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How To Affordably Go From An Associate To A Bachelor’s Degree
November 06, 2020
Getting an Associate or a Bachelor’s Degree these days is more important than ever before. Yet college costs often make people stop before they can get the degree they really want.
However, many people do not realize that it is possible to still graduate with a Bachelor’s in four years or less by first getting your Associate at a community or junior college. We show how to transfer from a community college in a way that saves you tuition money and saves you in other ways too.
The Bachelor’s degree is becoming the new standard. In fact, the average job now typically requires it - including many entry-level positions.
Economists and other experts call this phenomenon “degree inflation”. Just as the cost of goods, cost of living, and minimum wage increase with time, so too do the minimum education requirements in just about any job sector.
While it is great that so many people are being incentivized to get a quality education, certain obstacles come up, cutting off many people from jobs that they could really thrive in.
The first and most obvious is that of money, with fewer people having access to the financial aid they need to go to college for this length of time (though we do tackle financial aid and how to get it in this article). The other being that many people who may need a Bachelor’s degree for a desired job or for career advancement are not always great students. Through no fault of their own, not all are equally talented in this area.
Because of this, getting a Bachelor’s can be more difficult than it at first seems. No one should have to feel pressured about going to school.
In order to help, we offer a suggestion that many like to brush off: getting an Associate’s first, and then transferring to a four-year school.
Why do they brush it off? Because the stigma is that you have to compromise your education when attending a two year college.
In fact, that is far from the case.
Just to prove it to you, we will show you below the three types of students that could really benefit in going from associate’s to bachelor.
Students Who Want To Save Money
Perhaps the biggest motivation for students looking to go from an associate’s to a bachelor degree first is money. While there is something to be said for staying at the same place of study for four years, fostering friendships and forming long-term bonds with teachers, there is something more to be said for not graduating with a mountain of debt.
After all, college is about setting you up for the most future success.
You can’t do that if you’re dividing up high student loan payments with your other cost of living expenses.
Just as of the 2016-2017 aid year, the average Public Two-Year In-State Tuition was less than half of a Public Four-Year Institution’s.
Source: https://www.affordablecolleges.com/resources/college-transfer-guide/
This is a significant amount of savings if you devote half of your time at college (if not more) to this reduced price.
How More Than Two Years Could Be Your Discount
You would assume that the most you can save on a two-year to four-year transfer is two years, right? Well, technically that is true. However, many community colleges offer you “free” classes.
Free classes, you say? Sounds a little too good to be true.
Here’s how it works:
Typically colleges have a minimum number of class credit hours a student must meet to qualify as a “full time” rather than “part time” student. Why is this distinction important?
You can only be eligible for benefits such as federal financial aid (FAFSA) if you are full-time status.
However, many community college also have a maximum price tag for full-time status. For Delgado Community College, this maximum is 12 credit hours. Once you hit 12, you are taking what is a deemed a ful load of classes. Yet you can go as high as 15 credits there, and those extra credits will not cost you an extra cent in tuition.
How does this work? It’s partly an incentive but it is also the point at which the school has properly evaluated its price.
What this means for you is that the amount you go “over” on your class credits, the more credits you can have finished by the end of your associate degree run at a community college.
Students Who Have Struggled In School In The Past
The phrase “school isn’t for everybody” does ring true for many. While test scores and GPAs are one way to determine performance and learning, many people enter the college experience with several disadvantages, including:
- Not having the same level of education
- English not being a native language
- Having certain slight or extreme learning disabilities
- Test-taking anxiety
Because of all these factors, a two-year community college setting may be a better fit for some students, even if they plan to eventually go on and get their Bachelor’s.
Community college tends to be a more natural transition point from a high school system. For one thing, community colleges are typically the closest to home and do not offer any kind of on-campus housing.
This allows people who need a smoother transition into the next phase of life to only change one thing at a time (the level fo eduaction they’re entering), rather than also trying to change their lifestyle, environment and day-to-day functioning.
Knowing this, community colleges also often tend to offer more hands-on support, both in their operational staff and in their classrooms.
This means smaller class sizes. Many public four year colleges fill lecture halls with 100s of students, making you a tiny ant in a colony.
Community college focuses on smaller class sizes, so you get more personal instruction. Your instructors will be more available for you, will be able to answer questions more directly.
Two year institutions also offer great student support services that help you outside of what you do in class. Because all community colleges are state-funded, they use the power of the state to offer free services for typical adult living, like:
- Doing your taxes
- X
- X
- X
Certain federal and state aided initiatives, like the TRiO Student Support Services at Delgado, are meant to help offer free help to very specific pockets of people, like:
- First Generation Students
- Low-Income / Documented Disabilities
- International Students
Students Who Have Struggled In School In The Past
The phrase “school isn’t for everybody” does ring true for many. While test scores and GPAs are one way to determine performance and learning, many people enter the college experience with several disadvantages, including:
- Not having the same level of education
- English not being a native language
- Having certain slight or extreme learning disabilities
- Test-taking anxiety
Because of all these factors, a two-year community college setting may be a better fit for some students, even if they plan to eventually go on and get their Bachelor’s.
Community college tends to be a more natural transition point from a high school system. For one thing, community colleges are typically the closest to home and do not offer any kind of on-campus housing.
This allows people who need a smoother transition into the next phase of life to only change one thing at a time (the level fo eduaction they’re entering), rather than also trying to change their lifestyle, environment and day-to-day functioning.
Knowing this, community colleges also often tend to offer more hands-on support, both in their operational staff and in their classrooms.
This means smaller class sizes. Many public four year colleges fill lecture halls with 100s of students, making you a tiny ant in a colony.
Community college focuses on smaller class sizes, so you get more personal instruction. Your instructors will be more available for you, will be able to answer questions more directly.
Two year institutions also offer great student support services that help you outside of what you do in class. Because all community colleges are state-funded, they use the power of the state to offer free services for typical adult living, like:
- Doing your taxes
- X
- X
- X
Certain federal and state aided initiatives, like the TRiO Student Support Services at Delgado, are meant to help offer free help to very specific pockets of people, like:
- First Generation Students
- Low-Income / Documented Disabilities
- International Students
The Perks Of Being A General Studies Major
You might think a general studies student doesn’t have the same options as someone who graduates with an associate in a specific field, especially when it comes to transferring.
But in the case of transfers, it can actually be easier to do so under a general studies banner than something more major specific.
For instance, at Delgado, an A.G.S. degree, or Associate of General Studies, allows you to still pick a concentration (18 semester hours in one subject) while still staying flexible enough to take classes that you need to graduate and classes that you just find interesting.
You know how many stories there are of students who go into a (very expensive) four-year college with no idea what they really want to major in, only to discover their career path after taking a great class?
Discovery is a major part of the college life, and community colleges offer a safe and affordable place to find who it is you want to be in life.
Just in case you need one more reason to consider a General Studies degree? It will have the most potential to be fully-transferable. While almost every four-year has different standards for whether a degree-program-specific class is equivalent to what took, most general education and introductory classes are equivalent and easily accepted across the board.
The Power of Certifications
Keeping discovery in mind, what if you “discover” that an Associate degree isn’t right for you, or that for what you want to do, you don’t need to attend a college or two years and incur that cost?
This is another reason why two-year college might be the right place to start no matter your original intentions coming in.
Certifications are industry-recognized documents that prove to certain work sectors that you are qualified to be hired for a certain position.
Unlike an Associate or a Bachelor’s Degree, where you must complete a minimum number of credit hours to qualify, a certification can be earned in as little as one class and as quickly as one semester.
For those who like to think in the short and long term simultaneously, you can even earn one or multiple certifications on your way to an Associate and Bachelor’s degree.
Think of a certification as a documents that “transfers” you into certain jobs that wouldn’t consider you for employment without one. This is a particularly popular form of accreditation in trade and skilled labor jobs.
The Best-Kept Secret About Transferring An Associate To A Bachelor’s Is...
With all of the above in mind, there’s a deeper truth we must admit: any student could really benefit from transferring from a two year to a four year college.
With degree inflation and tuition costs factored in, where a student went to college all four years should not be as important as how they got their degree.
When it comes to getting your bachelor’s, now a near-necessity for any career, two things stand as more valuable than anything else:
- How Quick You Got Your Degree
- How Affordable Your Degree Was
The quicker you finish, the quicker you can enter the workforce and start a higher-paying salary.
The more affordably you finish, the less loans you have to pay back and the more quickly you can move on to important money decisions such as buying a house or building your retirement fund.
How Do I Know Everything Will Transfer?
One of the more discouraging moments in the career of any college student is when they realize not all credits they took can transfer from a two-year to a four-year college. This can thankfully be avoided with the right amount of preparation, planning ahead and understanding both your two-year college’s internal policies and policies with other colleges and universities.
Before you start at any two-year college to pursue an Associate degree with the purpose of transferring to a four-year college and receiving your Bachelor’s is look at the school’s website for their transfer policy.
One of the most important words in Transfer Policy parlance is Articulation Agreement. An articulation agreement is a policy that two higher education institutions have in place for smooth and easy transfers.
At Delgado, articulation agreements are set for most of the major colleges and univerisities in Southeastern Louisiana. This means that someone looking to transfer from Delgado to one of the qualifying four-year programs will have absolutely no trouble getting all of their credits transferred.
These articulation agreements often also include other cost and time saving advantages, like a waived application fee for the four-year college.
With an articulation agreement, you have the peace of mind that your entrance of a two year program basically guarantees you easy transfer and entry into the Bachelor’s program you need to succeed.
It’s like already enrolling in a four-year college without paying their tuition sticker for two years!