Published: 2025-08-10
Last Updated: 2025-08-10
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While its considered competitive, the current college system is mostly online. The word college comes from advanced placement students visiting adult learning centers and having one of the adults mention "that's a cool age to be learning these things". University being a conglemeration of "Universal City Learning Center" meaning a city sized infrastructure where anything can be learned about anything in the universe. This can be done online now, over the internet.
The current format is EdX, Coursera, Online, then local college or university. For local schools, the administration submits the papers online or they are submitted through BrightSpace, Blackboard, or Canvas. Moodle is for R&D and will likely be available for independent use in the future.
Time efficiency and cost effectiveness are the main concerns. Consider a semester lasts 4-5 months on average and short term classes are currently about 8 weeks.
CLEP allows testing out of 60 credits for approximately 3 thousand dollars. Study.com and Sophia both provide transferrable college credit to a good selection of universities. From there classes are about $1000 per class for up to a bachelor and around $2000 per class for a masters. Associates require 20 classes, Bachelors require 40 classes, and Masters require 10-12 classes. A person can't enroll in a Masters program without bachelors so these classes are being brought down to the high school graduate level for 12 credit certificates; associate, and bachelor degrees.
While most programs are going to individual transcripts and up to 90 credit transfers for bachelors plus 10-12 class Masters. First time students should ask about a Pell Grant. If not available then look for the most economical regionally accredited college and enroll in an associates or bachelor for a student loan. Many people will also choose to transfer the general ed depending on the cost of the program. Its recommended to have all the classes scheduled properly from one school on the first degree if possible.
A long time ago people went to college and tried to stay there as long as possible before starting work. This is not realistic and people that are in prolonged, ongoing, extended, or at set interval attendance are normally trying to assist in reducing the college requirements for workplaces and to assess the needs of those that require college attendance in excess of 5 years to complete their program.
Consider a 17 year old attending for 4-5 years to get a bachelor or a masters, this puts them at 22-23 years old for their first job. The jobs would pay a little more and mom and dad would likely pay tuition, room and board, possibly even buy them a car or help with settling them into their first apartment.
They can study almost anything they want but have to pick at least a few groups of classes that would represent their first job role. Something to do at work to pay their bills, go out with friends, and save for when they are older.
If a student wasn't ready for work yet, or they wanted to wait a little longer before they left school, they might stay in the dorm rooms until 28-32; studying to be something big like a doctor, a lawyer, or some type of CEO with a fancy business degree.
Realistically, this doesn't work anymore unless someone has a disability assessment and is diagnosed as having extremely long learning patterns preventing them from keeping up with workplace requirements. The solution can be college to help get through those learning processes and practice them repetitively; or a job that doesn't have requirements that change very often.
With todays, workplaces, they tend to change every 5-6 years so someone starting in a job role may be there for 8-12 years and will see many changes but their job role will be as similar as possible until they are ready to leave and find a new job. This has its context.
A person that is a normal paced or fast learner may not want to leave their job role because they perform well, they don't have to put much effort into their job, and its very high quality. They normally can't be forced to leave because the majority is switching jobs every few years but more time off in between jobs is an incentive to join the majority for some of these workers. They are open to doing a short term college education training for their next job role.
Traditionally, doesn't work well in a modern workplace. Its still available but has higher costs and various requirements. Most college students will go modern.