All of you who have been reading my blogs recently know that I have been actively searching for my next degree.  I knew that when I completed my MBA from Hawaii Pacific University that my academic career as a student was not over or at least I knew I had enough vinegar left to do one more degree at least.  I consider learning to be a lifelong pursuit but even I have to admit that enough is enough when it comes to actually obtaining that next degree.  At some point it just doesn’t make sense to keep going, to keep sacrificing and to keep having your family make sacrifices.  Sometimes you just have to know when to walk away.  A day will come when you have to admit to yourself that you can’t keep doing this indefinitely.  Fortunately this isn’t that day!

I have decided to attend online at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  I will be working towards a Master of Arts in Professional Counseling with a focus on Clinical Psychology.  Given that I have no psychology background, I still have to take a number of undergraduate psychology courses as pre-requisites.  Anyhow there are a number of reasons I have decided to attend LU.

First, they are inexpensive.  This is the one of the single most important things to me right now.  It has to be accessible and to be accessible it has to be inexpensive.  In fact the school has a payment plan that allows you to spread the tuition payments over 5 even sums at given times throughout the semester.  How thoughtful.

Estimated Costs 2008-2009

 

	Average	Local	Honors
Tuition/Room*/Board/Fees	$21,234	$21,234	$21,234
ScholarshipsChampion EDA Pastor Alumni Academic (average) Virginia Scholarship SBCV Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Honors	$1,000 $500 $500 $500 $2,000 NA NA NA NA	$1,000 $500 $500 $500 $2,000 $1,000 $1,000 $3,200 NA	$1,000 $500 $500 $500 $3,000 NA NA NA $3,750
Total Scholarships	$5,000	$10,200	$9,750
Total estimated cost/year	$17,234	$12,034	$12,484
Total estimated cost/semester	$8,617	$6,017	$6,242

Source: Liberty University

Second, they are regionally accredited.  This is a big deal because I intend to use this degree become a licensed psychologist and to immediately enter a doctoral program in psychology.

Third, with the 8 week sub-terms, I will still be able to complete my second Master’s degree by 2011 and then immediately enter a doctoral program.  Also, I will be getting high quality Christian education and develop the ability to use the Bible in counseling sessions. Like most investments, it makes sense to diversify.  This is the big winner over my second runner up, Nova Southeastern University.

Fourth, Since Liberty University has both residential and online programs; I can choose to take any course on campus if I feel the need to. Residential students can take online courses as well.

Now some cons that I have discovered, or at the very least some concerns.

First, the learning software is Blackboard.  Since January 2008 was my first semester at LU, and I had never taken an online course before, I had to spend a few extra hours learning what Blackboard had to offer and how the courses are structured. 
 
Second, most of the instructors for the undergraduate courses only have Master’s degrees, while for the graduate courses, the instructors all have PhDs.  Many of the instructors at both levels have a lot of autonomy in how they work their online class even though many of them have many sections which means many student papers to grade.  This can present problems from the student perspective as workload, assignment format, expectations, etc. will likely vary greatly from one professor to the next. 

Lastly, taking an online course is not easy. It requires a lot of self-discipline. The semesters are still 16 weeks, but the courses are 8 weeks. In each course we go through the entire book. There are assignments due every week. For example, in my course on human learning, there was an essay and multiple choice exams every week, as well as a group presentation of learning theories. Every week there was three things due by 11:59 pm on Sunday night. Points were taken off if you missed this deadline, unless you had permission from the instructor. In week seven, there was a 10 page research paper that was also due to be written in APA format.

The multiple choice tests were extremely challenging. Whereas most multiple choice questions in undergraduate courses were mostly verbatim recall, these exams were applied multiple choice questions. You had to know the concepts. You could not get by just by memorizing key terms. Each question was a hypothetical situation with four choices to choose from. Choose the best answer. Bottom line is that online courses are equally difficult to the residential counterparts.

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