Attending college may seem like just a dream to you if you are on a tight budget. After all, don’t college students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt?
While it’s true that many students do have student loans to repay after they graduate, there are strategies that you can use to save a significant amount of money on your education. You’d be surprised at how many colleges offer free or nearly free degrees. Although there may be conditions to meet for these schools, it can be worth the effort to apply.
In this article, we’ll look at ways you can save on your degree and consider why an online degree is often the cheapest and best option. Then we’ll give you a list of some colleges that offer free online degrees so that you can get started on your own program right away.
How to Reduce the Cost of Your Degree
You can use several tactics to lower the cost of your degree if your program is not free. You can often eliminate most or even all of the cost.
Prior learning assessment
Prior learning assessment, or PLA, refers to experience you have gained in your life outside of a college setting. This could be experience in the workforce or military or experiential life learning of any kind. Increasingly, colleges and universities offer credit for these experiences if they are related to your program. This can save you time and money, helping you to earn your degree more quickly while taking fewer courses.
PLA can also be given to students who took college-level courses in high school. These courses are usually called advanced placement (AP) courses or international baccalaureate (IB) courses. Students take exams at the end of these courses, and if they pass satisfactorily, they may receive college credit for their work. Similarly, students may also look into the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests for additional examination credit opportunities.
Scholarships and grants
One of the most important things you’ll do when you apply for college is to fill out the free application for federal student aid (FAFSA). This all-important form is used by the government to determine your eligibility for grants, work-study jobs, and loans. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or eligible non-citizens with a valid high school diploma.
There are deadlines for filling out the FAFSA, which can be done online. To complete the form, you’ll need your federal income tax return (or your parents), bank statements, and other financial information. If you submit online, you should hear from the Department of Education within three to five days, giving you a student aid report (SAR) that summarizes your application and indicates your expected contribution. Once processed, the SAR will be sent to your institution, where it will be used to determine your eligibility for college-based aid. The most common form of aid that results from a FAFSA is the Federal Pell Grant, given to undergraduates with financial needs.
Additionally, students can be eligible for scholarships directly through their university as well as outside organizations. While some schools will offer merit or need-based aid to students when they are accepted, other colleges will have specific scholarships students can apply for on their website. We recommend checking your school’s website for information or reaching out directly to an admissions counselor for help. For outside scholarships, students can check out websites such as Niche, Scholarships.com, and Unigo for a plethora of options to sort through.
Work-study
The Federal Work-Study Program offers part-time jobs, often on campus, to undergraduate and graduate students with financial need. Jobs may be related to your course of study or involve community service work off-campus. The jobs pay at least the current federal minimum wage but can pay more. The amount you earn through the program is determined by submitting your FAFSA and depends on both your level of financial aid and your school’s funding level.
Although work-study funding is intended to help you pay for your degree, you will receive your salary directly and can use the money as you wish. Many students use their work-study funding to pay for books or tuition expenses.
While not all students will be eligible for work-study based on their family finances, our professional recommendation is to always check the box “yes” to show that you’d like to be considered for it. If it is offered to you and you’d rather not participate, you can always turn it down later — but if you don’t check that box, they won’t even check to see if you’re eligible.
Why You Should Earn Your Degree Online
Online degrees can be an advantageous way to earn your degree, saving you both time and money. Here are a few of the advantages of earning your degree online:
Flexible scheduling
Many online programs feature asynchronous courses. These classes are recorded ahead of time and made available to the students to watch when it is convenient for them. This makes them a great option for adult students in the workforce or with family commitments, such as young children to care for. The courses can be accessed late at night, early in the morning, or whenever the student has time.
Even synchronous classes can be much more flexible than in-person classes. While some programs require students to attend each synchronous class live, others will provide a recording of the lecture to view later in case you missed it. Plus, you have the flexibility of attending the class anywhere in the world!
Although there may be a timeline indicating a date by which you need to finish a course, you generally have some flexibility with the schedule. For example, if you have an important presentation at work to prepare for, you can take a few days off from classes until you’ve done your presentation and can return to your coursework.
Save time
Depending on how far you live from your local college, you might spend an hour or more a day driving to and from campus, finding a parking space, and walking to your class, which is probably being held in a building on the far side of campus. You eliminate all that frustration and time with an online degree.
To attend an online class, you merely need to settle yourself in your office or the local coffee shop, flip open your laptop, and begin. You will also avoid the time-wasting distractions that happen on campus when you’re surrounded by people who may want to chat and other time-wasters. If you are not interested in a “campus experience” and are focused solely on earning your degree, an online program allows you to do this with no interruptions.
Save money
That lack of a commute saves you money as well since you avoid gas and parking costs. Parking costs can be quite high on busy urban campuses, where space is at a premium, so you can save hundreds of dollars by avoiding the school parking lots.
You may also have other savings. Some online programs are offered in an accelerated format that earns your degree more quickly, thus incurring fewer fees and possibly a lower tuition rate. You will also avoid spending money on campus cafeteria snacks and may have to pay less for digital textbooks rather than expensive hard copies of your course materials.
Our Research
This list features some of the country’s best free online colleges. Each school featured is a nonprofit, accredited institution, either public or private, with a high standard of academic quality for post-secondary institutions.
We evaluated each school’s program on tuition costs, admission, retention and graduation rates, faculty, and reputation. Then, we calculated the Intelligent Score on a scale of 0 to 100. Read more about our ranking methodology.
Next, we compared this comprehensive list of the best free online colleges to a list of aggregated college rankings from reputable publications, such as U.S. News & World Report, to simplify a student’s college search. We pored through these rankings so students don’t have to.
The 50 Best Free Online Colleges
