The State University of New York Empire State College

Date: Mar 24 2010
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
I am a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. I was attending a local community college that has a Navy partnership. When I started taking classes I took some in the classroom and a few online. When it came time for college algebra I took it online being out of high school for 13 years I was not able to re-teach myself so I dropped the online class and decided to take it in a class room. I was told on the first day of class that if I missed more then two classes I would automatically fail the class. I explained to the professor that I was enrolled under the Navy partnership and I would miss a class from time to time because I had to get underway. He didn't care. Some partnership.

After I dropped his class I did some research on the Navy's college website and discovered SUNY Empire State. The following semester I enrolled. At the community college I was only halfway to my associate?s degree. After ESC reviewed my college transcripts and my life time learning credits from the Navy I was only 48 credits from my Bachelors Degree. I was very skeptical of this but I bit anyway, and I am very glad that I did. ESC is not only a SUNY school it is regionally accredited and their classes will transfer to and other regionally accredited college or university. I finished my Gen Ed classes and continued taking the business management classes that I put together in my degree plan. The classes I have taken here at ESC have been more challenging then I expected. I have learned more at ESC then I did sitting in classed at the community college. At the community college I had professors that lectured the class and if you paid close attention and took notes there was no way you could fail. Being enrolled in the CDL I do not have scheduled class times, no professors lecturing and no study partners to help me out. ESC takes discipline and a self motivated individual if you want to get through it. Taking two classes a semester you can expect to write about 100-200 pages of assigned course work. If you are looking to breeze by this is not the school for you.

Almost all my professors have been very understandable about my job and understand that the ship often does not have internet access, or has very low bandwidth while at sea. As long as I give them a time line before I go out to sea they all have worked with my schedule, except one professor who was retired Navy…Go figure.

Over all I have enjoyed my experience at ESC. If I was not looking for diversity in my education I would consider continuing on at ESC for my Masters Degree. However I am attending Penn State World Campus, which has the same accreditation as ESC, and accreditation is very important.

I already have my ESC associate's degee hanging on the wall, and in 5 weeks My Bachelors degree will be right next to it.