Degree/Planning Advice: Retired LEO Seeking BA and MA after life-altering injury

[walruspanda]

Purdue: Offers an Accelerated Masters in Psychology while obtaining BA in Criminal Justice. They offer up to 25 Credits for POST training and credit for work experience.  They have an “ExcelTrack” that purports to give you to “the same degree faster and for less money.” This school has a for-profit feel to it and they require 180 credits for a degree, not 120. A Master’s in Psychology is far more interesting to me than an MAOL but either will work for me.

ExcelTrack is a CBE program. Conventional wisdom is that PG ExcelTrack requires more writing and is less accelerable than UMPI YourPace. The BA in Criminal Justice is offered by ExcelTrack but the MS in Psychology is not. I'm not sure what they mean by this bachelor's to master's plan. If they mean that some of your BACJ ExcelTrack courses would apply to an MSP, that's great. But my guess is they mean you can enroll in the BACJ and though you could do much of it ExcelTrack, you could also take some non-ExcelTrack courses that would apply to both degrees. But those non-ExcelTrack courses would be non-CBE, traditionally scheduled and priced.

A couple notes:

• Yes, you seem to be correct about the BA/Criminal Justice and MS/Psychology. There are four courses that can be taken as open electives with the undergrad degree for graduate credit (PS501/502/504/506), but because none of those are available in ExcelTrack, it's less helpful than it would otherwise be. 
  
• PUG is plenty accelerate-able -- I got my BS and MS in 32 weeks total, although with tons of outside credit -- but only if ExcelTrack is available. I'm not sure I can recommend the MS at PUG given that it's not ExcelTrack.