Review of Reuven Frankel's book "the Bochurs Guide to College"
The purpos of the book is to show you how you can attain a college degree without ever steping foot on a college campus, and giving the student the msot fleability in chosing the materials they will learn that are not directly related to the concentration (e.g. Liberal arts).
He goes through the various ways of distance learning and the otion available in each category.
These are:
Online courses directly from prospetive colleges all over the country;
Correspondes study. While still avaible at some institutions, it is quicly being replaced by online courses;
Credit-by-exam. This is perhaps the most powerfull way IMO which gives the tudent the most flexability in choosing what to study for and doing it and their own pace.
He goes through all the ways off abtaining credit by exams (many of which we's been disscussing in this thread).
Some of these include AP -advaced placement testing, CLEP's, ACE, and other like GRE. While GRE is meat as a screening device when entaring graduate schools, some undergraduate schools will award credits based on you score on these tests, as much as 30 credits is possible.
Other things dicussed are community programs like COOP, AHS (which he is the dean of), TTI etc. Whith AHS for example, one can get many credits just from Judiac and Hebraic studies n tests. So if you went through a yeshiva of Beis Yaakov youl have an easy time preparing for and taking these tests.
To acually get the degree one needs to be enroled in a college for a year or two. He highly recommends Excelsior Collge and Charter Oak Collge because of their extreem flexability in allowing you to get credits from so many different places, including yeshivah credits.
I highly recommend the book and think it is a great investment.
(Please excuse spelling, I'm on my mobile).