What Online College I Attended As A Working Parent And Would I Recommend It
Last Tuesday, I was folding a pile of damp soccer practice laundry at 9:30 pm when my 12-year-old leaned over my shoulder with my phone. “Mia the babysitter texted you,” she said, bouncing a crumpled tube of lip balm in her hand. “She wants to know what online college you went to, and if you’d recommend it. She’s nannying full time and wants to get her early childhood degree.” I set down a mismatched sock and opened the text, and suddenly I was back to 2018, sitting at our old dining table with a teething toddler on my lap, trying to figure out the same thing: which online school wouldn’t be a scam, wouldn’t leave me with thousands in debt, and would actually get me that degree I’d dropped 10 years earlier when I had my first kid.
I ended up going to Southern New Hampshire University online for my bachelor’s in psychology. Back then, I had 48 credits sitting around from the in-state public university I’d left after my sophomore year, and every school I contacted either wouldn’t accept more than 12 of them or charged three times what I could afford on a paraeducator’s part-time salary. SNHU took 45 of my old credits, charged $320 a credit, and let me take one 8-week class at a time instead of locking me into a full 15-credit semester. That was non-negotiable for me; I couldn’t risk falling behind if one of the kids got sick or my work schedule shifted.
The first semester was messy. I had one midterm scheduled the same night my oldest got his tonsils out, and I emailed my professor at 2 pm asking for an extension. I got a reply in 20 minutes saying take an extra week, no extra hoops, no fine. That sold me on it, honestly. But it wasn’t all smooth. I had three classes that felt like total busywork: post one 200-word response to a prompt, reply to two classmates, that’s the entire grade. I barely retained any information from those, and the custom digital textbook they made me buy cost $150 and I couldn’t sell it back after. There’s no campus study groups, no after-class chats with professors to work through tricky concepts, if you slack off for a week you can easily fall too far behind to catch up. I almost dropped out after that first semester when I got swamped with back-to-school night and a toddler ear infection and didn’t log into the portal for 12 days. I only stayed because my advisor called me (yes, a real person called, not an automated email) and helped me drop one class without getting a withdrawal on my record.
People ask me all the time if it’s a “real” degree, and for what I needed it for, it was. I got hired as a full-time behavior interventionist at my kids’ elementary school three months after I graduated, and the principal didn’t blink an eye at it being online. When I applied to a master’s in school counseling at the local state university a year later, they accepted every single one of my SNHU credits, which matters more than anything else I can tell you. That’s the first concrete check I tell anyone to do now: confirm your program is regionally accredited before you fill out an application. A lot of cheap online schools aren’t, which means your degree won’t transfer to other schools and most employers won’t accept it. No regional accreditation, just skip it.
The second thing I tell people to do is get all credit transfer agreements in writing before you enroll. I had a friend who went to a different big online school that told her over the phone they’d accept all her old credits, then after she paid for her first class, they said only a quarter counted. She ended up paying twice as much as I did for the same degree. Third, if you’re balancing school with kids or a full-time job, pick a school that lets you go at your own pace, not a rigid 16-week semester. 8-week terms meant I could take a term off if we had a big family trip or a medical issue without failing half my classes. I paid for each class out of pocket as I went, so I never took out more student loans than I could handle, which was only possible because of that flexible pacing.
I wouldn’t recommend SNHU, or any online college, for everyone. If you need the accountability of showing up to a physical class every week to get your work done, online school will be a struggle. I’m a self-directed person, and I still struggled to stay on track some semesters. If you want a degree in a field that requires a lot of hands-on training right out of school, like nursing or engineering, this isn’t the right fit either. But for someone who needs to work around their current life to get a degree that will open new doors, it’s a solid option.
I texted Mia back all of this last Tuesday, not just a quick yes or no. I told her it worked for me when I needed it most: the $15 an hour raise I got after graduation paid for my oldest’s braces and our first real family vacation in five years, and I wouldn’t have that job without my degree. I couldn’t have done in-person classes when my kids were little, and I couldn’t afford to take time off work to go back to school. But I also told her to check the local community college’s online program first, because for the first two years of her degree, it might be cheaper, and she can transfer credits later if she wants.
She texted me back this morning saying she’s pulling her old high school and college transcripts together right now to compare options. I’ll probably go back for my master’s online in a couple of years, once my youngest is in middle school and has more after-school activities that don’t require me to drive her everywhere. I’ll look at SNHU first, but I’ll do the same three checks I tell everyone else to do. It’s not a one-size-fits-all answer, but it worked for me when I had no other good options.
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