Thus, I know the benefits and feasibility of students earning college diplomas by their own, solitary study and without setting foot in a college classroom. I earned 2½ years of college credit during a 2¾-year period during which I worked a job the entire time (part-time for ten months, full-time the remaining 23 months) and never visited a college campus except to take proctored exams or to use the libraries.
The questions that my reader has of me now are probably those I had when I first contemplated the options that I took. Those questions were:
- How is the student's progress verified, and is that evidence of a form that will satisfy future employers or graduate schools that the study was performed?
The answer to each of these questions require a short section of this web page all its own; you'll reach the answers most quickly through the links. For now, I turn attention to one more question:
- Is this the best move?
For me, the answer was Yes, for these reasons:
Classes never became closed to me because of the body-counts filling the limited number of seats before my turn at enrollment, and course-work was not spread over more or fewer weeks than I found best for my study abilities and rate of absorption of the material. Typically, I did have to finish a homework-containing course (of which I enrolled in few) within nine months, but given that two months was more typical of my time requirements, this restriction did not faze me, and I was better off than in conventional education, wherein I would have had to endure difficulties should I not have understood previous material when the time had come to be presented some overriding concepts to go atop the fuzzy-to-me ones not truly learned by me in a subsequent lecture.
I chose almost all of the 21 courses I would have to take before I ever officially began in the program. A few new courses which I deemed better for me than those I had originally chosen, became available during my 2¾ years of course-work, so I made substitutions. A very few courses were withdrawn from availability during the time I was enrolled, but there were always several months advanced notice before the terminations became effective, so I had sufficient opportunity to take these exams before they were permanently withdrawn.
Fees paid by me, to the best of my knowledge, covered the costs of providing the exams, exams which typically set me back $45-$60, and never more than $140. (I exclude here the higher price I paid for each of two state-university-operated mail-order courses which each had two proctored exams. Full cost information will be detailed in a subsequent section. For now, be aware that these two more-expensive courses were optional, there having been cheaper alternatives.) If taxpayer money subsidized any part of my earning these credits, it was likely not much. Contrast this to the $10,000 per year of state money that typically supplements the $4,000 a year paid in tuition by college students at state colleges. I gloried in knowing that I was not emptying the pockets of my fellow citizens, let alone not doing it to prop up and perpetuate a corrupt system of mis-education and tenured employment of the lowest ranks of the conceptually incompetent.
Testing
organizations:
Regents College
Proficiency Examination Program (formerly American College
Testing's PEP)
College-Level Examination Program
College Board Online
(search at site for: "Advanced Placement Program")
Thomas Edison College Examination Program
Microsoft
Certification Home Page
Colleges
offering Low-Cost Credit-Banking Programs:
Regents College
DistanceLearn program (Regents College has also been known as
the University of the State of New York, a pioneer in non-
traditional education.)
University of
Missouri Center for Independent Study / Distance Education
Program
Thomas Edison College Examination Program
California
State University, Dominguez Hills
Links to
Groups of Other Links
Handilinks to Distance Learning
Microsoft
Certification Exam Resource Page
In the previous section, I wrote of accredited
colleges awarding
academic credits for the passing of exams offered by these
colleges, other colleges, and independent testing organizations,
and that these examinations were proctored to assure verity of
the results.
One of the general principles of this method of
pursuing a degree
is that if a student can pass the final examination of a course,
there's little reason to hold it against him that he neither
attended classes nor submitted homework. Several academic
organizations put this theory into reality by offering exams
which, if passed, colleges will accept just as readily as
transferred courses when awarding course credit.
(Organizations
and programs offering exams include American College Testing
Proficiency Examination Program, DANTES Subject Standardized
Tests, College Level Examination Program, and Thomas Edison
College Examination Program.)
How much did these exams cost to
take? A substantial number of
them had total fees payable to the university or organization of
$45, and of those that didn't, the majority of those cost me $60.
For three I took which entailed essay answers rather than
multiple-choice responses, the fee for each was $140. On
each of two course I took which had eight homework assignments (which
took the form of multiple-choice questions answered on a scantron
sheet), a proctored midterm and a proctored final exam, I spent
about $200. (These amounts do not include monies spent on
textbooks, nor of local proctoring, both of which I'll have more
to say later.) These latter were the most expensive of the
courses, and had it not been that these were in subjects highly
desirable to me and which were not offered elsewhere ("Cognitive
Psychology" and "Perception"), I would have taken advantage of
more of the many $45 exams available to me.
Thumb prints were taken of me when I arrived to
take some of the tests. At these tests and at others, I provided and left
behind (as required) photograph of myself; the proctor with whom I
signed in would compare the photograph to me to make sure that
the photograph was of the same person standing before him.
(Given that the photo departments of major drugstore chains offer
15 reprints for $2.59, it was not at all expensive to leave
behind a permanent image of the exam-taker seen by the proctors
at the test site.) I contend that I could more
incontrovertibly
assert that I did not use ringers than could be claimed by some
students who take exams in the large auditoriums at conventional
universities.
Two of the testing organizations I used which were
not affiliated with a university, provided proctoring as part of the examination
fees; in these cases, the proctoring was offered only at a date
and time prescribed by the testing organization; such
organizations kept their costs low by having many students taking
a variety of exams in one room under the watchful eyes of two
testing administrators. (Intelligently, the administrators
worked out ahead of time a seating arrangement for the students
that would ensure that students would be seated near only
students taking exams in different subjects.) Typically,
test dates were limited to one day per month per location; locations
were sufficiently plentiful, there having been three alone in Los
Angeles County.
Amounts paid by me to Thomas Edison State College
did not include
fees for proctoring should the exams be taken outside the state
of New Jersey or within New Jersey on dates not set by the
College for group testing. Thomas Edison State College provides
proctoring at no additional charge to its students at its four
sites in New Jersey at a few scheduled sessions each month.
For someone residing in California such as I was, it was practical
that I sought proctoring services local to me. One
community college provided proctoring for $10 per test at times
when an otherwise-empty office room was available and an
administrator knew that during the test hours she would be in the
vicinity (to look in on me at irregular intervals). Once a
change in the job duties at that college led to the end of that
option, I made arrangements with another college (Calif. State
Univ. Northridge) which offered proctoring for $15 an hour
(charging only for time used, not the maximum time permitted) at
almost any time during normal business hours, subject only to
blackout dates during periods when the college could expect their
enrolled students to schedule substantial numbers of exams.
Exams detached from college courses are not as
full-fledged
course; there aren't as many subjects offered to students who
won't be attending on campus. The testing organizations
named by
me in my previous installment collectively offer exams in
hundreds of topics, yet this number of subjects is minuscule
compared to the number of college courses available. Even
after eliminating the many junk and anti-conceptual-by-premise courses
offered on campuses, there are valuable subjects for which
equivalency-credits-earning methods are desirable and yet are not
offered by the testing organizations. Fortunately, students
can nonetheless earn academic credits for these subjects without
attending on campus.
The solution is to do something other than take
exams or attend a college campus. It's called "Portfolio
Assessment."
Thomas Edison State College offers a wonderful
service that permits its enrolled non-traditional students to
earn credit in nearly any subject for which credit could be
earned anywhere by conventional means. Called "Portfolio
Assessment," this program enables students to
submit proof that a given subject is offered for college credit
at an accredited college anywhere in the United States. A
photocopy of a page from a college course catalog, accompanied by
its citation, suffices to make this claim (subject to
confirmation by the university). The student then offers to
submit proof that he has mastered the material that would be
taught in a course of that time-frame; an airplane-pilot's
license proves that one has mastered the course-work of a flying
class, for example. Microsoft certification substantiates a
claim of mastering an aspect of computer programming. For
subjects on which proficiency is not be measured by recognized
means, the college permits the student to submit a project and to
make himself available for a verbal test. Phone exams can
be scheduled so as to spare students from visiting a distant
campus; proctors at schools local to the student can be visited
by the student for the phone exam, and the proctor can attest to
the identity of the student in the same manner as they do for
equivalency exams and they can watch that no notes or
inappropriate memory aides are used.
Portfolio Assessment projects, which might be more
easily called "equivalency projects," may take the form of terms
papers or something else. A computer program written by the
student might prove ideal for illustrating the student's mastery
of computer programming. For myself, on some subjects, I
submitted multi-layered time-lines, comparison tables, or
schematic charts as I often found these far more conducive to my
education than would have been a conventional prose composition.
Portfolio Assessment in two ways multiplied the
number of courses for which I could earn distance-learning
credit: a) it provided
the opportunity to earn credit in core courses for which
ready-made exams had not been prepared for non-classroom
learners, and b) it opened up to me the full
range of courses offered at hundreds (if not thousands) of
colleges, rather than limiting me to the offerings of just one
college, the number of courses of which would be limited
regardless of the size of the college.
This first provision enabled me to earn equivalency credit for
"Logic" even though Thomas Edison State College (nor any of the
large testing organizations) did not offer the subject as an
equivalency exam. However, inasmuch as Thomas Edison State
College did have one or more professors who taught a standard
Logic course in a conventional classroom setting, it was possible
for such a professor to examine my submissions to determine
whether I had learned the material that I would have learned in a
classroom course. To earn credit for
subjects for which Thomas Edison did not offer courses and did
not have a resident expert among their faculty, the college
allows students to propose their own accredited expert and to
allow the student to approach that expert on behalf of the
program.
The second provision named above ("Portfolio
Assessment multiplied the number of courses for which I could
earn distance-learning credit ... [by] open[ing] up to me the
full range of courses offered at hundreds of colleges, rather
than limiting me to the offerings of just one college") made it
possible for me to earn credit in "Cognitive Psychology" and
"Perception"--courses that proved to be all too rare in college
catalogs despite (or possibly because of) the rationality and
value represented by these courses.
To become a nontraditional-learning student of
Thomas Edison State College requires being accepted by the
admissions office as such a student (which entails a modest fee)
and payment of annual fees of roughly $900. (Residents of
New Jersey pay somewhat less. There are a few other
categories for which reduced fees are set, e.g., military
veterans.)
This section concerns: the advantages and adjustments of a
student who does his learning somewhere other than in classrooms.
In pursuing a degree by independent study, I did
not have to put up with professors who merely recited what I had
already read in the textbook, who misunderstood what was stated
in the textbook, who pretended to understand student questions
before providing non-answer responses with the pretense of
authority. What's more, I was spared having to experience
an overwhelming compulsion to correct the teacher for the benefit
of the other students while fearing professorial reprisal -- or
to ridicule the points made by the lecturer in the hope that the
teacher and other students would see an alternative without my
being unwelcomely clear when I had a precisely-formulated
opposing view.
People often ask what kind of life one subjects himself to by
pursuing his education in this way. For me, it meant
learning while making a living. By tape-recording my notes,
I could listen to my study materials while performing a job that
could be done simultaneously with listening. When I found
that I had learned most of the material on a tape, I would reach
for a hand-held cassette recorder I kept nearby and would speak
into it those few facts not yet learned as the first tape reached
those points. The new, shorter tape then would take the
place of the old in my listening.
(Among jobs that lend themselves to cassette-listening without
impairment of work performance: driving an automobile as part of
a messenger's job, cleaning, manufacturing, fisheries, and
photo-processing. Those adventuresome and willing to leave
a populated area might try prospecting for gold.)
Some say that a student misses a vital part
of the college experience by not being among other students who
are pursuing the same courses. If there could be any
validity to that claim, the other students would have to offer an
appropriate, educational value. Such might be found: fellow
students whose contributions to a conversation would elucidate
rather than render the class into a bull session. Still,
isn't it outrageously expensive to
meet them through payment of thousands of dollar in tuition
(which goes to faculty, not the students who allegedly provide
this value), when -- if non-traditional methods of obtaining an
education were better known -- these people could meet one
another through local internet announcements of the
classified-ads sort, or through newspaper ads classified as
"Groups Forming." The major Los Angeles daily paper has in
its classifieds, within the personals ads, a subcategory for
"Groups Forming," whereby those responding pay $1.29 a minute to
leave recorded messages asking the group originator to inform
them of date, time and place. Unofficial classrooms could
be formed in this manner.
I did not waste time commuting to and from a campus, then to the
classrooms, and I did not have to toy with living in one of the
expensive, cramped, noisy apartments commonly found near college
campuses, subjected to the blasted heavy-metal rock and
drunkenness prevalent in those neighborhoods.
Another concern of many students and their parents: the caliber
of the college granting the diploma. "Ivy league" is still
considered more prestigious than non-"Ivy." On this score,
students should realize that the academic credit granted by
Thomas Edison State College (and other colleges offering the same
services) on its transcripts is indistinguishable from that for
traditional courses. Students wanting the diploma of a
traditional, prestigious university for which he is qualified may
make preparations to enroll in said school for the student's
final year or semester, earning freshman-through-junior level
credit through less-expensive means. The success of such
plans will be contingent upon the student being acceptable to the
university as a late transfer, the university's limits on
accepting more than a particular number of upperclassmen
transfers, and the possible concern by traditional colleges that
were such transfers were to become too commonplace that they
would suffer in the form of fewer applications from potential
freshmen. Students planning to transfer schools should ask
questions of the schools to which they plan to apply in subsequent years.
Some people insist that homework is vital to
learning. It can be, I concede, but the key word is
"can." Each student comprehends at different rates, and even
within a given student, the speed of grasping new concepts can
vary by subject or by day. I gauged myself to set my study
load. Homework and projects were done as plentifully or as
scarcely as I considered necessary for my learning. When my
hand-made flashcards had been of tremendous aid in my learning
the material, I opted to not exert effort on prose compositions,
graphs, concept maps, or more elaborate projects. If I
caught myself weak in some areas--if I could not answer the
questions in the chapter review of a textbook--I assigned myself
to make a chart, table, or whatever was appropriate.
The same textbooks available to regular college
students can be bought by students who study without college
classroom attendance. What's more, the textbooks
recommended by testing organizations and by Thomas Edison can
often be found in the libraries of colleges that assign
comparable but different textbooks to their students in
commensurate classes. One needn't be enrolled in colleges
near one's home to use the facilities or even to borrow
books. The University of California system offered me a
one-year non-U.C.-student library card, entitling me to borrow books, for
$72. Better still, they provide free borrowing privileges
to alumni-association members, and inasmuch as one needn't to
have graduated or even attended a U.C. to be eligible for
membership, and with alumni association membership selling for
$45 a year, that was the better buy.
Thomas Edison State College is on the net at www.tesc.edu. When
last I visited their site, they had general information about
their programs, but for specific information about courses
offered they referred interested parties to their print catalog,
which they sell for $15.
My working while pursuing a degree had a reward:
unlike most college students, I graduated school with more money
in the bank than I had when I started.
Sources:
Bear's Guide to
Earning College Degrees Nontraditionally. Superb book
on distance learning, published in updated editions for 20+
years, and an invaluable resource for this student. The web
site offers excepts. The section on diploma mills is very
funny.
University of the
State of New York -- long-time provider of nontraditional
means of earning accredited college degrees, now calling itself
Regents College
Lyceum International
-- unaccredited at the time of this writing, this organization is
nonetheless worthy for several reasons: 1) its faculty also teach
elsewhere and thus deliver the caliber of an accredited college;
this fact might help sway the officials of other colleges to
grant academic credit for the successful completion of a Lyceum
course; 2) Lyceum is committed to presenting material subjected
to the rigors of reason; relativism is disdained, logic is
upheld, productivity is applauded.
Proficiency
Examination Program (formerly administered by American
College Testing, now by Regents College)
The present author's comments
on two University of Missouri courses
Sources on Today's Intellectual
Atmosphere -- why did I refer to today's educators as the
"lowest ranks of the conceptually incompetent"? Find out
from these links to superb commentary from those who have worked
decades in the "college trenches."
And for students of
literature, here's a resource devoted to full texts of the standard
repertoire of the past:
Project
Gutenberg -- a one-stop source for writings on which
copyright has expired
Entire contents © 1998 David P.
Hayes
2: PROCTORED EXAMS
3: WIDE CHOICE OF
SUBJECTS
4: NEVER ATTENDING A
CLASS
5: STUDY MATERIALS FOR THE UNCONVENTIONAL
STUDENT
To contact author David P. Hayes by
email, type this address (with no spaces) in your email
program:
