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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 25 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 39788 |
| Visitors Out: 1040 |
| Total Visitors Out: 2197 |
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| OEDb’s online college rankings published |
| 2008-01-29 20:22:37 |
The Online Education Database has published their second annual online college rankings. This is a good reference if you have several distance education schools in mind and are trying to decide between them. The metrics gathered appear to be very thorough, though my own alma mater, Thomas Edison State College, didn’t make the list for [...]...
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| Some encouraging advice |
| 2008-01-29 17:43:19 |
The Teaching Home is a magazine for Christian home educators. A few years ag, they published some suggestions for parents and students who are considering higher education. If you’ve been wondering what the Biblical motivations and goals behind higher education should be, this is an excellent read.
Read the full article....
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| Phyllis Schlaffly: College not always necessary |
| 2008-01-16 19:14:47 |
While the price of a college education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation, many careers for which colleges prepare their graduates are disappearing. U.S. News‘ Best Careers guide concludes that “college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers” because B.A. diploma holders “are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills.”
Read the full article....
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| Why it doesn’t pay to get straight A’s in college |
| 2007-12-29 10:45:00 |
I worked hard to get good grades my first few years of college. My last year, I was tired of the whole college deal (and was working full time in my career field already) so I didn’t stress out quite so much about getting straight A’s.
I still got a decent GPA, but in the end [...]...
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| Career advice for the college grad |
| 2007-06-27 19:42:28 |
Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog that I track regularly. One recent post was about how important it is to have actual job experience after graduating.
The premise of the article is that a typical college grad won’t have any experience and will be forced to take an entry-level position as a receptionist or [...]...
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| Interesting quote |
| 2007-06-17 15:46:36 |
I was reading over a page of quotes today and came across this one from an unknown source:
“A knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible.”
How very true!
Read the full page of quotes....
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| Mini-revolt at Macalester college |
| 2007-06-12 20:06:26 |
This article by Katherine Kersten perfectly illustrates what a struggle it can be to encourage even a small amount of intellectual diversity on a college campus. If students are steeped in course material like this day in and day out, how can they help but pick up the leftist mantra?
Take the Macalester curriculum. What comes [...]...
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| Thanks for attending |
| 2007-05-27 11:29:01 |
To those of you who made it to my talk at NCHE last Saturday, thanks for attending! One gentleman pointed out to me afterwards that Baker’s Guide to Christian Distance Education by Jason D. Baker was not listed in the handout. I apologize for the oversight. Aside from the book, Baker also has a new [...]...
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| What can distance education do for you? |
| 2007-05-25 16:34:15 |
Here’s an interesting article about distance education that was published by a news station in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite the fact that it’s targeted at adults who want to go back to school, it contains a good overview of distance education along with some valuable warnings about what to watch out for when picking a program....
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| Speaking at NCHE again this year |
| 2007-05-24 13:43:11 |
I’ll be speaking at the North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE) state conference in Winston-Salem again this year. I’m giving my distance education talk on Saturday, May 26th, from 12:30 to 1:30 PM in South Main 3. A few of the points I’ll cover include:
Why distance education is a good alternative to traditional college for [...]...
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| More programs offer free tuition |
| 2006-10-29 18:01:45 |
For the student who is really looking to cut costs, here is an informative article contributed by one of our readers. It seems that more and more colleges and universities are offering enough tuition assistance to basically eliminate most or all of the cost of earning a degree. Of course, you typically must meet certain [...]...
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| Are academic elites communists? |
| 2006-09-05 22:00:13 |
Well, no, not necessarily. But what Walter Williams is arguing in this column is that many professors are against those who are anti-Communist. As Walter writes:
Leftist elites love the ideas of communism so much that they are either blind to, or tolerant of, its many shortcomings.
I certainly witnessed a small portion of this intolerance during [...]...
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| Paying for college |
| 2006-08-16 12:51:21 |
Another article about paying for college comes our way courtesy of Fox News. It gives some interesting statistics about the average cost of college tuition and also provides figures on other expenses parents should be prepared to pay if their child will be living on campus.
In 2002-2003, the average annual cost (tuition, room and board) [...]...
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| University refuses Christian groups |
| 2006-08-10 20:48:38 |
University of Wisconsin officials are being warned their refusal to recognize Christian student groups is illegal.
Not a surprising development considering the stance most colleges take towards Christianity. What’s interesting is that, in this case at least, the university is being publicly challenged on the issue.
There is no denying that students can still participate in similar [...]...
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| How do I find a proctor? |
| 2006-08-05 21:10:21 |
Most distance education programs require that you take your mid-term and final exams under the supervision of a proctor. Finding one isn’t difficult if you know where to look. Your local library is a good place to begin your search. Any certified librarian can act as a proctor for you. This is the route I took since I have a library close by. Another option is to find a proctor at a local community college. A proctor from a college may charge a nominal fee, though. Either way is acceptable in most distance education programs. You should check what the requirements are for your specific program.
Once you’ve located a proctor, you will typically need to have them complete a short form. This is a one-time request the allows the college to verify that you chose a qualified proctor. Thomas Edison State College has an example of their proctor request form online. After submitting the form and verifying that the college has processed it, you may then begin taking your exams under ...
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| An easy way to build high school transcripts |
| 2006-08-04 03:00:00 |
My brother, David, and I are in the process of developing a web application to make the work of building professional School">high school transcripts (suitable for submission to colleges) fast and easy.
Traditionally, the process of building a transcript for a home schooler has been quite involved. My own parents and I designed my transcript using an Excel spreadsheet. It was painstakingly slow! Many books on home schooling through high school have transcript templates in them, but the process of photocopying and filling them out is time consuming.
It is because of this that we decided to create Teascript, a web application that makes generation of transcripts simple. Teascript is still under development, but we’ve put up a teaser page highlighting some of the planned features of the application. The page also allows you to sign-up to receive notification when Teascript goes live. We encourage you to take 30 seconds and check it out!
We truly want this app to be a useful service to other...
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| Don’t ask, just pay |
| 2006-07-26 06:14:16 |
So you scraped together the money to pay tuition for your child’s first year in college, and you would like to see a report card when spring semester ends this month.
Sorry. You can’t have that.
This is an excerpt from a News & Observer article published earlier this year. The article goes into detail about how parents are routinely denied information from their students’ records. Now, this isn’t so different from the way government schools frequently operate in elementary and high school, but it is a definite paradigm shift for home school parents who are used to knowing everything about their childrens’ academic progress.
Even parents of children who graduated from public school have good reason to be outraged. Apparently, these colleges will accept thousands of dollars in annual tuition from the parents, then deny them access to information that would tell them whether or not their funds are being used correctly.
The fascinating thing about this art...
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| What is concurrent education? |
| 2006-07-20 16:50:52 |
Another question I received during my NCHE workshop was in reference to something called “concurrent education” and whether it was compatible with distance education.
I wasn’t familiar with the phrase at the time the question was asked, but after doing some research it seems that it’s just another name for what many home schoolers choose to do: enroll in college-level courses while still in high school. This is often a very smart thing to do because the credit earned can be applied towards both a high school diploma AND a college degree. However, many families choose not to opt for dual enrollment because it can sometimes put an unnecessary strain on the student. (I myself chose not to pursue this avenue during my high school years.) For some families, though, it can be an excellent fit.
Back to the original question: can concurrent education/dual enrollment programs be pursued at a distance? The answer is: ABSOLUTELY! In fact, I would venture to say that dual e...
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| In debt before you start |
| 2006-06-27 16:18:17 |
This article published in USA Today earlier this month provides some interesting statistics on college students and debt. Did you know that the average college senior graduates with $19,000 in debt? That’s average. And, as the article highlights, the number of grads with $100,000 or more in debt is rapidly rising. Does this sound like a firm foundation to build a family and a career on? Not to me. Yet students continue getting themselves in debt by taking a conventional approach to earning a degree. By pursuing alternatives like distance education, students can minimize or even eliminate debt and graduate without that burden on them.
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| Is ITT Technical Institute accredited? |
| 2006-06-08 05:16:17 |
One question I received after the distance education workshop at NCHE this year was if ITT Technical Institute is accredited. I assume the attendee who asked was considering them as a possible distance education provider.
The answer is yes, ITT Tech is accredited, but not by a regional accrediting body. Regional accreditation is what to look for when choosing a good distance education school because regionally accredited schools have met very high educational standards. Also, if a school is regionally accredited it is typically easier to transfer college credit into and out of the school.
This goes back to the question of what your ultimate educational goals are. If you want to earn a degree that will generally be recognized by employers as being from a quality institution, regional accreditation is a must. If your only goal in attending school is learning a skill that you will then put to use in your own business or in an employment scenario that is less strict about such things, regi...
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