Musings by Melissa

Those of you who know me know that I’m always reading at least one book, and that it’s rarely a fiction book.  (The recent exception being “Gone with the Wind.”  I love to learn.  This love of learning has led me to homeschool our three children.  And I hope that my love for learning is contagious!  May they always enjoy learning new things, and may they never be afraid to pick up a book to try to learn a new skill.

Now that Carl is in 8th grade, his post-high school educational decisions are looming in the not-too-distant future.  The more I hear about the so-called “Christian” colleges, the less likely I am to encourage him to attend one of those.  And while Carl is being raised to think things through and stand up for what he believes in, I don’t know that public university is a place where he would thrive either.

And so, I’ve started looking at other options.  Most people would be surprised to learn that other options do, in fact, exist.  One such option is obtaining an online degree.  Western Governors University (http://www.wgu.edu/online_it_degrees/programs) is an example of this. 

Western Governors University is a nonprofit accreditied university that was started by 19 governors in an effort to provide greater access to higher education for working adults.  The university focuses on mastery of a subject in order to pass a subject.  A student can’t pass just because they’ve put in their time and paid the bill.  They must master their subject matter first.

Because of this, when a student has mastered the material, they are permitted to continue at their own pace.  This allows for those with work experience (or a natural apptitude) in that field to progress faster than they would otherwise be permitted.

Tuition is about half of a typical university because WGU is a non-profit school.  Depending on the course of study, tuition is roughly $3000 per semester.  And if students are able to accelerate faster than normal, they would save even more!

The programs at WGU are challenging because they require mastery.  This makes it very appealing to motivated, independent students. 

I would need to do more research into this before suggesting it to Carl, but it sounds like it could be a very good fit for him.  Either way, it is definitely an option worth considering.