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UPGRADE YOUR WORLD!
SUMMARY: Our student body largely consists of adult learners. Our charter permits us to grant credits toward all of our degrees, including your Bachelors, based both on documented "real-life experience" as well as by accepting all academic credits previously earned at other colleges and universities.
Each Bachelors degree student's requirements will be tailor-made to incorporate the previous experience that the student brings to the program. Except for students who elect to serve internships or residencies, all coursework involves online study modality.
A Bachelors is an under-graduate degree that falls between a 2-year Associates degree and a post-graduate Masters degree. Today, a Bachelors degree is becoming a nearly-essential qualification to obtain good career positions. It also provides you with the academic and practical knowledge to demonstrate to an employer that you have the basic education needed to function professionally in this increasingly-complex world. Whether you are an entry-level employee, and entrepreneur, or an experienced worker who just never found the time to finish your schooling, a Bachelors degree will help you to showcase your expertise as a potential leader in your career field.
Greater earnings come with a Bachelors degree: Statistically, someone with a Bachelors earns roughly twice the amount each year than someone with just a high school education. (Survey, salary.com.)
People with college degrees earn considerably more in today's market...
Online Education is growing incredibly rapidly: Salary.com says: "Online education is widely accepted as being just as valuable as the classroom experience." They add: "The growing popularity of online courses is undeniable, with online enrollment currently growing at a staggering 33% a year. There are more than 3 million students currently involved in distance or online learning according to the Distance Education and Training Council. And in today's increasingly connected world, this number continues to grow, and at a faster rate."
Saint James College is proud to offer a premiere online educational program, and is one of the least expensive degree-granting institutions in the United States (due to our being owned and endowed by an inter-faith spiritual denomination, The Love Church Worldwide).
1. WE MAY REQUIRE ONLY HALF AS MANY CREDIT HOURS FOR A DEGREE AS OTHER COLLEGES! 120 credit hours are required for a Bachelor's Degree. But, at Saint James College your real-life experience may cut that number in half...and it may be reduced even more if you have any previous college or Continuing Education or seminar credits. We are a fully-legitimate school...but we are structured to give maximum credit for your actual life experience, vastly speeding up the time it may take you to obtain your degree!
2. "CHALLENGE THE COURSE" with information you already possess, and move right along to the next lesson! In most colleges and universities, you have to deal with a conventional grading system. Here, since virtually all of our students are adult, mid-to-late career learners, we have a different approach. By email, we send you a brief lesson in your major, say, Business Administration. You read the lesson (which will typically contain much information you already know from your work or pervious education), and then there's a brief Knowledge Review at the end. This may be a short multiple-choice quiz, or a brief 200-word essay to demonsrate that you have a grasp of the material. If you do, you move right on to the next lesson -- no sitting in a classroom for a full semester listening to the same material that you already know!
3. HERE'S WHAT MOST SCHOOLS REQUIRE: Elsewhere, students will normally carry a course load of 15-credit hours per semester. This would require that they take and pass five courses each semester. This would give the typical college student 30-credit hours per school year. Multiply 30-credit hours per year by four years and you’ll see how schools arrive at the requirement of 120-credit hours for graduation.
4. A MONTH OR TWO TO A DEGREE? YES! If you come to us with significant real-life experience in your chosen field, and if you move through the lessons quickly, you may be able to earn your degree at Saint James College very rapidly. Some do it in a month or two! Why not you?!
5. No need for an Associates Degree. Possession of an associates degree is frequently helpful but unnecessary. Saint James College offers experienced adult learners the opportunity to obtain a Bachelors degree through our "Real Life Experience Fast Track Program."© This consolidates previously-earned college credits and Continuing Education Units from seminars and workshops, combining them with real-life professional experience (explained further, below)
6. Your background is typically in the same discipline in which you are seeking your Bachelors. For example, student who has been been working in a law office may seek a bachelors degree in Paralegal Studies. Someone who has been working in a substance abuse rehab, a community mental health clinic, or other human services field may seek a Bachelors in Counseling.
7. Up to one-half of the 120 credit hours required for a Bachelors degree may be granted based on your real-life experience to date (more information on this feature is given in the informaton sections below). A student wishing to earn an online Bachelors degree may have the number of credit hours required for this degree cut in half if she or he can demonstrate at least two years professional or not-for-profit work experience in the general field for which the degree is being sought. As an exmple, if a student can document having worked two years in an accounting office, or served as an administrative assistant in a construction company front office, up to 60-credit hours may be granted toward a Bachelors in Business Administration. Someone with two years' service in a Clerk of Courts office or in a Sheriff's Department may be eligible for up to 60-credit hours toward a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice.
a. This includes all college and university credits, even for degrees that were never completed
b. Certifications from seminars and workshops may be accepted by the faculty if they are deemed to be related to the Bachelor degrees major
c. Previous CEU's (Continuing Education Credits) may be accepted toward the Bachelor's degree. This could include annual CEU's earned by nurses, medical technicians, EMT's, etc.
Pay under $2,500 (and possibly as low as $1000) for a Saint James College Bachelors Degree! Because Saint James College is owned by The Love Church Worldwide interfaith-denomination, the college is able to operate with vastly lower expense levels than traditional and for-profit universities. The next two paragraphs offer important cost information…. Unlike other colleges and universities, Saint James College only charges you for the classes you actually have to take in order to earn your degree.
All tuitions are determined by the amount of previous academic and real-life experience that students bring to the program. Depending on the scope of documented experience in a student's portfolio, tuition may range from $1,000 for a well-prepared candidate to $2,500 or more for a student who enters the program with little previous college credit or experience. Saint James College has very limited scholarship funding available but routinely arranges for convenient payments to be made at zero percent interest.
SAINT JAMES COLLEGE Credit for Real-Life experience details: As we mentioned above, based on your Real Life Experience, our government charter permits us to grant you in advance up to 50% of the 120-credit hours required for a Bachelors degree. So, if you have worked in business, management, counseling, administration, legal services, etc., for some time and have acquired significant hands-on experience … you may be able to obtain your Bachelors degree at Saint James College by completing fewer academic requirements than those which would be expected of an incoming candidate with no such background. Each student's request for the Real-Life experience waiver is evaluated by The College on a case-by-case basis.
ALL previous college / university credits will be accepted: It is often a fact of life for mid-career adult students that their previous college experience occurred in the in the somewhat distant past, frequently a considerable number of years ago. Adult learners frequently have a great deal of difficulty transferring these fully-legitimate-but-old credits into new educational programs. Unlike most colleges and universities, Saint James College routinely accepts all documented academic credits that you have earned previously at other institutions of higher education. This is true even for credit hours earned years previously. As an example, if your credits were earned ten years ago, most schools require that you re-take large numbers of courses when you enroll in their programs. Naturally, this brings in tidy amounts of extra income for them. But, with Saint James College, we do not use requiring you to re-take classes as a profit center.
How long will it take me to get my Bachelor's degree? If you bring only limited pre-existing graduate-level college credit and if your "real-life experience" is limited in scope, it could take from one to two years of self-paced study. However, students with some college credits (or CEUs) coupled with a strong background in "real life experience," it is possible for organized and dedicated students complete their studies in months. We are not a diploma mill! You must study and complete courses, or you must have the necessary background for our Fast-Track Program©. But, if you do, and if you invest the appropriate amount of time in our online distance-learning program, you may complete your Bachelors degree program rapidly. Each student works at a different pace, so it’s up to you how quickly you can complete your studies.
Two caveats: We are accredited by the Association of Accredited Bible Schools. We strictly adhere to our mission of providing world-class education in a conveniently-presented distance learning format. Our courses
The study showed that roughly one-fifth of those who were awarded a non-traditional under-graduate degree went on to obtain a masters or doctorate. 97% of the non-traditional undergrads were accepted by the grad school that they preferred. Three percent reported some difficulties in presenting a non-accredited degree or transcripts from a non-accredited college, or for having obtained real-life experience credits. The bottom line is that the study showed that a full 94 percent reported no difficulty in being admitted to graduate school due to having an unaccredited degree or earning it through non-traditional or online education.
(See Sosdian, Carol P. and Sharp, Laure M., The External Degree as a Credential: Graduates’ Experience in Employment and Further Study, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.)
The second caveat is that Saint James College degrees must have a "spiritual flavor" to them. Due to being owned by a chartered religious denomination, the government requires that our degrees be awarded with a relationship to a church or spiritual competency. You may sign your name with your credentials, such as Kathy Smith, B.A.., or Larry Jones, B.S., but the government requires that your actual Saint James College diploma must say "Bachelors in Business Administration for Religious Institutional Management" or, perhaps, "Bachelors in Spiritual Family Counseling." Because our degrees were designed at the outset to assist priests, ministers, and spiritual workers to increase their competencies and advance their careers, this has been consistent with our mission. It also enables us to offer Bachelors and other degrees for as much as 95% below the "market" cost in traditional education. Nonetheless, this requirement may not be acceptable to all students. Consider all higher educational degree programs carefully and choose one that matches both your budget and also your professional needs.
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are academically sound, our faculty and instructors are highly-competent and helpful, and we strive to offer among the lowest tuition rates in North America. Because we are a relatively new college, we are not yet regionally accredited. This is less and less important in today’s job market where employers are hungry for qualified employees and have fewer concerns about regional accreditation than in the past. Our degrees are not regionally accredited by an agency accepted by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, but they are real degrees, legitimate, and awarded by a college that is sponsored by a fully-chartered parent, The Love Church Worldwide inter-faith denomination. As many as 99% of non-traditional education students surveyed by a government-sponsored study said that they feel their degree meets or exceeds a traditional degree.