Affordability of Higher Education (Part 2)
The founder of American Military University, Major James P. Etter, was passionate about the need to provide an affordable college education to service members. We matched our tuition to the semester hour rate maximum reimbursed by the Department of Defense (DOD) which is currently $250 per semester hour. We do not charge an application or admissions fee. We do not charge a technology fee or student activities fee. We provide book grants to all undergraduate students who maintain the minimum satisfactory academic standing of a 2.0 GPA. We have not increased our undergraduate tuition since 2000, nearly eight years.
We charge a Transfer Credit Evaluation Fee (TCE) of $100 which is used to offset the cost of procuring all transcripts earned by a student at previously attended institutions and/or military training schools as well as the cost of evaluating how much credit applies to the degree path selected. We do not charge the student a fee per credit hour transferred as some schools do. We accept ACE credit recommendations and accept up to 90 credit hours transferred at the undergraduate (BA/BS) level.
What does this mean? We believe that we expand access to higher education by attempting to keep our tuition low and our fees at a minimum. Some of the students who attend our institution would not be able to afford other institutions including their public state university. Our credit transfer policy further reduces the total cost of a degree for an adult learner since our cap should not reduce the courses already taken at a community college while earning an associates degree. Calculating the savings by not having to retake courses is complicated, but something that I strongly advise you to do.
I suggest that anyone concerned with the cost of a degree make a comparison of the following items:
To see our methodology, please click the links below:
Tags: Access and Affordability, ACE, American Military University, AMU, federal student aid, Transfer Credit
June 24th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Very interesting discussion and chart, thanks for sharing!
May 19th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
[...] The average four-year public college tuition for the 2007-2008 academic year was $6,180 (see my June 2008 blog article comparing the cost of tuitions at public and private four-year colleges). This is more than half [...]