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California College Classes and Programs

To my surprise, California proved to be my ticket to wrapping up my Associate of Arts, pursuing an online Bachelor's of Science (unfinished) and completing a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from the world's foremost GIS program. 

All I had heard was that California is expensive to live in and their universities have extremely expensive tuition.  But I was a military wife and most California colleges had agreements (called "SOFA" at the time) to charge in-state tuition to military members and their dependents and community colleges had extremely affordable tuition.

My books typically cost as much or more than my tuition. My husband was active duty and getting 75 percent of his tuition reimbursed by the Army and tuition was something like $12 per credit hour, or $3 per credit hour for him after reimbursement. 

Most California colleges are on a semester system and a full-time class under that system is typically three credit hours. So I was paying like $36 per class, plus some additional fees and books were usually $50 to $100 per class. And a couple of times, he took the same class I just completed and we re-used my book and he paid $9 for the class plus some additional fees.

Some programs are entirely online and there are many existing transfer agreements within the California college system where if you finish the first two years at a California community college with a transfer agreement and good grades, you are automatically accepted to a prestigious four-year university. This can make the first two years so cheap, it nearly halves your overall tuition costs.

Their wealth of online programs and transfer agreements means you can potentially pursue a credentialed degree from almost anywhere. SOME, but not all, online classes may not distinguish between in-state and out-of-state. It was a flat fee for some classes years ago when I was attending. 

You can begin exploring information about these options via these handy online tools which were my good buddies while I was in school in California:

Online and Distance Degrees

Here are a FEW I found to help get you started researching your options:

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