I am looking for degree program that offers credits for life
experience. I have an A.A. degree and am a certified Alcohol and Drurg
Counselor. I have approximately 800 hundred Continueing Education
Units(CEU'S)from accredited sources. I have been imployed inthe field
for 18yrs. Any suggestions?

Hi there,

First, I would highly recommend that you read the follow article that
outlines several ways to get college credits with life experience.

http://www.geteducated.com/articles/collegecredit.htm

For example:
Challenge exams have been developed to "test" what a learner already
knows about college-level subjects.  Most exams are multiple choice,
feature an average of one hundred questions, and can be completed in
an hour or less.
1. College Level Exam Program (CLEP) - CLEP, the College Level Exam
Program, is the most widely accepted challenge exam program. More than
2,900 accredited colleges accept CLEP for undergraduate degree credit

2. Thomas Edison College Exam Program (TECEP) - TECEPs cover the
humanities, social science/history, science and math, business, and
professional areas such as counseling.

Aside from challenge exams, there are several more possible ways that
the website lists for converting life experience to credits.

--------------------------------------------------
Having said that, the following universities will convert life
experiences directly to college credits/degrees.  They will require an
assessment, usually free, where you submit your information and they
will notify you of your eligibility.


Almedia University
http://www.almedacollege.org/life-experience.html

Belford University
http://www.belforduniversity.org/university/BachelorsProgram.asp?mcid=2

Fairfield University
http://www.fairfield.edu/x3189.html 

Bronte International University 
http://www.biu-edu.org

Concordia College and University
http://www.concordia-college.net

Canyon College
http://www.canyoncollege.edu/apple_form.htm 

Breyer State University
http://www.breyerstate.com/onlinetransfer.htm

Southern Vermont College
http://www.svc.edu/evening/lindex.html 

Redding University
http://www.reddinguniversity.com

Suffield University
http://www.suffielduniversity.com

Please note that I have purposely left out colleges that have very
negative reviews in terms of fraud potential or credibility.

If you would like to see a side by side comparison of some of the
universities/colleges listed above, please visit the follow link:
http://www.degreeadvice.com/diploma_guide.html


If you require clarification on any part of the answer, please feel
free to ask for one.

Cheers,
Tox-ga

You should be aware of web based diploma mills that claim to transfer
credit for life experience. Any college or university that is not at
least regionally accredited is a huge risk. I highly recommend reading
this http://personalpages.tds.net/~rlaws/dlfaqv8.html#two

Although the above response is accurate that many colleges or
univiersities do allow students to test out of some coursework using
C.L.E.P, the majority of the response was poorly researched. The link
that was provided to "compare the quality" of schools that transfer
life experience actually contains suspected diploma mills. I encourage
you to discount and ignore any such school that does not require
qualitative and quantitative course work.

Most importantly, you should research the accreditation of each school
you are considering. Regional accreditation is most commonly accepted
for most schools. National accreditation is usually reserved for
biblical or religion based schools and some specialty schools. Lastly,
red flags for fake degrees are schools that claim to be nationally,
internationally, or world accredited. Some diploma mills claim to be
accredited by some other fancy sounding fake authority from another
country or continent. If you live in the U.S.A. you want a regionally
accredited university. There are eight regions (or accrediting boards)
each under The Council for Higher Education Accreditation board. You
can view links to each of them here
http://www.chea.org/Directories/regional.asp . You should always look
at the lists of schools on these regional accreditation authority web
sites to find the name of the school you are considering.

I suspect the reason why you are interested in converting life
experience to college credit is to either save time or money. In
either case, you could consider a regionally accredited school which
provides excellerated web-based learning environments (and C.L.E.P.
lifelong learning test-out options) such as University of Phoenix
(http://www.uopxonline.com), American Intercontinental University
(A.I.U - http://www.aiuonline.edu), or Capella University
(http://www.capella.edu). There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Excellent points d0u9las.
A good website for anyone wanting to delve into this topic in depth is
http://www.degree.net