I Want to Finish My Degree Online as a Parent: How to Start When You Don’t Know Where to Begin
It was 9:42 on a Tuesday, and I was wiping Goldfish crumbs off my 7-year-old’s subtraction worksheet when I typed “how to finish my bachelor’s degree online” into the search bar for the third time that month. I’d dropped out 10 years earlier, six weeks before I was due with my oldest, and I’d circled back to the idea at least once a season ever since. I worked 25 hours a week as a paraeducator at our neighborhood elementary, and the pay gap between my job and a licensed teaching spot covered our grocery and electric bills every month, but every time I tried to look into it, I ended up with 17 open tabs, a knot in my stomach, and a closed laptop an hour later.
That night, one tab was a glossy out-of-state private school advertising a degree I could finish in 12 months for $40,000. One was a TikTok from a mom of four who said she knocked out her whole degree while homeschooling and running a side business, waking up at 4 a.m. daily. One was the FAFSA homepage, which I’d stared at three times before and never filled out past the first page, because I couldn’t dig up my 2012 tax information after a long day. I ate a stale granola bar standing over the sink after I shut the laptop, and told myself I’d try again next month, same as always.
I ran into Marnie, a 4th grade teacher at our school, at drop-off the next morning. She’d finished her own elementary ed degree online in 2021, back when her ex worked construction out of town and her two kids were still in daycare. I mumbled something about being stuck, not even knowing what first step to take, and she leaned against the playground brick wall and said she’d spent six months doing the exact same tab-hoarding thing before a friend told her to stop looking at programs entirely for the first week.
No one tells you when you’re a parent going back to school: everyone wants to push you to apply today, sign up for an info session, lock in a “new student discount” before the month ends. No one says the first three steps don’t involve talking to an admissions person, paying a cent, or committing to anything. Marnie walked me through them over lukewarm iced coffee, and they were so boring and small I almost laughed, but that’s why they worked.
First, dig up every single transcript you have from every college class you ever took, even the one-off summer pottery class you took for fun at 19, even the dual enrollment class you took senior year of high school. I spent 20 minutes that Saturday rummaging through the dented basement filing cabinet, knocking out a dead spider and digging through folders of vaccine records and 2018 soccer sign-up forms before I found the sealed envelopes I’d forgotten I kept. I’d spent years telling people I only had 30-some credits, that I’d basically wasted the two years I did attend. When I opened them, I had 62. Two classes I thought I’d withdrawn from I’d actually finished, with a B and a C+. That 20-minute dig cut almost a full year off the time I thought I’d need to graduate.
Then, before you look at a single program website, write three non-negotiables on a sticky note and stick it to your laptop. No exceptions, no “maybe it’ll work out.” Mine were: no required scheduled live class meetings, because my husband works rotating 24-hour fire department shifts and we don’t have regular childcare; maximum two classes per 8-week session, because I can’t carve out more than six hours a week of quiet time after bedtime; and per-credit tuition under $500, because our district offers tuition reimbursement and I didn’t want to take out more than $10,000 in loans total. Marnie’s had been “no weekend group work” and “all exams open book, because I can’t guarantee I won’t be interrupted mid-test by a kid throwing up.” When I browsed after that, I could close any non-qualifying tab in 10 seconds, instead of wasting an hour reading student testimonials and convincing myself the $1,200-a-credit private school was worth it for the “career coaching.”
The other early check I almost skipped: send a one-line email to your HR department asking what tuition benefits you qualify for, even if you’re part-time, even if you think you don’t qualify. I’d assumed the district’s reimbursement was only for full-time licensed staff, but it turned out paras with a year of tenure got $2,500 a year, no strings attached as long as I passed the class. That one email covered almost half my annual tuition before I even applied to a single school.
I almost messed up accreditation, too. The first program that popped up in my ads kept calling me, three times in one day, and offered a free laptop if I enrolled that week. I mentioned it to Marnie, and she told me to ask one question before I said anything else: is the program regionally accredited? Most public and non-profit colleges hold regional accreditation, which means your credits count for state teaching licenses, transfer if you need to pause or switch programs, and qualify for most employer reimbursement. The ad-heavy fast-track schools often only have national accreditation, which most public school districts don’t recognize for licensure, and credits rarely transfer. I asked the recruiter, he hemmed and hawed and confirmed it was national vocational accreditation, and I blocked the number. That 10-second question saved me tens of thousands of dollars and a year of wasted time.
I ended up applying to the online division of our state’s big public university, and I didn’t even fill out the full application first. I sent their admissions team a three-sentence email: “I’m a part-time paraeducator looking to finish my elementary ed bachelor’s fully online. I have 62 undergraduate credits from two in-state schools, earned between 2011 and 2014. Can you complete a free unofficial transcript review and tell me how many remaining credits I’d need, and the current per-credit cost for online students?” I had a reply two days later, they reviewed all my transcripts for free before I paid the $35 application fee, and told me 58 of my 62 credits transferred. I only needed 60 more to graduate. At two classes a semester, that’s two and a half years, not the four I’d been panicking over.
I finished my first 8-week class last month. I got a B+, and I’m not even a little upset it wasn’t an A. Half my discussion posts were typed in my car while my oldest had soccer practice. One rough draft of my final paper was written in the pediatrician’s waiting room while my 4-year-old waited out an ear infection. I still haven’t figured out student teaching, which I’ll need to complete full-time for a semester in two years. My husband might switch shifts next year, my mom’s scheduled for a knee replacement this fall that might mean I take a whole semester off, and there are still weeks I don’t open my textbook at all because someone’s sick or work’s chaotic.
I didn’t sign up for the whole degree all at once, is the thing. I signed up for one class, to see if it fit. Last week I registered for the next one. That’s as far ahead as I’m planning right now. The sticky note with my non-negotiables is still on my laptop, half-covered by a dinosaur sticker my 4-year-old slapped on it last month. I just rewrote the words around the T-Rex. It works.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » I Want to Finish My Degree Online as a Parent: How to Start When You Don’t Know Where to Begin