Penn State & ACE Example

[sarahmac]

That's not too bad, I guess it's more expensive than the Coursera/Georgetown Bachelors of Liberal Arts completion offering, I recall a post on that before, something like $400/credit and have to do at least the last 30 credits with them for residency... I was just curious on what this degree can offer that's not available 'cheaply' elsewhere...

In terms of what it "does" I'd argue one of the major selling points is that World Campus is just campus, not a separate college. World Campus was just a way of collecting their online degrees together in one hub. And there are a lot of them too, similar number to ASU (but in different things).

Graduates get a Penn State degree the same as if they'd attended University Park (main campus), and WC students can attend classes from other campuses if they want. A lot of folks did during COVID. 

That puts it ahead of places like PUG, UMass Global etc. as an option.

But, PSU's goal was never to be like the Coursera Georgetown offering, which is a BLA for adults who need a degree, any degree from a good university. 

PSU ha've been doing online ed a long time in one form or another and it's mostly so that rural Pennsylanians can get a degree without having to go away for college and pay for the privilege. If the degrees in agribusiness, turfgrass science, and parks and recreation weren't an indicator. A lot of people start at 18, there were people from my husband's hometown (few thousand folks, mostly farmers) in some of his classes. It's just targeting a different market.

I think it's what UMPI wanted to be for rural Maine folks before the internet at large discovered Your Pace...