Good online business degree in Florida?

July 13, 2009 6:58 PM

Besides University of Florida (UF), are there any good, accredited schools in Florida that offer completely online business degrees (or Economics... maybe General Studies worst case)?

I was kicked out of a state school (hereafter, SS) 3 years ago, after attending full time for 4. My GPA was 1.8. With that kind of GPA and credit deficit, I was basically permanently kicked out. So, I switched majors and went to community college!

I just finished my Business AA from a community college. Now I'd like to finish it up my BA. Unfortunately, I can't get back into SS (I still live in the same city, do not plan to move, have great job making more than all my coworkers with degrees). I've already appealed and was denied readmission. My GPA after CC was 2.15, but for the business program only, it was 3.62. I have like 60-70 credits of HORRIBLE grades dragging me down.

Because I am not in good standing with SS, I can't go to UF (you have to be in good standing with all previous institutions). Also, because my GPA is horrible, I can't go anywhere but another SS, or a degree mill (university of phoenix, etc), unless there are some extremely understanding private schools out there I don't know about. With an AA from a Florida Community College, you're guaranteed admission to a state school.

Are there any other schools in Florida I can go to, without moving? Does anyone have any advice or experience with this kind of situation whatsoever? Basically I spent 4 years in a major I thought I liked, but hated and was not good at, digging myself into a huge hole, because I was young, dumb, irresponsible, etc.

Should I just not say anything about my previous SS experience and apply to UF anyways?

posted by anonymous to education (8 comments total)

You can apply to UF, but you'll never get in. Also, I don't know how you could conceal your academic expulsion when you send your transcripts. I can't think of a school in the Florida public system that will take you with those grades, except maybe Florida Gulf Coast. FGCU offers a distance learning MBA, but not a BS. Apparently some of the CCs are offering bachelor's degrees now, and maybe one or two of them have a BS in business. (doubtful) With respect to your comment about private schools, many private schools are extremely forgiving if you fork over full tuition.
posted by Crotalus at 7:58 PM on July 13

Also, since you're in Florida, I'm sure you already know about this option. Its one step up from University of Phoenix.
posted by Crotalus at 8:13 PM on July 13

I am assuming you want to attend a Florida school online for tuition purposes, and not actually move.

According to http://www.flbog.org/aboutsus/universities/ , you have about 9 public universities to choose from. Research who has a mostly-online program and start applying. This is Plan A.

If that fails, find a community college that grants bachelors degrees. According to http://www.flboe.org/cc/students/bach_degree.asp
, there are 15 within the state of Florida. At least one has to have an online program.

I don't think it's right to call University of Phoenix a degree mill. It is an established, accredited university. They're also the grandfather of online programs... and programs for people with jobs.
posted by beingresourceful at 9:54 PM on July 13

I disagree with Crotalus about there being no Florida public institutions that would accept you; indeed, based on your completion of an AA degree at a Florida CC, it looks to me like UNF in Jacksonville would accept you, assuming a 2.15 GPA = "C" average, by their lights. You could certainly clear this up with a call to the UNF Office of Admissions. The Coggin College of Business there is pretty well respected as an undergrad business school.

In the private school domain, in North Florida, Jacksonville University offers a number of undergraduate business and finance programs, leading to BA or BS degrees, but does not offer much, if any, of its coursework online.

The real rub you are going to have, if you are looking specifically for Florida institutions, is that few of the state institutions have put much of their coursework up on the Web. They simply don't want to compete for distance learning students with established private schools like University of Phoenix, Walden University, Capella University, etc. The marketing costs for brick-and-mortar state institutions, which get much of their operating budgets from endowments and state funding, simply don't hold up well, when they are perceived by the public to be going to national advertising campaigns for distance learning students, instead of to supporting residence students from in state. If you are going to do a business degree entirely online, you are pretty much going to have to consider doing it with an accredited online private institution, such as one of those I mentioned above. But there appear to be some Florida private schools moving in the direction of online education, including Southwest Florida College in Fort Myers.

One thing I will mention is that taking classes through distance learning is often advertised as "more flexible" in terms of personal scheduling than attending a normal classroom based program. In my experience, while there may be some convenience to online courses in terms of travel savings, the class schedules and projects are quite tight, as you typically must do your readings and post your written assignments early each week, in order to receive online "feedback" from your classmates and instructor, and participate in class "discussions" by posting to the class Web forum. It is vital that you stay ahead of the syllabus, as getting questions answered about assignments can take a full 24 hour e-mail cycle, if your fellow students and instructor are in other time zones. Also, you can expect that you will have some technical difficulties with Web servers, and occasional Internet issues, that you would not have with classroom versions of the course, and you need to understand that most online programs expect you to meet submission dates for assignments, regardless of such technical problems.

Given your academic history, you might need to do some introspection and decide if you have the personal discipline it takes to work mostly by yourself, and through the relatively impersonal mediums of Web forums and e-mail correspondence, to complete your education. It is not for everyone.
posted by paulsc at 10:17 PM on July 13

University of Phoenix might not be a degree mill, but it is a for profit institution. Its goal is profit and that often comes at the expense of the interests of students. From conversations with its instructors, morale is very low among students and instructors everywhere. Many instructors have uneven academic backgrounds themselves, and many realize they are gouging innocent people for virtually worthless degrees-- worthless in the sense that U.Phoenix does not hold much if any prestige.

I strongly advise you to avoid all for profit institutions.

It is not clear whether you are planning to return to school full time or to finish your degree part-time, or whether you'd leave Florida for school if you had a chance to go to a public or private school of your choice. (Maybe I just missed where you clarified those things.) So I'm going to assume that you want to stay in Florida, and you're open-minded about public and private schools. I've got four suggestions.

First, there is at least one well-known, fully online not-for-profit university, Western Governors University. It might be just what you are looking for. All learning is self-paced and you interact with instructors online. Because it is non-profit, it does not carry the stigma of U.Phoenix and its ilk.

But as paulsc said, it can be hard to keep up with a program lacking structure and formal classroom instruction. If you know you can manage time well now for study, online might be the best way to go.

Second, public schools that offer classroom-based courses at night and in summer school for non-traditional students (those who return to college after a break of any number of years). Summer school in particular is a great way to get a lot of credits out of the way. Non-traditional student programs are the wave of the future, and I am sure there is a public school offering near you, right for you. (God, I sound like a commercial)

Third, private schools will be more forgiving of your low GPA than you think. These days every tuition dollar counts. Harvard might say no to your past GPA, but there will be many other private colleges that will welcome you with open arms.
(Incidentally, I teach at a private school, and one day I ran into a student who had been kicked out of a class I had T.A.'d as a grad student at his previous school!)

Fourth, private schools, some more than others, also have begun to cater to the needs of non-traditional students. And-- good news-- admissions criteria are can be very lax compared to regular-student admissions.

I saved the best news for last. You've got one very attractive thing going for you: a high GPA in your major. You'll be pleasantly surprised what that major GPA will do for you. To make it work to your advantage, send along a carefully-crafted letter explaining the reasons behind your low overall GPA, how you've matured since then, and your passion about your desired major. If your major of choice is business, highlight your success since you left CC.

I hope this information helps. You're in a pretty good position because universities hit hard by the economic crisis need tuition dollars, non-traditional student programs are on the rise, and you have a high major GPA.
posted by vincele at 12:02 AM on July 14

2. All transfer students must have a cumulative college average of "C" or higher and be in "good standing" status ("C" or higher average and be eligible to return) at the last college attended.

Paulsc is incorrect. The last clause of the foregoing paragraph will sink you at UNF.
posted by Crotalus at 6:23 AM on July 14

There are also a fair number of online-only schools outside of Florida that will give you in-state tuition for programs that don't involve any in-person classes. My boyfriend and I were researching them in an IT field, but business is pretty common as well. Some of the brick-and-mortar schools offering this option included the University of Illinois-Springfield, the University of Wyoming (which has over a century of experience in the correspondence-course field -- think about all of the people out in the West who didn't have other stuff to do) and Troy University.

Troy, incidentally, were pretty jerky when he called them, and he didn't pursue them at all.

He eventually started with Capella. I work pretty closely with academic advisors at a top national university, so I was obviously pretty hesitant about all of the previously mentioned for-profit reasons, in addition to having a friend whose experience was less than transparent. Still, one of my advisor friends recommended Capella as being the top of the for-profit heap. My boyfriend has only been doing classes for a few days now, so we'll have to wait and see, but he's been pleasantly impressed by how much they've communicated with him over the past few months and made the effort to explain everything. They've called a bunch of times and he's felt like they've been very responsive.

He's in a pretty similar situation to you -- has a job, needs experience but not necessarily the kind that you'd get with a degree, probably just needs the piece of paper -- so you might check those things out. There's also the possibility of starting with an institution like this and finishing up at a better school so you can say you graduated from FSU, for example, even though you only completed your last two semesters there.

Incidentally, having worked in admissions, I'm kind of surprised that the state schools won't let you back in. In my experience, if you've shown yourself to be a good student in the years following a major mishap, you should be eligible. If for some reason you end up putting this off and establishing residency in another state, you might check out some state schools again.

Good luck!
posted by Madamina at 8:39 AM on July 14

"... Paulsc is incorrect. The last clause of the foregoing paragraph will sink you at UNF."
posted by Crotalus at 9:23 AM on July 14

To continue my disagreement with Crotalus on the UNF example, many schools on the 4.0 GPA scale system list a "C" average as being equivalent to a 2.0 cumulative GPA. If that is true for UNF, and you completed your AA degree at a Florida state CC with a cumulative 2.15 GPA at that institution, and are eligible to return to that institution (for other coursework, i.e. not on academic or other suspension), you would be, by my reading, perfectly eligible for transfer as a junior to UNF. But as I said in my original post, it's easy enough to confirm with a simple phone call to the admissions office at UNF.
posted by paulsc at 12:00 PM on July 14