Friday, August 19, 2011

Costs Involved in Taking Online Degrees

It has now become a very popular option among people to take a college degree through online sources. This is because in olden times, many people were not able to go to a traditional college for on-campus learning, either because of financial problems, or some other reason. Such people who aren't educated, but still would like to avail the benefits of high salary that can be earned with a degree, are the ones who find such online degree courses helpful. These courses can even be used by people who already have a degree in one subject, but wish to get one more in another subject.

About Bachelor Degrees

In the case of professionals, the bachelor's degree is considered as the minimum qualification for any job in any field. Associate degrees can be very good for people looking for job changes, but a bachelor's degree is needed as a basic building block for it! Today, there are several online courses on the internet that offers degrees in various subjects, and that too from reputed Universities all over the world. Some of them are the Kaplan, American Intercontinental University Online, the University of Phoenix etc. There are other institutions with campuses also, which offer an online version of their course. But a major disadvantage with these degrees is that these institutions charge you more fees when compared to the direct online courses.

The total fees payable for studying such courses will be very high. For example, the University of Phoenix Online charges $30900 for a Communication course, the American Intercontinental University Online charges $30560 for the MBA course and so on. The prices for the online versions of the courses in the universities with a campus will be lesser than this, but it will not offer any flexibility of timing, which is required the most for online courses. There are also online courses available at rates as cheap as $3000.

Taking the Master's Degree and Education beyond It

Once the bachelor's degree has been achieved, you can go for the Master's degree in a subject of your interest. Taking a master's degree can not only bring up your career but also increase your earning potential to a very good level. Master's courses that are provided online are very expensive, but yet useful. The University of Phoenix Online takes a fee of $625 per credit hour for the Master's degree they provide. This is actually 110 dollars more than what you have to pay for their bachelor's degree course! There are other institutions also, providing online courses for completing the Master's degree. Devry's Keller School of Management is one of the most famous among these, which provide MBA courses for online students. They charge $2100 per course and there are totally 10 courses that have to be attended, as well as 18 elective topics. Thus the total fee for studying MBA from this school of management studies would be around $30000! But when you compare this with the on-campus MBA schools, this amount is 3 times lesser! Moreover, online courses even offer the option for doctoral studies.

Rebe Carin owns and operates Registered Nurse Online Programs and also writes about Nurse Practitioner Online Programs.