Is StraighterLine Legit?

Is StraighterLine legit? Yes, StraighterLine is legit. Students have shared many success stories about their experiences with online courses on StraighterLine. Generally, the pricing, availability, and the ability to complete courses at your own pace are the reasons StraighterLine is the go-to. These have no negative effect on the quality of the lectures and class content.

When you sign up, you will particularly like the organization of the classes and the similarities to in-school activities. Whether you are a working professional, coach, or parent, you will find the convenience and self-paced nature of the courses very significant.

Is StraighterLine Legit?

StraighterLine is very legit. For college students, StraighterLine is an excellent choice due to its affordable cost, faster course completion, and adaptable schedule. However, the primary reason students choose StraighterLine is the ease with which you can transfer their credits to their degree-awarding institutions.

StraighterLine has direct course transfer agreements with over 130 partner colleges. Therefore, students who enroll in these colleges will receive full course credit for StraighterLine courses as part of their degree plan. Also, the American Council on Education (ACE) has reviewed and recommended StraighterLine courses. So, thousands more colleges and universities accept them for credit.

What is StraighterLine?

If you like Sophia courses, you are going to love StraighterLine. Back in 2008, a guy named Burke Smith wanted to find a way to beat insane college prices. He was an educational entrepreneur and consultant, and he was especially annoyed that even though technology kept getting better, college kept getting more expensive.

At the same time, if technology is making it easier to educate, then how come education is costing more and more? So he thought of StraighterLine. Basically, you sign up for a specific course like college algebra, and then you start watching the videos, reading the textbook, and making your way through the course.

As you do, you’ll do homework assignments along the way, sometimes written assignments, but mostly just exams. In the end, if your grade is 70 or higher, StraighterLine will contact your college. They will ask them to give you college credit for what you did. If your college accepts, you now have some college credit.

Perks of StraighterLine

Now, saying it out loud, I realize that doesn’t sound super glamorous. In fact, what I just described sounds an awful lot like a regular college course. But there are several reasons that StraighterLine is super exciting.

Self-paced Courses

First, StraighterLine courses are self-paced, so there are no deadlines, and you can do it on your own schedule.

Many Colleges Accept StraighterLine Credits

StraighterLine has agreements with 130 partner colleges that will accept StraighterLine’s credits. In fact, there are more here than there are for Study.com or Sophia. Of course, beyond the list, there are tons more who will consider StraighterLine credits.

More Courses Than Sophia

StraighterLine has over 60 courses to choose from, which is more than either Sophia or CLEP. So there are a lot of really great things here, especially for filling in niche aspects of your degree.

StraighterLine Doesn’t Affect GPA

Whatever you get, as long as it’s 70 percent, it just transfers to your school as pass/fail.

StraighterLine Courses Are Pretty Quick

StraighterLine themselves say that their courses take about 75 hours a piece to make it through, and that their average student finishes in 33 days.

But there are plenty of people on the internet who have knocked out a Sophia course in a couple of weeks, a week, even a couple of days.

Cheaper Cost

StraighterLine costs $99 a month for the membership and then $59 per course that you attempt. So if you finish 30 credits through Sophia in 20 weeks, that would cost you about $1,085. Earning those same college credits at like an average online college would cost you $14,000. So that’s just insanely amazing.

So those are the perks, but let’s take a look at an actual StraighterLine course.

StraighterLine Course Structure

This is the syllabus for their Introduction to Business course, one of their easier ones. And there’s a lot of information here, but I’m going to give some of the highlights.

They have a textbook that you’ll go through, and that’s going to involve a lot of reading, maybe some videos.

There is a course description

This description is about what exactly is included in this course. Essentially, it’s just an everyday average introduction to business course.

They offer course objectives

A lot of courses these days are based on competencies or around object learning objectives, things that they want you to come out of the course knowing. So in this case, they have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One of them, we’ll just give an example, evaluate and contrast major economic systems and businesses throughout the world. So they are going to make sure that you learn how to do it, as well as the other seven things.

There have course evaluation criteria

So it looks like, in this particular course, there are going to be four regular exams. They’re going to have a graded midterm exam and then a graded final exam. You can see how many each of these points are worth because the graded final exams were 300, this one is worth 200.

You’ll want to do extra well on those, and then, you know, still good, but not, you won’t have to do as well on the smaller ones.

They’re only worth 125. Either way, as long as you end up with 700 points, you pass the StraighterLine course.

You can retake courses

At StraighterLine, if you fail one, all you have to do is just pay the $59 and try again. So you can just keep going.

They have their course topics and objectives

There should be about 15 different topics, including one review topic. And yeah, they’ll kind of have a little bit of an introductory topic at the beginning.

Some StraighterLine courses are going to only have four or five topics. Some have 15. It’s really going to vary by the topic and who designed the course and how well they laid it out.

Even more objectives of the things that you need to learn. And you can probably assume that each one of these on the side over here is going to be a lesson, a chapter, or maybe a few paragraphs, even somewhere in that size range.

When Do Your Exams Come Up?

You may have your first-grade exam after three topics, the next one after five, seven, ten, fourteen, and then fifteen. So that’s how they space it out and make this whole thing work.

So basically, StraighterLine is very similar to taking a regular online college course, except that it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, and you can very much go at your own pace and finish much quicker.

How Do You Ask Questions?

There’s also not a professor that you email, though they do have tutors you can ask questions of. There are fewer homework assignments. It doesn’t affect your GPA, and it’s just overall like a really awesome experience.

If you like Sophia, you will like StraighterLine, too. They have so many more courses to choose from, so if you’re having a hard time filling up all of your slots with Sophia courses, StraighterLine is a way to supplement or even just invest in.

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