Still the only reason you are able to move forward towards this next phase of your life is because of all those nifty online colleges that are designed to let you earn your entire degree online. With the time and money you will save by not having to drive to the local community college you can afford to take a few extra classes.

All you have to do is enroll.

An editorial in the local newspaper catches your eye. A woman went back to school hoping that her newly minted degree would put her in line for a promotion at work. It wasn’t until several months later that she learned that the degree she hanging on her wall wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.

She responded to an e-mail. For a college degree all she had to do was send in a fee, take a couple of simple classes, and provide the school with a record of her life’s experiences. The whole process would only take a few months. The idea of having a bachelor’s degree in just a few months as opposed to the four years it would take at the local university was tempting. Added with the fact that this school was only going to charge her two thousand dollars compared to the twenty-five thousand dollars anywhere else she went was going to charge her and the offer became an irresistible siren’s song.

Now all the woman has to show for her efforts is a story, a degree that is only recognized by one school and a two thousand doller charge on her credit card.

Stories like this woman’s are all too common. Schools offering degrees for a one time fee and give credit for life experience are all over the place. They are called “degree mills”

Degree mills are not a new creation. As long as people have been earning degrees there have been places happy to hand them out.

The first red flag that a school is a degree mill is the low fee. It is rare for a bachelor’s degree to cost less then twenty thousand dollars. If a school offers you a lower price ask to see their accreditations.

The second red flag is the amount of credit a school is giving for life experience. No school offering a legitimate degree is going to hand out one hundred twenty credits for your life experience, no matter how exciting your life might be. Accredited colleges don’t make any money if you’re not enrolled in their classes. That doesn’t automatically mean if a school is accepting life experiences in exchange for credit that they are a degree mill, some schools do accept life experience but they only give a limited amount of credit for the experience.

If you’re unsure the school you are interested in is a degree mill all you have to do is contact the Council of Higher Education Accreditation. They have over three thousand schools and sixty accrediting agencies listed. If the school you are considering isn’t listed then your degree won’t be viable.

Getting a legitimate college degree online is not difficult provided you do your homework and don’t allow yourself to be tempted by an easy solution.

-----