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Posts Tagged ‘life experience’

Obtaining College Credit through Life Experience

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

A big question that readers of the blog at www.TheDegree.com keep asking is … “Can you actually obtain a degree for life experience?”

Unlike most questions about education there is a simple one word answer for this question which is a plain NO. Any person who states that you can attain a degree for life experience is trying to sell a valueless piece of paper to you which will not be helpful for your life. Getting a degree is easy nowadays, but it can not guarantee a good life for you, but it’s just a tool to search for employment.

But it’s possible to obtain college credit and acquire complete degree depending on what you have learnt at workplace, through independent readings or study, life events, knowledge acquired from hobbies, life events, voluntary work etc, with help of exams like DANTES and CLEP and also through assessment of earlier learning (APL).

Adult learners with work experience often already know what students usually learn at colleges, having gained knowledge outside of the classroom. Many accredited universities in the United States and throughout the world offer credit when a student is able to prove that they have learned something, which is equivalent and valuable as a course. In United States, “portfolio” is used to asses prior learning when compared to college degrees. Portfolios are considered to offer a course description at college level from any college within United States. Hence portfolios are considered as necessary by some universities as evidence to prove that someone has acquired knowledge, which is tantamount to a college degree. In other institutions verification of work experience can meet their criteria for college credit.

In all cases, the knowledge, which is gained through experience at workplace, is compared with knowledge that is needed to complete a course and acquire a degree based on common standard. With portfolios, this is explained by a real life example of a student who explains what they have done in their life that includes proof to support the knowledge, which they have gained substantiating that it is equivalent to knowledge obtained through classroom training.

Because the process of assessing portfolios consumes lot of time and many students are searching for different alternative methods to showcase their skills and knowledge, which they consider to be equivalent to degree attained from a University. For the most part only universities present outside United States which are fully accredited are providing credit through APL (Assessing of Prior Learning), with and without need for submission of portfolios.

While this can save lot of time for students, the end result is actually same and student is able to attain credit for learning outside classroom through research, work experience, hobbies, voluntary activities or life events. International University of Panama is one such university, which gives credit to students for outside classroom learning. You can find lot of useful information about acquiring credit from knowledge gained through outside classroom learning at the website, http://www.thecareerpeople.com/

Obtaining College Degree through Knowledge gained from life experience

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

As per statistics given by U.S. Census Bureau, people who have a bachelor’s degree are able to earn an average income which is sixty percent than people who have just a high school diploma. The difference in earning potential between people having a college degree and people with high school diploma reaches more than 1 Million dollars. In spite of this vast difference in earning potential just 21 percent of adults above 25 years of age are getting college degrees. There was survey conducted by National newspaper in which readers regretted about the fact that most of Americans are not able to pursue their education at college level and attain a degree.
But now there is hope for people to obtain a college degree with knowledge that they have acquired outside classroom through either work experience, voluntary activities, knowledge gained through hobbies etc. These degrees are fully accredited and equivalent to degrees, which are issued by top fully accredited US universities.
You can get this degree if you have started but were not able to complete the course of study, even if it was more than thirty years ago. If you have credits from an accredited college outside United States, then you can obtain a fully accredited US degree with less time when compared to normal college degree. If you are currently in high school and wish to push up your education levels so as to enter college with three, six, twelve or thirty credits, it is now possible. This helps to you get credit for the knowledge that you already acquired through life experience and you can become a college graduate within a time span of 1 year. Much of the work can completed as online study, exams, work experience, or other outside the classroom learning. In many cases it is impossible to know if the final degree is an online degree or a campus based one. This is true for undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees.

There is no need to attend regular classroom training and to obtain credit for already acquired skills outside classroom. You can study something on your own or make use of work experience to get a degree by completing exams. You can start fresh and take exams at your own convenience to obtain a US college degree easily. You can use the knowledge attained through life experience, voluntary work, hobbies, self-study and reading, work experience etc and attain US college degree by writing exams such as DANTES, CLEP or APL – Assessment of Prior Learning.

This type of degree has been acquired by lot of people already, and they enjoy the benefits of fully accredited US college degree. They have able to get professional high-paying jobs with help of their degrees which has literally altered their lifestyle and earning potential. For more information about this, you can visit the websites http://www.thecareerpeople.com/ or www.TheDegree.com. Both these websites provide valuable information about obtaining a degree or degree equivalent to that acquired from top universities without attending formal classroom training.