Online colleges are becoming increasingly popular -- they give a lot of flexibility in price and time and transportation relative to tradition "bricks-and-mortar" colleges. In this section, we'll tell the good and bad of these colleges, and also try to help you gauge whether they will work for you.

General thoughts

The major draws for online colleges is that you can work from home, often at your own schedule, and they may be less expensive. If you already have a job and are a working adult with a lot of time and financial constraints, this can make the difference between going to college and not.

There are a number of limitations to online colleges. For example, if you are in a technical field where you need to do hands-on labs, online probably won't work.

Perhaps the most important issue, however, is how you learn. Most of the programs of note online are self-paced, where you work on your own when you have time. Generally, strong students accelerate in self-paced learning, while students who struggle more may fall behind. The reasons for this is that many struggling students tend to wait until the last moment to do things, they benefit from the social aspects of having people around, and they also can build personal relationships with their instructors. You should look into yourself to see whether you are reasonably sure that you'll be able to get on a regular schedule of work, and you'll be able to be motivated working by yourself. To be clear, at most of the colleges, you're not on your own -- instructors will be available when you need help, and students may be conversing through chats and forums, but independent learning is a key aspect of success.

If you are looking for more structure, there are online colleges that will provide a more regular class experience -- perhaps an instructor teaching on Zoom with student interactions. When looking at an online college, check to make sure of the learning experience.

Many types of colleges

In the sections below, we'll give a brief description of different types of online colleges, with pros and cons. At the end of this section, we'll provide a list of colleges.

Regular colleges with online programs

Many large universities are creating online programs -- often called "world" or "global" campuses -- Penn State World Campus, Colorado State University Global, Purdue University Global, ASU Global, USC Global, and more. These generally are not self-paced, online courses, but rather regular degree programs with courses held in Zoom-like online rooms and assigned instructors. This may help you stay on-track if you worry about self-paced courses.

However, these programs look like regular degrees, often with high price tags and many restrictions on how many courses you need to be taking to remain a student in "good standing" -- your flexibility is highly restricted. Furthermore, these campuses may have admissions criteria similar to those of their bricks-and-mortar campuses.

For people in West Virginia, this provides wider access to colleges outside of the state, but at a much higher cost and likely less services than available from colleges in-state.

Large online-only colleges

There are a number of large colleges that are online-only or mainly online, including Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University, and which offer mostly self-paced courses. These colleges have relatively low tuitions, and allow the ability to graduate in less than 4 years with a bachelor's degree, so that you can start a career (and state earning salary) earlier. If you're highly self-directed, these colleges can be good options.

College course providers

There are a number of course providers like StraighterLine, Sophia and Study.com who don't provide degrees, but do provide college courses at very low cost. These courses are often accepted at colleges for college transfer credit, so that you can enter other colleges with much of your coursework complete. The cost of these courses is often less than a quarter of the cost as a regular college student.

The quality of these courses, however, is often not very good-- this is a case where you get, roughly, what you pay for. However, taking some courses through these providers can accelerate your time through college, especially with courses that you are less interested in.

One final concern -- make sure that the colleges that you think that you'd like to earn your degree from will accept the courses that you're taking. Most colleges also have a limit on the number of courses that can be transferred in this way -- typically 50-75% of the courses needed for graduation.

Adult-oriented colleges

There are a number of colleges that are focused on the needs of adults, and who make the process of gaining a college degree as easy as possible. Two of these are Thomas Edison State College and Excelsior University. What they excel at is puling together a variety of credit options to speed your time through college, and to make earning a college degree as inexpensive as possible.

At these colleges, for example, you can stitch together credit from military service, previous work at other colleges, the course providers listed above, and even sometimes your work history, to pull together as many previous credits as possible. You can then take some courses at the colleges and earn an associate or bachelors degree.

Note that at both colleges, CSM satisfies the general education math requirements for a bachelor's degree, helping you with what is often one of the hardest and most dreaded college courses. Furthermore, DegreeForum is a website devoted to people trying to find the easiest way to a bachelor's degree, and CSM is consistently listed there as the best math course.

For-profit colleges

There are a number of for-profit online colleges that have large numbers of students, like University of Phoenix, Capella, Strayer, DeVry and Grand Canyon University. While for-profit does not mean bad (and non-profit does not mean good!), for-profit colleges and universities have had problems with low completion rates and high student debt. When considering a for-profit college, you should go the extra mile to make sure that it is the right fit for you.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Colleges)

These are providers of individual courses and course sequences (sometimes with certificates) that feature a wide variety of topics, sometimes with very high quality instructors from top universities. The courses are often free, except for ones that lead to certificates or degrees, which are typically different from entry-level vocational certificates, and can be in areas of science, IT, management and more. Some of the largest MOOCs include Coursera, edX, Udacity, and OpenClassrooms.

If your goal is learning, MOOCs can be great -- free courses from instructors at Stanford, Harvard, and other top universities! However, as you go to their certificate and degree programs, it's not clear that their offerings are much different or superior to those at other colleges mentioned above.