NEW ORLEANS (press release) – The higher education information resource OnlineU has published its 2021 Most Affordable Online Colleges rankings, based on tuition rates from over 40,000 online programs at 737 colleges.
At #9 nationwide, Delgado Community College ranks as one of the Most Affordable Online Colleges in the United States for associate degree programs: https://www.onlineu.org/most-affordable…/associate-degrees
At Delgado Community College, all degree-seeking students pay the same tuition, regardless of official place of residence. This can save students and their families hundreds or thousands of dollars compared to public colleges that charge higher tuition for non-residents: https://catalog.dcc.edu/content.php?catoid=46&navoid=6708
OnlineU focuses on providing prospective students with data highly relevant to them — clear, accessible tuition information they can use to compare options and make an informed decision. To provide this, they rank colleges based on manually researched tuition rates, sourced from official school websites. In order to ensure program variety and eliminate outliers, colleges must offer at least 10 online programs across several different subject areas to be considered.
The average student loan borrower graduates with over $30,000 in student debt, which can often take decades to pay off. Considering the remote education surge, many affordable online options do exist, but the overwhelming number of colleges and resource sites can make it difficult to identify, narrow down the field, and compare options.
Unfortunately, it is also difficult to obtain accurate tuition information for these online options. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) only provides reliable tuition costs for campus-based degree programs, yet many college ranking sites rely on this data to rank online degrees.
OnlineU is clearing up this misinformation by manually researching tuition rates for online degree programs. The company researched 40,576 tuition rates to compile the rankings for the associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels, providing a more accurate resource for online students to easily compare schools based on cost and degree level.
“In studying the data from over 40,000 tuition rates, there were some surprising and valuable findings: OnlineU’s data showed that IPEDS out-of-state tuition rates can be more than double what an online student would actually expect to pay,” said Sung Rhee, CEO of OnlineU.
