Penn Foster Career School

Was not happy with this school. Materials are extremely outdated. This is extremely problematic. Say you want to study technological repair. How is the degree effective if the coursework relates to outdated tools and equipment. After graduating, no employer is going to take a degree from this school very seriously. This school does not prepare you for the real world. Go ahead and interview potential employers of the field you are interested in, and ask them whether they would recommend this school. They will say "no".

With many of these careers, you need a lot of hands on training which they do not provide. Buy a book at the store about the potential career of your choice, and you will learn more. At least the book will be up to date.

Also, you enter a contract for a specific degree, and once you enter the contract there is no backing out. You can't change your program, and you can't get your money back, even if you haven't actually started your classes yet. All you will get out of this "school" is outdated materials, instructors that won't assist you, no information or feedback, and a degree that will get you no where.

I have visited numerous education sites and I would say this is the second one that I am paying out of pocket for. I am taking the Associate for Computer Information Systems that I start at the end of July 2015. Now one thing you need to ask yourself before pursuing anything with this school and be honest when you answer is "Can I self-manage myself? Can I self-motivate myself?" Because these are the key things you need with this school to be successful. The program I am in is broken into 4 Quarters/Semesters and there is a list to tell you what you will be taking in each section. To make this easier I will break it down.
TUITION
You have numerous options for paying for tuition but Financial Aid isn't one of them. The 3 options you have are 1. You can pay for that semester upfront which is about $1400 (estimated) <-You save about $350 with this option. 2. You can setup for automatic payments taken from you credit card or however. The monthly payment is setup at your initial registration for the course <-You save about $215 with this option. Finally you can send payments in by mail or do like me and just pay online. Don't understand the purpose of snail mail but to each their own. With this option you get no savings so the total cost would be around $1700. So how do it break down in cost per credit hours? $79 per credit hour. Now one thing you have to know about automatic payments after to many failed charged attempts your student account will be switch to manual monthly payments which then removes the discount that you got for being in the automatic payment service. This is mention in the agreement they have each student sign now if you switch it back on if it goes back on I can't say because I never switched mines back on due to my current limited employment situation.

COURSE
So how is the course done? Everything is online some educational books are provided to you digitally and other books you will need would be ship to you during the time that you would need them. You have the outline of your courses for that semester and when you get it done depends on you. You don't have a teacher setting due dates for your assignment the only thing you have is what you need to study and then the exam you need to take and 1 year to complete the quarter. What if you didn't make the time? You can pay $75 for a 6 month extension for the quarter. They even contact you for tutoring session that they may have going on. What if you need to speak to a teacher? Your program teacher is an email away and I would say I only heard within a few hours or no more than a day from my teacher. So I haven't had bad experience on that. Also some courses require you to take a Proctor Exam which you do have to find you own Proctor and pay for the service. You have to have them approved by PennFoster. They also tell you that some of your courses can transfer to some colleges and just to contact the college you would want to transfer to confirm if they accept PennFoster credits.
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
The most that I can say is that I haven't completed my course but I still have been trying to get in the field that is closely related to what I want to do. On my resume I do mention that I am a current student at Penn Foster College and that has not hinder me from getting call backs from employers. I would say honestly being that I don't have a degree but my high school and some college I really wasn't getting any calls back. So to me to get a call back and at least make it through an interview is a plus that I even got that opportunity versus close to zero calls.
But I would reiterate if you need your school plan set for you and dates set for you to get assignments done then this is not for you. If you can manage yourself and your education plus you don't mind being a lone wolf I would say give this a shot.
Then the most important thing is read what you are signing. Because you will look up Penn Foster and see some people have had bad experiences and majority from what I read is because they didn't take the time to read the fine print, read what they was agreeing to. To me isn't the school responsibility but the student.

I have attached a couple of shots of what you would see if you was signed up for a quarter and a course outline. Some may say $5,000 for an Associate is to much they can pay that at a local community college. Which is fine but that $5,000 won't cover the books that you need for the course or the other fees that are thrown on top of tuition cost. So this isn't for everyone and to save yourself the headache you should know what you are capable of.

I personally like Penn Foster as a way for distance learning as I have a full-time job and a full-time mom to two children. Penn Foster is convenient for me and my lifestyle. Would I recommend? Probably not, for the simple fact that it is outdated information for some courses. I was lucky enough to choose a program that is forced to be updated each year. It's worth the money if you put in the work. Beware that some employers think that Distance learning is a joke, and won't take you or your degree/certificate seriously.