Friday, January 9, 2015

These Illinois Schools Offer 6 of the Best Online Bachelor's Programs in the U.S.

According to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, about 1 in 4 students - or 4.5 million - took at least one online course towards a Bachelor's or Master's degree.

To help students research and compare offerings in this trending marketplace, U.S. News released its highly anticipated 2015 Best Online Programs rankings, a comprehensive assessment of the best online Bachelor's degrees in the country, as well as the top Master's e-programs in business, engineering, computer information technology, education and nursing.

For Online Bachelor's Degrees, the largest list of the collection, the University of Chicago tied for second with a Student Engagement score of 100. This particular category is measured by weighing a variety of factors, including graduation rates, best practices, class size, retention rate, and time to degree deadline. UChicago also received a 70 for Faculty and a 74 for Student Services, earning an overall score of 97.

Penn State University ranked #1 with an overall score of 100 and UChicago tied Dayton State College and Western Kentucky University.

Several other Illinois schools cracked the top 100 online Bachelor's programs, with University of Illinois—Springfield (#20), Loyola University Chicago (#47), Western Illinois University (#63), University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign (#82), and McKendree University (#98).

You can view all of U.S. News' online program rankings here.

This story appeared online on ChicagoInno on January 8, 2015.

Read the entire story online.