Accredited Life Experience Degree Programs
Are Life Experience Degrees Legitimate?
You have probably received an email message that offered you the chance to quickly and easily earn a "prestigious" degree based on life experience. Perhaps they ask for copies of transcripts, test scores, job reports, or personal narratives. They might even mention how people with college degrees earn far more money than those without undergraduate or graduate degrees. Are these legitimate?
In general, the answer to the question of whether life experience degrees are legitimate is no. You cannot earn a credible degree based on life experience. No accredited college or university in the United States will offer "life experience degrees". But there is a program that is very similar and always confuse by many people to be “life experience degrees” is Online Prior Learning Assessment Programs.
Under the Online Prior Learning Assessment Programs, you can earn an entire associates or bachelors degree through a demonstration of prior learning. Demonstrating prior learning typically involves using transfer credits, credit by examination, or portfolio development and evaluation. Note that prior learning assessment is a more formal procedure than so-called credit for life experience and is recognized as a legitimate means of granting credit. If you can demonstrate that you have learned something equivalent to content taught in a college course, then you can earn college credits and apply them an undergraduate degree. The accredited school best suited for prior learning degrees is Thomas Edison State College.
The Online Prior Learning Assessment Programs are only applied for undergraduate degrees; it doesn't apply to graduate programs. While you may be able to earn a few graduate credits based on prior learning assessment, they are generally limited to a handful, if any. If you closely examine the schools that advertise graduate degrees based on life experience, you will notice that they aren't accredited by a recognized agency, and so you would be wise to avoid such programs.
A legitimate life experience degrees offered by an accredited online school is actually an online prior learning assessment program where the student need to demonstrate that he or she have learning something equivalent to the courses thought in an online degree program and it only applies to undergraduate degree program. So you can earn credit and even an undergraduate degree through a demonstration of prior learning but be wary of programs that lack accreditation or promote quick degrees through life experience.
The consequences of using a degree that is lack of accreditation may not just limited to receiving a credential with less value, it may cause you facing the worse scenario that involve a legal penalty due to violating state law by using an unrecognized credential. In order to avoid this potential embarrassment upon yourself, you would be wise to avoid any solely life-experience degree that are promoting a quick degree program which you not need to invest any thing but money.
In Summary
The purely "life experience degrees" that are promoting fast-track degree is definitely not legitimate. But under Online Prior Learning Assessment Program, if you can demonstrate that you have learned through your life experience a certain courses thought in the degree program, you can be granted credits and earn your associate and bachelor degree.
Related article : Is an Online MBA will Help In Your Career Advancement?
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