My Experience with Lumerit

[jsd]

Unbound takes advantage of naive, homeschooling families looking to shelter their kids, especially their daughters, from the world. It's much cheaper to go to a community college.

That was certainly a consequence of their model before their 2 or so name changes, no reason to doubt it has changed since.

[TheAccountant]

I really appreciate your openness about your experience.  (They've rebranded again, they are now called Unbound)

I am confused about *exactly* how their relationship with Waldorf University works.  I can see their ACE approved courses in the catalog. They are:
SOC240: Community Service Learning
BUS201: Introduction to Entrepreneurship
ENG131: Composition and Reading I
ENG131: Composition and Reading II
PHIL113: Comparative Worldviews
PSI131: Earth Science, Earth Science with Lab
COMM396: Leadership and Management Com (not upper level)
COMM394: Leadership Theory and Practice (not upper level)
SOSCI280: Social Justice from a Biblical Perspective

So, is there a *different* catalog of courses that they are offering for that price?  If so, are they LITERALLY offered through the university and LITERALLY on a university's transcript? Or is this a case of what onlinedegree is doing where the credit is simply being ACCEPTED by a college (Excelsior in their case) which generates a transcript?  I'm curious if you know - if you don't that's ok.  But, when you say "unlimited" courses, does that list extend beyond the classes I've listed above???  Thank you again, I have a few more questions, I really apprecate your help!

I wish I knew where the courses Lumerit/Unbound offers originated from. On a couple of occasions I found errors on my graded tests/quizzes and reached out to Lumerit to review them. Each time they said they would contact their "course provider" and get back with me. They did, usually within a day or two. I don't believe Lumerit actually created any of the courses. 

As far as Waldorf goes I'm not completely sure. I paid the extra for RA on some of my courses (in order to meet CPA requirements in my state) and was told to contact Waldorf for transcripts of my completed courses. I plan on doing so this week, so I may be able to provide more info soon. 

Yeah I saw that very few of their courses had ACE recommendation.
The lumerit site shows about 50 or so "courses" https://lumerit.com/courses
But without ACE, RA or specific college partnerships, those courses would probably be useless. And paying $100 EXTRA(to already overpriced courses) to have them RA transcripted and maybe still not usable, just seems like an extreme ripoff.

Their website now says that: "Every course we offer is regionally transcripted. This allows these courses to transfer to virtually any college that accepts transfer credit. "https://getunbound.org/courses

I wish I had more answers. I'm guessing they raised their prices to include RA on every course instead of an optional add on. I believe all their courses carried ACE approval from the beginning though.

[davewill]

...
Their website now says that: "Every course we offer is regionally transcripted. This allows these courses to transfer to virtually any college that accepts transfer credit. "https://getunbound.org/courses
...

I wonder how true that really is. "Regionally transcripted" doesn't sound legit at all. When Study.com tried that little trick with Excelsior, with their courses on an Excelsior transcript, it quickly developed that TESU (and others?) would NOT accept courses that way. Study.com had to quickly work up a way to send their own transcripts directly. It definitely won't fool any school that would not otherwise accept the credit.

[sanantone]

...
Their website now says that: "Every course we offer is regionally transcripted. This allows these courses to transfer to virtually any college that accepts transfer credit. "https://getunbound.org/courses
...

I wonder how true that really is. "Regionally transcripted" doesn't sound legit at all. When Study.com tried that little trick with Excelsior, with their courses on an Excelsior transcript, it quickly developed that TESU (and others?) would NOT accept courses that way. Study.com had to quickly work up a way to send their own transcripts directly. It definitely won't fool any school that would not otherwise accept the credit.

Excelsior was putting them on their credit bank transcript, so the source of the credits was named. What Unbound is doing could be similar to what the teacher professional development companies are doing. They have partnerships with universities that transcript the courses as their own.

[cookderosa]

I will be very interested in how Accountant's transcript looks. "Regionally transcripted" is U/L/CP terminology- that's not a term the education industry uses. I think "transcripted" at an RA university would be an accurate description if they follow suit behind similar companies that have done similar things- but that's not laundering credits into BEING regionally accredited.

As we all know, using a middleman (college) to record a course doesn't change how future colleges view or review that course. It's literally a wasted step to include a middleman because you'll have to undo it for an accurate evaluation later.

Now, let's say that U/L/CP by some miracle has actually been subcontracted by the university to provide content in a way that the university lists the courses as their own, then that's a different story. That would bury the affiliation and indeed the courses would be "RA" (not "Regionally transcripted"). I do not know the nuances of accreditation and whether or not that would be totally allowed, I suspect it might be because colleges do that with ALEKS now, but in that case, you register through the college (registering through ALEKS is not allowed) and this could be similar to how SL is collaborating with the community college to use financial aid. (in neither case is it a financial benefit to the student- in both cases you pay much more than if you registered independently).

Not as a critique of U/L/CP (though I have many) but in this specific instance, I don't think the credits are going to be what they are "suggestively selling" them to be. I expect some very shocked and disappointed students at transfer time.

[dfrecore]

Westcott does it this way, which seems shady to me, but I'm guessing it's not since they put it on their website for all to see:

How it Works
These individual courses are available to anyone in the public who'd like to enroll. Unlike traditional colleges where one must enroll in a degree program, Westcott Courses offers individual courses that are available instantly. Westcott Courses is the teacher of the course, and the official transcript with academic semester credits comes from our partner university, Brandman University who is regionally accredited by WASC. Westcott Courses does not appear on the transcript; the transcript shows our courses the same way it would show a traditional class taken at the university's campus.

[cookderosa]

Westcott does it this way, which seems shady to me, but I'm guessing it's not since they put it on their website for all to see:

How it Works
These individual courses are available to anyone in the public who'd like to enroll. Unlike traditional colleges where one must enroll in a degree program, Westcott Courses offers individual courses that are available instantly. Westcott Courses is the teacher of the course, and the official transcript with academic semester credits comes from our partner university, Brandman University who is regionally accredited by WASC. Westcott Courses does not appear on the transcript; the transcript shows our courses the same way it would show a traditional class taken at the university's campus.

interesting..... I'm tempted to enroll in something just to understand it better.

[dfrecore]

Westcott does it this way, which seems shady to me, but I'm guessing it's not since they put it on their website for all to see:

How it Works
These individual courses are available to anyone in the public who'd like to enroll. Unlike traditional colleges where one must enroll in a degree program, Westcott Courses offers individual courses that are available instantly. Westcott Courses is the teacher of the course, and the official transcript with academic semester credits comes from our partner university, Brandman University who is regionally accredited by WASC. Westcott Courses does not appear on the transcript; the transcript shows our courses the same way it would show a traditional class taken at the university's campus.

interesting..... I'm tempted to enroll in something just to understand it better.

It's a bit pricey to experiment with - $498 is the cheapest course.  I would actually consider Calc II for my kid if he got to that point - I like the idea of it being self-paced, and it would need to be RA.  It's similar in price to the BYU IS High school Calc BC course (and then he'd need to take the AP Exam for another $94).

But if you decide to do it, let me know - I'm as curious as you are to see how it works!