Why UMPI Is the Best College to Hack
...but May Not Be a Good Fit for You
When I started College Hacked, I was stuck in the mindset of “The Big 3.”
Back in the second age of college hacking (~1995-2010), The Big 3 dominated college hacking message boards. They were Thomas Edison State University, Charter Oak State College, and Excelsior University.
Between these three schools, you could find a degree, you could hack it, and you could graduate quickly and inexpensively.
But times have changed. Excelsior discontinued their uExcel exams, COSC is too expensive, and TESU has made more and more rules that make them harder to hack.
You know what schools have risen and tried to take their place?
Competency-based schools.
And the three most prominent are Western Governor’s University, Purdue Global University, and University of Maine at Presque Isle. Instead of just being transfer friendly and accepting lots of CLEP and Sophia, these schools rethought college entirely and instead let you pay a subscription for a certain amount of time in which you can learn at your own pace and complete a single assignment per course that proves you learned the material. This has allowed students to speed up graduation times and save tons of money.
And all three have their pros and cons, but I’ve found that UMPI is the perfect blend of price, transfer flexibility, alternative credit acceptance, and speed.
I’ve even given clients completion estimates to UMPI of around $5,000 and 6 months to graduation! It’s pretty insane how good this school is if you want to graduate quickly and inexpensively. And this is due not only to the fact that they accept CLEP, Sophia, StraighterLine, and Study.com, but also that their Bachelor of Liberal Studies degrees have around 60 credits of free electives, which makes them really good at using transfer credits if you have a lot of them.
On top of that, you’ve got their competency-based program that costs $1,400 every 8 weeks. In that time, students have knocked out over 30 credits (even though the average is probably closer to 12). That’s insane value for college students, and it’s another big reason I love UMPI (and that I said, “Yes,” when they invited me to teach for them!).
BUT there’s one thing UMPI really suffers in: degree choice.
Their online program only has six bachelors degrees; when you count specializations, it’s 14. That’s not much. They have a business degree, education minor, journalism degree, a criminal justice degree, and a history/political science degree, but that’s it. No psychology. No healthcare admin. No technology.
So what’s the big deal for you? Well, I really want to drive home the point that college hacking is ALL about backwards planning. What career goal do I have? What major will get me there? And what college will get me that major quickly and inexpensively?
UMPI (or any other school) might be AMAZING, but if they don’t have the major that your career requires, don’t do it. When you graduate college, it doesn’t matter what degree you have if it isn’t enough to get you into the job or graduate school you want.
No matter how good a school is, you don’t start building a College Hacked plan picking a college. You start by picking a career goal.
If you want to learn more about UMPI, check out this video:
Thanks for reading/watching! And if you’re looking for this week’s video reviewing the University of the People, here it is!
Have a great week and happy hacking!
Dr. Clifford Stumme