7 Best Online Colleges for Busy Adults (2025)

want to graduate college quickly and inexpensively so you can build a career that you love but not from a scummy School that'll take advantage of you by the end of this video you are going to know exactly Which online college is right for you the seventh best online college for busy adults is Southern New Hampshire University and I used to rank snhu higher even top three but times have changed that have made this school slightly less desirable but first the positives snhu or new only charges $330 per credit and next to nothing in fees which is frankly amazing so that could be an entire degree from them for around $40,000 when the average is much more like 50 they have a ton of Majors to choose from including a bunch that aren't usually available online like graphic design or environmental science my sister's even getting a fancy computer graphic design modeling or something degree from them that she could not find anywhere else especially for such a good price they also accept a ton of transfer credit from other schools and from thirdparty alternative credit sources that we talk about on this channel like clap exams or dsst exams or Sophia or study.com self-paced courses by the way if you're new to the channel College hacking is just a sexy term that I came up with to describe replacing expensive time consuming college courses with some of those third-party alternative credits basically using those methods a person could graduate from sneu for under $155,000 and in like 18 months I'll include a video link in the description and in case you're at all curious but back to sne and on to the negatives sn's reputation is me not bad necessarily it's accredited it's got a legitimate degree but it is basically a college Factory kind of like the Walmart of higher education with over 150,000 students the process is extremely streamlined and the customer service is not great for instance anytime we or a client calls to ask questions about their policies the answer is always you need to enroll and give us money before we'll seriously answer your questions now I may be stupid but I thought that good ethical customer service meant giving customers the information they needed before they made huge purchases but I could be wrong though to be fair even when an admissions rep is willing to talk they don't usually know anything and beyond that they've changed their general education to be harder for everyone and seemingly for like no reason you see a short term thinking College wants to squeeze as much money as possible out of every single student and a good way to do that is to require courses that can't be replaced by transfer credit as you can see they've got categories for social justice sociological perspectives on Humanity sustainability historical perspectives and roles of social political psychological and economic context in shaping the self in society that is to say the least a progressive and difficult to transfer into take on the liberal arts thank goodness some smart College administrator out there with a PhD discovered the brand new types of courses that you a hardworking adult with a family and a job need to take to really be educated if only there was a little more Justice sustainability and humanity and how they treated their customers but frankly guys when you consider the price and you consider all the options that they have if you don't mind being pushed around a little bit and treated like a number sne might still be a really good option for you and if it is welcome to the world's least friendly and most efficient educational conveyor belt and now for something completely different and that takes us to another online New Hampshire in new Hamp New Hampshire new hampshirian school University of New Hampshire's College of professional studies and they are the opposite of snhu in almost every single way why you ask I'll answer UNH is an R1 research School making it one of the 146 most prestigious schools in the United States snhu on the other hand is not an R1 research School and is definitely not academically rigorous or super challenging admittedly UNH doesn't have a ton of national name recognition because they are smaller but you can be really proud I think of having their name on your diploma the customer service is Miles better at UNH College of professional studies it helps that they only have like 2,000 students but they also assign a dedicated advisor to you throughout your entire time there and their classes are four credits large instead of only three which means that you only need 30 classes to graduate instead of 40 theoretically it should be the same amount of work but it is simpler to put together on the negative side they do charge $379 but they are still pretty College hackable meaning you can transfer in a lot of thirdparty credits to be able to finish your degree quickly which makes it so that you can probably still graduate for under $155,000 from some of their Majors incidentally all of this means that they are the most prestigious hackable school out there they unfortunately do have fewer degrees than a huge school like snhu but they have all of the basics incl including a build it-yourself major some very cool degrees that turn in Associates into a bachelor's and quite a few Tech business and Healthcare degrees unfortunately the one thing they do have in common with snhu apart from being New Hampshire New Hampshire new from New Hampshire is that the general education isn't very transferable you have to take 16 credits from UNH or transfer them from another school but that can be very difficult to do but unlike snhu these four classes are actually more useful they want you to English composition with them because they really believe in the importance of having good writing skills going into the rest of your degree which personally I agree with then they require interpersonal communication SLG group dynamics and advanced critical analysis strategic thinking uh which aren't classical liberal arts courses but the application and the usefulness of these is just so much more than what you see in snhu's general education and finally they do require an interdisciplinary sort of like a Capstone for their general education which sort of brings everything to together with a focus on solving real world problems which I mean I see the value in so overall I think a busy online student could graduate from UNH for under $15,000 in under 15 months I'm really glad to see them on this list and I hope in future years they go higher and higher full disclosure I did get two degrees at luo and I used to work there but all that means for the purposes of this review is that I know their dirty little secrets and I had the privilege of enduring quite a bit of nonsense under the reign of their former president who I might add did not fall well if you know what I mean of course their reputation did suffer for a while but their time of political entanglement and kind of nonsensical being on the scene of the national conversation seems to basically be over and I think they've basically gone back to just being focused on giving a quality Christian online education the school is still huge not as huge as it used to be and I think it's like just under 100,000 students but the reason they're on this list as high as they are is because they to have really great customer service I don't know if it's quite as good as unh's but they're easy to work with even their call center people are helpful which is saying something wild to think that a mega University could value the customer experience and and seem to really want to take care of their people they also seem to have a higher quality educational experience than most online universities n.com user reviews put them at 4.6 out of five Which is higher than most of the schools on this list but their individual academic score is higher than every school on this list except for UNH which yes is going to be hard to beat they're pretty affordable at $39 $ per credit hour and a $349 per semester technology fee yes a little bit harder but you are kind of paying for that good customer service and good educational experience but it also means that if you're playing at smart you can still graduate from Lu for under $50,000 or if you use College hacking methods under $113,000 unfortunately luo like other schools on this list have changed some of their major requirements to make some of their degrees more difficult to transfer into or less hackable this sometimes means more required Advanced courses more courses in general or smaller free elective sections but even still their business psychology and interdisiplinary studies degrees are still amazingly transferable and really really good ones to choose speaking of which I used to run their interdisciplinary Studies major and that is still probably the single best do-it-yourself hackable Chipotle major out there but it's cool because you basically get to choose almost every single class that you want to take with only minor limitations and Beyond the degrees that I've already mentioned there's like 212 total majors and specializations to choose from like it has the best selection of any school on this list obviously Liberty University is a Christian University and there are Bible and theology classes that are required if you hack a degree with us we can show you how to skip most of those but at the very least each Liberty class still has like a Biblical worldview integration which is like a very small assignment that's just kind of talking about how your faith or I mean you could take it from the tact of your lack of faith fits into your understanding of this topic that's going to be a deal breaker for for some folks but it's really not that difficult and if you are a Christian I think it's kind of cool because it gives you an opportunity to see more of the importance of your subject beyond all that they love transfer credit they accept most of it even credits from sometimes nationally accredited universities which means that if you kind of got sucked into a nationally accredited school or like a lower level accredited school and you realized oh this school isn't all that well respected Li University online can be a great place to rinse those credits and still get some use out of them plus since last year the graduation rate went from 36% up to 38% which we love to see and also puts them higher than the average for online colleges and overall I think luo is still a pretty solid School py University Global or Pug as I'm going to call them for the rest of this review is not number four on this list because they're really good at any one thing but because they're like second or third best at almost everything first off though you should know that they're a competency based education program which is a wild thing basically means that students can progress at their own pace basically instead of having to wait eight or 12 weeks to finish a course and doing the homework every single week you can just pay a subscription fee for a certain amount of time and then you go through and do as many courses as possible usually there's like one big test or assignment at the end of the course and you just study for it until you're ready and if you can pass that they're like hey you just get the credit and in this case pug charges $2,500 for 10 weeks and generally 10 weeks with them is enough to finish anywhere between an eighth to a quarter of the degree which if you're doing the math means that you could poten potentially be graduating now I have to do the math I mean that's like 40 to 80 weeks and $10,000 to $20,000 if you didn't hack and transfer any credits at all but let's talk about the ways that pug is never the best but somehow always good enough they only offer eight Majors the fewest of any school on this list but they offer three of the really important ones business it and healthcare administration they basically charge $36 a day for their program which is a great price but more expensive than any other Competency Based school on this list that will talk about they are Competency Based but their degrees are 180 credits long and they're like smaller credits but they do an assessment for every credit but even those assessments are smaller so it sort of works out TimeWise but it's kind of a headache UNH is definitely the most prestigious school on this list but pug is still loosely associated with Purdue University of course they do owe $150 million to a for-profit college and there doesn't seem to be a way to pay that back and there is sort of this General lowline buzzing question of like will they exist 10 years from now and on your diploma it will say Purdue University Global not Purdue University so that's all just something to think about if it matters to you now while Western Governor's university has a better Competency Based program more options and it's cheaper pug does accept International students which WGU does not and this means that it might be for a lot of Internationals the best option they can pick see what I mean they're like good especially in some very specific cases but they're not always great now I think that most pug students will find that they're able to college hack a pug degree in about 9 to 12 months for under $7,000 so I mean there's a lot to be said for that but I'd advise you against doing it for the name recognition I think that's kind of a red herring in this case and especially the there's the fact that once you get your master's degree nobody cares where your bachelor's is from so it's much more worth your time to go and pick a masters from a prestigious school but yeah I like pug I like what they're doing and they're going to be a great option for a few people where to begin with number three Thomas Edison State University is my old Alma modder and I love those guys in the same way that I love the old kudin who lives down the street and complains about where I park my car they hate parties and loud noises but they've got a heart of gold and if you ever needed someone to jump your car they'd help you out all the while grumbling and telling you how you should have taken better car of your car in the first place kind of like Ron Swanson from Parks and wreck so to start with the negative they definitely have bad customer service and they've been trying to make it harder to hack their degrees and transfer credits into Thomas Edison for a while now like for instance in 2012 when I graduated I was able to transfer in 102 credits worth of testing credit and take six classes and graduate for $ 7,423 and it was amazing they wouldn't give me much confirmation on my plan until I had enrolled like new but it all worked out and once I was enrolled they were a lot more helpful the truth is that TSU is kind of the grandfather of college hacking and ultimate transferability to a school and the big reason is that most schools will limit you they'll you max out at being able to transfer in 75% they want you to take at least 30 credits of their classes before they say that you earned a degree from them Thomas Edison in the past I think you you could transfer in 120 like all of them or maybe all but three and these days there's still some level of flexibility it's just harder and here's what I mean normally yes transfering 75 credits to Thomas Edison no problem you can also test out of another 133% of the credits using their in-house tests which are more expensive than kpet test kind of a pain to study for but still an amazing opportunity if you want to get down to only having to take six credits with Thomas Edison State University basically because these are two classes that you just can't transference from somewhere else like they're unique to Thomas Edison which is a new development that's annoying but it is what it is if you want to only have to take those six credits and transfer everything else you have to pay what's called a residency waiver fee so for $3,354 they will do you the honor of allowing you to only take 5% of your classes with them which is really really cool for people who have some extra money to spend and maybe have you know 120 150 180 credit credits from previous college attempts like you could just go over there pay some money and take a couple of classes 12 weeks later be done the really annoying part is that they're very confusing about what kind of third-party credits they accept like they almost don't acknowledge Sophia they barely work with study.com they only really seem to like clap in dsst and their own in-house tests even after you're enrolled if you have Sophia courses you're transferring over they'll only confirm six of them per email like you have to go and do six of them and then send them in to get them approved approved and then you have to go do another six they are a grumpy bureaucratic government run School in every sense of the phrase but they still get the job done it's like Gandalf and Lord of the Rings a little touchy little grumpy speaks and riddles but when the time comes and it's time for the battle he kicks butt and I'll tell you what I mean they've got an impressive 43% graduation rate anytime an online school is graduating in the 40s that's awesome they have a lot of Majors to choose from including one of the most impressive hackable Humanity sets of of Majors out there and the most flexible computer comp science major that I've ever seen and while their per credit rate is $556 for out ofate students they max out at $4,420 per 12we term so if you loaded up like 15 credits now all of a sudden you're basically spending $295 per credit which is better than any other school on this list oh and I forgot to mention they've got some other crazy Majors obviously like a do-it-yourself you know Chipotle build it yourself major math which you don't often see online photography science religion Air Traffic Control business human services like basically a bit of everything they are very diverse if you choose the Thomas cedon path be prepared for a little bit of frustration and having to do a lot of research and planning or I mean you could just hire us to do it for you but at the end of the day the experience will be worth it the degree will be legitimate and you will probably spend very little money and graduate super quickly probably for around $7,000 and somewhere in between 12 weeks and a year Western Governor University or WG is an amazing school they're Competency Based but they are like the cheapest you could imagine imagine you pay $4,000 for a 6-month enrollment and that is enough time for some people to actually just finish the degree that comes out to $22 per day which is amazing and they've got all the hottest degrees to choose from like a bunch of different business degrees they've got tech computer science cyber security they've got psychology they've got a bunch of Education stuff they've even got the worlds only that I know of truly mostly Competency Based online nursing program and a couple of other Healthcare healthcare administration degrees plus especially with the computer degrees you can get certifications at the same time uh that are like industry standard things that you might actually need anyway and all of this works because WGU has a very strong career Focus you're not going to find Humanities degrees there's no English or history or art or anything like that because their one goal is to get you what you need to go get a job they accept a 10 a transfer credit including a lot of the types of hacking credits that we talk about here on this channel it's very possible to just test out of before you even get there like a half to sometimes slightly more of one of their degrees and then you just have to competency base the rest of it up which is basically just like institutionalized hacking anyway they've got Partnerships with colleges and community colleges all across the country so like if you come in with an associates degree from a certain School they'll just automatically give you credit for a huge chunk of like almost all of their degrees but alas nobody is perfect not even me uh and in this case there are a couple of catches number one being that they don't accept International students which is like a huge bummer for international students though I have seen seen some Canadians sneak in so I'm not sure how that works but it has happened they also do something that I really don't like and is that they have no free electives in their degrees whatsoever like everything is a course that is specifically required this means that if you're sitting on like 45 plus old credits from another College attempt chances are good that a lot of those aren't going to find anywhere to fit in a WGU degree and they're just going to kind of disappear into the ether WGU also does required proctored exams for about half of their Competency Based courses and as a kid I didn't mind taking tests it was actually kind of fun it was like a challenge it was an adventure but a lot of people don't feel that way and if you really hate proctored exams uh WGU might not be right for you overall like I said WGU career Focus they do a really good job of keeping track of career Trends and Industry Trends to update their degrees with more of the types of courses that you'll need like when AI became a thing they added more AI courses and frankly when I called WGU up on the phone their employe and customer service people all seem like super happy to be part of the program which is really refreshing like most of them are students there too and they're like yeah this is just so great I'm so glad I have a job here and I'm getting my degree here and it's really encouraging and fun to hear so from all that I've seen they too treat themselves like a business and a business that really cares about their customers so if you want affordable Competency Based education and a variety of super awesome fields and you live in America WGU might be a really good option for you finally we come to the the reigning Champion again at number one this year we have the University of Maine at Presque Isle also known as umpy not by me because that sounds dumb we're going to call him umpi somebody's going to call me out for calling snhu sneu but I just love umpi too much to call them umpy I almost said umpy there these guys offer again Competency Based education through their ypac program it cost $1,700 for8 weeks which is cheaper than pug but like $8 per day more expensive than WGU but the value is there basically they accept tons of transfer credits and their degrees typically have very large free elective sections so you're able to transfer in a lot of old credit of yours or very quickly go through Sophia or study.com or KP transfer all of that in and then you should only have 30 to 33 credits left to complete at umpi and many many people have finished those 30 to 33 in that 8we period meaning that their total costs at the school were right around ,700 you had a few hundred for clepping stuff and Sophia and whatnot and now you're looking at under $2,000 and in some cases under 6 months or under 9 months to be able to graduate in fact I recently put out a video about how I would graduate from umpi in under 4 months they've got Humanities degrees they've got psychology they've got a ton of business stuff and accounting degree criminal justice but the the best of all is their liberal studies degree they build it-yourself Chipotle Majors because for some of those you can transfer in like 60 credits of free electives that's half the degree that you just get to choose yourself plus they just launched a healthcare administration degree and there are rumors about a soon upcoming computer science major they definitely don't offer as many degrees as WGU they cost more but you only have to buy what you need and you have that Supreme level of transferability but here's the big con umpi is in the small town of prescy up in the Teeny top courn right hand corner of the United States in nowhere Maine and they've recently become super popular and their administrative practices have not caught up so typically it takes a long time to get admitted it's been taking recently like up to 3 months to get your degree conferred at the end beyond that they have a lot of new advisors that they've been working on training but there still seem to be a lot of mistakes that come through that students have to be on lookout for themselves not in by any means that all of their advisers are like bad at their jobs or anything but mistakes do happen more frequently than at other schools if you can Overlook that or if you hire us to help you overlook that umpi is a amazing I've even seen people transfer in like 90 credits of Sophia alone take 30 credits with them and then just be done like that could be as little as like $1,800 so cool so cool so exciting I never get tired about talking about umpi but I will say if you want a slightly better customer experience and less weight times and you're okay with a a much much smaller range of degree options tamuk or Eastern Texas A&M University Commerce also has a competency based online program and they don't make it into this list because they just don't have enough degrees to choose from but if you're looking for similar levels of transferability for like one or two degrees that they have and you're looking for like a much more solid customer service experience tamuk could be a really good option and that's not to say that umpi isn't quickly getting better but if you're imp patient and that's really important to you and you don't mind spending a little bit more I will just say tamuk is an option that's out there but even still umpi is King and we have helped hundreds and maybe even thousands at this point students graduate from umpi and other schools on this list and we'd love to do the same thing for you so that you can graduate quickly and inexpensively and build a career that you love if you want to learn more about college hacking you can check out this video here or you can go straight to the link in the description and sign up for a consultation with us we'll help you define your career goals pick a major pick a college and then build a plan to be able to graduate from that college as quickly and inexpensively as humanly possible but that's all I've got for now thanks for watching and happy hacking