Life experience or degrees for it can be as unique and different as the people trying to acquire them. The types of degrees available at each institution vary according to the school and its core studies. A perusal of several colleges offering life experience degrees reveals that students can earn a degree in just about any discipline. For instance, the University of Berkeley offers online life experience degrees in psychology, business administration, theology, comparative religion, computer science and health administration, among others. Most online life experience colleges offer fully customizable degree programs.
Most schools offering these types of degrees have a set of assessment criteria that they use to determine how many credit hours to award students based on life experience. Schools like Canyon College award degrees based on a combination of work experience, licenses and certifications earned, additional specialized training, military training and experience and any workshops or conferences attended.
Troll the Internet for "life experience degrees" or any other similar term using a major search engine and you'll get numerous and varied results. As an article published on geteducated.com notes, however, the majority of these so-called life experience degrees are scams. They point out four legitimate online life experience colleges: Excelsior College in Albany, New York; Charter Oak State College in New Britain, Connecticut; Western Governors University in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, New Jersey. Each of these colleges is regionally accredited and offers its own approach to life experience degrees. Excelsior College and Thomas Edison State are accredited by the Middle State Association of Colleges and Schools while Charter Oak College and Western Governors University are accredited by the New England Association and the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, respectively.
Accreditation is the key to determining the legitimacy of any life experience college. Numerous schools offer these types of degrees, but without proper accreditation the degrees are meaningless. When looking for a life experience degree, regionally accredited schools are considered the most desirable in higher education. Schools should be certified as genuine by an accrediting body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Schools that are accredited by agencies registered with the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) are the most desirable.
According to another article on geteducated.com, fake accrediting agencies have created an "epidemic" in online education. Too many colleges offering fake degrees have scammed people out of hundreds and even thousands of dollars. It has become so commonplace for fake schools to sell degrees online that even a pug named Chester Ludlow was awarded a Master of Business Administration for the one-time fee of $499. Geteducated.com listed 30 fake online accrediting agencies. Among common phony agencies you may find the likes of the World Online Education Accrediting Commission (WOEAC), Accreditation Council for Distance Education (ACTDE) and the Association of Distance Learning Programs (ADLP). Neither these nor the other 27 agencies listed were recognized by the CHEA or the U.S. Department of Education. Students purchasing life experience degrees from schools accredited by these agencies may be throwing their money away.