Customer Reviews

Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees Nontraditionally (Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning)

5 star:		(20)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pardon the hyperbole, but no "nontraditional" (i.e. working adult) student should be without this book. John and Mariah succinctly and humorously break down the good, the bad, and the ugly in this guide to the world of nontraditional and distance learning.

If you're a working adult considering your options for continuing your post-secondary education, you need this book. There are many ways to earn or complete a degree, and Bears' Guide attempts to show you the myriad paths and how best to select and pursue them.

Last, but not least, there are many "institutions" in the US and abroad that would love to have your money. In fact, many of them would be perfectly willing to sell you a degree that would serve you better as toilet paper than as a credential. This book helps you tell the difference between institutions that deserve your money/time and those that deserve to see your backside.

There are only a couple of high-quality general treatments of the topic of distance and nontraditional education, and this is one of them. The other is Marcie Thorson's Campus Free College Degrees. Peterson's guides get an honorable mention from me.

In closing: I own it; I love it; I highly recommend it. Now go buy a dozen copies!

I admit I was skeptical when I responded to a small classified ad offering this book for sale.

But the book written by John and Mariah Bear turned out to be an extremely well-written and carefully researched work, offering valuable and practical assistance on completing a degree at any of a hundred-plus quality, regionally accredited schools. The schools, including some very high-profile ones, offer many different specialties. Some are State-affiliated, and several allow the industrious student with a lot of work and life experience to complete an accredited undergraduate degree in under a year for less than $3000!

The book also has great -- and amusing -- information on various "less-than-wonderful" institutions to stay away from, as well as an interesting and colorful historical section on past diploma mills.

All in all, an excellent resource, enjoyable to read, and very highly recommended.

Huge excellent book and database for the ever-changing opportunities for adult distance learners wanting an accredited degrees. I particularly liked Dr. Bear's friendly candor and the time-saving information on life-credit for past work experience. Finding out about the educational "credit bank" alone was worth the price of the book.

"Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown, And accept that soon you'll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth saving, Then you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone For the times, they are a-changin'." -- Bob Dylan

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm biased: I love nontraditional education. I was homeschooled K-12, completed a B.A. through Regents College, and am now an M.A. candidate in the (external) HUX program of California State University, Dominguez Hills. Now, that being said... This book is, simply put, the most accessible introduction you will find to the most accessible means of obtaining a college degree. This book, along with Thorson's Guide (which I also wholeheartedly recommend), permitted me to excel as a nontraditional student rather than treading water as a traditional student. I was able to take on the Regents B.A. and graduate very young, then go right for a Master's without missing a beat. If you want a marketable degree but can't put in 4+ years at your local university, or if you have 150 hours of credit but can't figure out what to do with it, or if you're well-schooled and wish you could just plain challenge every course on the books, or if you've taken a number of vocational courses and wish you could turn them into college credit, or if you want a Ph.D. but don't happen to have $30,000 lying around, or if you'd like a degree from the University of London without having to get in an airplane... Buy this book. If you'd like to take African studies from an African university, British history from a British university, and Japanese literature from a Japanese university, all without even crossing state lines, buy this book. If you'd like to have a Duke M.B.A. without going to Duke, a Cornell M.S. in Labor and Industrial Relations without going to Cornell, or a Stanford M.S.E.E., but you can't actually spend much time on campus at Duke, Cornell, or Stanford, buy this book. If you'd like to get a regionally accredited Bachelor's degree in less than a year and for less than $3,500, and you're sure that you really can challenge your way out of the entire curriculum, buy this book. If you want to know how _everyone_ will be earning their college degrees fifty years from now, buy this book. But, hey, if you really *want* to spend four years on a college campus, it wouldn't hurt to request a copy by interlibrary loan and skim it over. It's entertaining -- has little captioned illustrations, bad puns, the whole nine yards. It's really a very warm and human book, as educational directories go.

Buy a used copy of Bear's Guide, as this edition is really justa re-hashing of earlier versions. Nevertheless, Bear's Guide isprobably the only comprehensive source of distance education info onthe market. It is a great starting point for anyone really interested in pursuing distance education. I would point to three areas of concern, however. First, distance education is much cheaper than the traditional format: You get what you pay for...no matter the medium. Bear's Guide touches on this only slightly. Second, Mr. Bear(a pseudonym), has quite a large following of rabid, unquestioning groupies who tend to "circle the wagons" any time Mr. Bear is publically challenged. Most reviews of this book, at this site, are written by these groupies...Finally, with Mr. Bear's growing popularity and entourage, I would say the quality of Bear's Guide has been slipping. This current edition is merely a re-hashing of his last.

I was first exposed to Dr. Bear's book while looking at post graduate programs. I found his book an invaluable aid while looking for a program that would meet my needs. While the field of distance education changes constantly, this book is a good place to start when searching for distance education alternatives. The book is well organized and written in a straight forward, easy to read manner.

This book would also be a valuable resource for HR departments, especially the "less than wonderful" section. It can be used as a quick reference for tuition reimbursement programs (If a school is listed, does it qualify under the company's reimbursement program?) or as part of a background check (If a school is listed, do their degrees meet the company's requirement for recognition?).

I found Mr. Bear's books very helpful in learnng about distance education and selecting a school to enroll in. However, one must remember that people interpret situations and experiences differently and must base their final selection on their instincts and feelings. This book attempts to instruct the reader on distance education, do's and dont's as well as provides information on selecting a program and institution that is right for you. However, he should not be criticized or held accountable because someone doesn't like a program or the school is not rated at the top of a rediculous chart. In conclusion, this book is very helpful and can greatly aid one in learning about distance education.

I personally felt that John's guides were well done and very informative. However, it is important to recognize that it is an individuals responsibility to research his suggestions. I don't think it was his intentions to publish a book and have everyone take his word. In response to some of the previous reviews, maybe Ms. brokenhearted should have done a little research on her own instead of blaming John that her university ended up being a diploma mill. And to the nutty professor, I can see how you might not like the idea of distance learning. After all it puts your future in jeopardy. By the way I'd like to know who completed a B.A. in two months. That was just a bit of an exaggeration now Mr. Professor!

I bought the 12th edition and the 13th is bigger and even better. Anyone considering trying to earn a degree via distance learning should consider this a must buy. It's about 400 large pages with information on well over a thousand different schools. So you can use it for your initial search for a school to narrow your choices down to just a few schools to start corresponding with. Or if you're already thinking of a specific school you may still want to get this book to look at what the book says about it. There's a paragraph or two written on almost every school in here. It could save you the time and money that might be wasted getting tricked by a degree mill. I think this book would also be very handy as a reference in a personnel office to check up on schools listed on resumes.

Even the most highly regarded traditional colleges--e.g., the Ivys and Stanford are FAR worse, in my view, than the public perceives them to be. Think of the passivity of their notorious large lecture classes usually taught by a professor more expert and more interested in his or her narrow, arcane specialty than providing what students more likely need. Think of the minimal feedback generally offered to students on their work. Think about the tests and assignments which are often designed more for easy grading than what will result in greater benefit to students. Think of how many students graduate (even with graduate degrees) unable to write or think. If students graduate from colleges with good writing and thinking skills, it's largely because they came to the college with high ability. The evidence in my view, is clear, that colleges, ESPECIALLY, the prestigious ones, have not demonstrated sufficient value-added for the 4 years and $135,000 sticker price--EVEN when one factors in the career-enhancement that accrues from an Ivy diploma.

With many of the degree programs in Bear's book, the instructors are more dedicated to teaching rather than research and they tend to offer more feedback, on average. Perhaps most important, distance learning programs tend to offer greater options for individualizing a program to meet the student's needs. And of course, the best options such as Thomas Edison State College, allow the students to pick the best and best-suited courses from among the hundreds of institutions offering distance-based courses, rather than just the few that the local university happens to be offering that semester.

I have spent much of my life evaluating higher education, and I would argue that all students--EVEN teenagers--would be VERY wise to consider colleges in this book.

Yes, I have a Ph.D. from Berkeley, but if I were to do it over again, knowing what I know now about traditional higher education, I would probably forgo any graduate degree, but if I did pursue one, it would likely be from an institution in Bear's book.