11-14-2025, 03:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2025, 03:35 AM by Jonathan Whatley.)
Penn Foster College now offers individual online college courses for $499 per course. This comes after several years of PFC not offering individual courses, only entire degree programs where students pay a block rate per semester and take courses in a prescribed order.
Most courses are 3 semester hours. 166.33 per semester hour is one of the better rates you’ll find in the US outside some alt-credit and community colleges.
Tuition includes digital textbooks and study materials. Courses are self-paced. In PFC degree programs, you have 12 months to complete each term with a possibility of six-month extensions for a fee.
There are a few important distinctions to note.
Penn Foster College is nationally accredited by the DEAC, not regionally accredited. Some destination schools accept nationally accredited credit categorically, some case-by-case, some not. Increasingly, but not universally, the destination schools we discuss most at DegreeForum are friendly to NA transfer credit.
Years ago it was a moderately popular DegreeForum tactic to take Penn Foster College courses only when they had ACE credit recommendations, to transfer to schools that were ACE friendly but not NA friendly. That tactic is now obsolete, because Penn Foster College has let every ACE credit recommendation expire without renewal. There are no active PFC ACE courses anymore. But if your destination school will now accept PFC credit on the basis that the credit is NA, the ACE basis doesn’t matter to you.
An important distinction remains that the Penn Foster brand and pennfoster.edu website are shared by a set of legally distinct schools and programs, most of which do not have transferable degree-level credit attached. A good way to tell them apart is by referring to the official catalogs. Courses with transferable degree-level credit are in the Penn Foster College Undergraduate Student Catalog. Courses without such credit are in the Penn Foster Career School, Penn Foster High School, Penn Foster Training Institute, and Penn Foster College Diploma and Certificate catalogs.
The Penn Foster College Undergraduate Student Catalog currently lists courses in the following subjects. Most are lower level, designed for PFC Associate of Science degrees. PFC also offers three bachelor’s degrees, in Business Management, Criminal Justice, and Veterinary Technology, so upper-level courses are offered in these three subjects. PFC offers no graduate courses or programs.
In the UMPI transfer database, every PFC Graphic Design course listed comes in to UMPI as GEL 1XX or GEL 2XX general elective credit, so these might not work to assemble a Graphic Design transfer minor there.
Not every PFC course is necessarily available for individual course enrollment.
Most courses are 3 semester hours. 166.33 per semester hour is one of the better rates you’ll find in the US outside some alt-credit and community colleges.
Tuition includes digital textbooks and study materials. Courses are self-paced. In PFC degree programs, you have 12 months to complete each term with a possibility of six-month extensions for a fee.
There are a few important distinctions to note.
Penn Foster College is nationally accredited by the DEAC, not regionally accredited. Some destination schools accept nationally accredited credit categorically, some case-by-case, some not. Increasingly, but not universally, the destination schools we discuss most at DegreeForum are friendly to NA transfer credit.
Years ago it was a moderately popular DegreeForum tactic to take Penn Foster College courses only when they had ACE credit recommendations, to transfer to schools that were ACE friendly but not NA friendly. That tactic is now obsolete, because Penn Foster College has let every ACE credit recommendation expire without renewal. There are no active PFC ACE courses anymore. But if your destination school will now accept PFC credit on the basis that the credit is NA, the ACE basis doesn’t matter to you.
An important distinction remains that the Penn Foster brand and pennfoster.edu website are shared by a set of legally distinct schools and programs, most of which do not have transferable degree-level credit attached. A good way to tell them apart is by referring to the official catalogs. Courses with transferable degree-level credit are in the Penn Foster College Undergraduate Student Catalog. Courses without such credit are in the Penn Foster Career School, Penn Foster High School, Penn Foster Training Institute, and Penn Foster College Diploma and Certificate catalogs.
The Penn Foster College Undergraduate Student Catalog currently lists courses in the following subjects. Most are lower level, designed for PFC Associate of Science degrees. PFC also offers three bachelor’s degrees, in Business Management, Criminal Justice, and Veterinary Technology, so upper-level courses are offered in these three subjects. PFC offers no graduate courses or programs.
- Accounting
- Allied Health
- Business
- Civil Engineering
- Computer Information Systems
- Computer Science
- Construction Technology
- Criminal Justice
- Early Childhood Education
- Electricity and Electronics
- Engineering Science Technology
- English
- Fashion
- Finance
- Graphic Design
- Health Information Technology
- Human Resources Management
- Humanities
- Industrial Engineering Technology
- Interior Design
- Internet Technology
- Marketing
- Mathematics
- Mechanical Engineering Technology
- Medical Assistant
- Nutrition
- Paralegal Studies
- PC Maintenance Technology
- Science
- Social Science
- Veterinary Technology
In the UMPI transfer database, every PFC Graphic Design course listed comes in to UMPI as GEL 1XX or GEL 2XX general elective credit, so these might not work to assemble a Graphic Design transfer minor there.
Not every PFC course is necessarily available for individual course enrollment.
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