, the school with the least expensive tuition would get a score of 200 in that category (the higher the score, the better), while the school with the highest College Prowler academic rating would get a score of 100. Theoretically, if a school had the highest possible score in each of the eight categories, it would garner a total score of 1075. None of the schools reached this mark, but the University of Maryland University College came close (see below)! The scores as well as overall rankings are included for each school so you can get an idea of their performance. They are also listed according to affordability so you can scroll right to the schools that are in your price range. Because of the methodology used, these schools are not all the cheapest online colleges out there, but the ranking is meant to introduce you to schools that are a great value – in other words, they blend extremely high quality with overall affordability. If you need more convincing about their quality, take a look at the list of honors, awards, and rankings we included with each school. Many of them have quite impressive résumés of distinction! 30. Southern New Hampshire UniversityHooksett, New HampshireThe Southern Hampshire University — its main campus is located in the picturesque town of Manchester, N.H. — offers a robust online college experience with more than 200 undergraduate, graduate and certificate programs to choose from founded on a technologically sound platform. SNHU bolstered its claim to making higher education affordable and accessible to all students by announcing an online tuition freeze in 2014 for the third consecutive year. The SNHU Advantage Program is a proprietary financial aid program offered by the university to help students who wish to pursue an education without committing to a traditional undergrad day program. Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a revelation for recessionary times,” this program offers significant tuition savings, small class sizes, online tutoring options and access to teachers and advisors. Online degree students also have access to a fully-stocked library with access to hundreds of databases, 24/7 tech support and a virtual bookstore. SNHU is a fully accredited online college: In addition to a regional accreditation in New England (NEASC), the university also holds specialized program accreditations for business (ACBSP), hospitality administration, teacher certification, and sport education (NASSM). Specialized accreditations for nursing and sport management programs are currently in the works.
Tuition: $28,884
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