BIG 3 fast cheap bachelors

[Jonathan Whatley]

A BSBA in General Management would be quicker and cheaper. Operations Management will require some courses that are not all available through cheaper means.

Cheaper, and all else being equal faster, though especially for someone in operations management, I could see the focused title being worth it, and the difference in cost and time might not be that great.

From TESC's page for the degree, the requirements for the area of study in Operations Management should be able to be met with:

Required Subjects
TECEP Operations Management (3 sh)
Quality Assurance (3 sh)

Operations Management Electives
DSST Management Information Systems (3 sh)
Additional operations management electives (9 sh)

I wouldn't be surprised if you could meet all the elective requirements through exams that APICS, The Association for Operations Management, offers that also count toward their certifications of CPIM (Certified in Production and Inventory Management) and, optionally, CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional).

These have college credit recommendations from the National CCRS. TESC generally gives college credit for courses or exams from non-collegiate sources on the basis of recommendations from National CCRS, or from ACE CREDIT (from the American Council on Education).

A popular choice here, for low-cost individual courses, is Penn Foster College. Penn Foster is a correspondence career college with national accreditation, not the more common regional accreditation. This means their so their courses don't transfer to the Big Three automatically based on the college's status. However, some Penn Foster courses hold recommendations from ACE CREDIT and transfer on that basis. ACE lists a current recommendation for a Penn Foster course in Supply Chain Management. There may be others relevant to operations management. (Make sure a course's recommendation is current.)

You might have to go to a more expensive source, like a college, for that specific requirement in Quality Assurance. But altogether a low-cost, convenient BSBA in Operations Management seems very achievable.

Also note that TESC offers a Certificate in Operations Management. You could pick it up along the way, or afterwards. (Though at TESC, you get a one year cycle for a giant enrollment fee. If you wanted to earn anything else from the college after that cycle ran out, you'd have to pay another giant enrollment fee.)

[Sanderco28]

I think I might go to the general management BSBA and then squeeze in the operations management.

[Sanderco28]

I love the care you guys show. You select educated few that care for others whom you don't know shows your character and the general tempo here. I wish you all abundant blessings and an expansion in your territory. And prayers over all the education endeavors you attempt.

[sanantone]

I'm leaning toward operations management and attending tesc I went to college two years but owe my school way more than it will cost to complete my BA degree with dsst, clep etc. thank you lots for the info I'm a newbie so bare with me. Also any constellation on when exactly should I enroll or should I wait until I have completed the fema Clep's and dsst's.

You owe your old school money? Will they release your transcript? Most schools either won't let you graduate or won't let you enroll at all until they receive transcripts from every college attended.

[rvm]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Folks answering this thread have given you good info. There are little details you may want to know prior to making your decision concerning which Big 3 college to choose. It may be a good idea to read some threads here comparing TESC, COSC & Excelsior.

As you are starting from scratch - assuming you're not going pay to have your previous transcript released and you can move forward without doing so - you likely have some time to make a decision. General Education courses at the "Big 3" are mostly the same (with a few minor differences). If you enroll now, you are going to be hit with fees that you probably do not need to pay right now. Why pay fees when you can take the Gen Ed (and more courses) you need without being enrolled? You can read the college catalogs for each school and ask questions here. Also search for terms such as degree plan to see the road map other students have taken.

If cost is important to you, consider this: Ecelsior is probably the most expensive of the 3, followed by TESC then COSC. TESC has a cost calculator online here: Thomas Edison State College | Cost Calculator.

If name is important to you, well... that's a personal preference only you can decide.

A few other things to consider: TESC does not give grades for courses you do not take at TESC. In other words, if you use Straighterline for your Gen Ed, TESC will only give you a pass/fail. COSC will give you the letter grade.

COSC has a policy where they will forgive bad grades but you must request it in writing within a certain number of days after enrolling. In other words, if you got a D in Pre-Calc in your first attempt at college and want it removed from your transcription, you can request it be removed. Of course, if you need it to graduate, you will have to take it again.

COSC requires a cornerstone and capstone course which the others do not, I think. The courses count towards your 120 credits needed to graduate. I've heard they are not difficult. I don't mind dealing with those courses b/c I want the letter grades I mentioned in the above paragraph.

Another thing to consider is COSC is the only one of the Big 3 to give Credit for GRE's. You can knock out 18 - 24 credits (depending on the GRE subject test) for approximately $130 and score of 40% or better. You will get an extremely low price per credit, 18 -24 credits. Your transcript will show passes but no letter grades. You could potentially take the English Literature, Psychology, Biology GRE's and gain 18 credits for Eng Lit, 24 for Bio and either 18 or 24 for Psych (sorry I can remember the exact number of credits). There are folks who used to be very active forum members who have taken one or more GREs and scored very well. alissaroot definitely did; maybe rudigore and others as well.

TESC has degrees such as BS in Business Administration while COSC has concentrations. This is copied from COSC's college catalog: "Charter Oak State College offers Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degrees in General Studies. The degree earned is either a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science with a major in General Studies and a concentration in one or more specific subjects. The major and concentration are printed on the official transcript, but not the diploma." Some people don't want this while others don't mind. I don't mind COSC's concentrations b/c I want letter grades for the courses I have taken from SL and credits I have earned from DSST. While COSC has concentrations, they also have Independent Studies where you can design your own degree (TESC may also). There's more info in the COSC college catalog. The COSC website seems to be offline this morning. If you want the college catalog, send me a PM with your email address and I will email the attachment to you.

Last but not least: before you begin your journey, make sure the classes or exams you take do not duplicate each other. There are exams for Intro to Computing and Management Information System (may not be the exact names of each exam). You likely do not want to take both b/c you will only receive credit for one. Also, for some exams, the order you take the exams will matter. Say you need 2 math classes for your chosen degree. You don't want to take Pre-Calc, then decide you don't want to tackle Calc. If go back and take College Algebra, you probably will not get credit for it b/c of the order you took the tests.

Don't let all of this over-whelm you. Almost everyone here has been in your shoes when trying to decide which school is best suited to their situation. If you have time, read as many posts as you can and ask questions. No question is a dumb question. Colleges change their policies from time to time, so it is always better to ask before you leap too far.

[clep3705]

You owe your old school money? Will they release your transcript? Most schools either won't let you graduate or won't let you enroll at all until they receive transcripts from every college attended.

If the school won't release a transcript, then you never went there. Simple, problem just went away. As long as none of your other transcripts show that you went to the school in question, then the only way anyone will know you went there is if you reveal it.

In theory, you are obligated to tell every school about every other school you went to. That's impractical sometimes and not really anybody else's business. That's doubly so when you are doing fine at a school. Suppose you go to school A, do fine there, then mess up at school B. After that, you return to school A and do fine again. In theory you broke the rules. But you made your life much, much simpler.