Many people are unable to take classes on the campus of a four-year college or university. Taking community college courses may also not be an option.
MOOCs (massive open online courses) are worthy of careful consideration. Based on my research, there seem to be two major considerations: the field in which you wish to take courses, and, the overall academic quality of the given institution.
Here is a portion of an article featured by “The Best Schools” website. To learn more about its available resources, please click here.
To check out its highly informative The Savvy Student’s Guide to Online Colleges and Online Education, please click here.
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Online colleges — and online education more generally — have seen an enormous increase in student e-learners over the last decade. Ten years ago, America saw around two million higher education students learning online. That number has now almost quadrupled.
According to a 2015 report by Babson Research titled Tracking Online Education in the United States, today the number of college students learning online exceeds seven million. With the overall higher education student body in the U.S. currently at 21 million, that means one out of three college students is taking at least one course entirely online.
It’s therefore no surprise that online colleges and universities, which focus on delivering course content exclusively online, have proliferated. These schools enable students to finish a degree program and graduate with little more than a laptop and Internet connection.
Nonetheless, online colleges and universities differ widely in quality.Moreover, with increasing competition for online students, many campus-based schools are now getting into the mix and offering online degrees. For this reason, rankings of online colleges and universities need to be regularly updated.
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The article lists and discusses what it considers to be the best online colleges for 2016. Here are the Top Ten:
1. Penn State World Campus
2. University of Florida Distance Learning
3. U Mass Online
4. Boston University
5. Northeastern University
6 Indiana University, IU Online
7. Arizona State University, ASU Online
8. Florida State University, Office of Distance Learning
9. Drexel University, Drexel Online
10. Oregon State University, OSU Ecampus
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Keep in mind that most college textbooks can be rented from Amazon.