Best Affordable Overall Online Colleges & Degrees Methodology

The Best Affordable rankings provide an indicator of which colleges are likely to have stronger salary outcomes while still having an affordable tuition. Salary Score indicates strength of alumni salaries after graduation. Each college’s Salary Score is based on a comparison of median alumni salaries across the same programs at all schools weighted by number of graduates. Therefore, online schools with more graduates in STEM fields, which tend to lead to higher salaries, won't automatically have a higher Salary Score. Instead, the rankings reflect colleges whose program offerings outperform the same programs at other schools.

We hope that this list will provide prospective students with a good starting point for deciding which online school will meet their affordability needs and prove to be a worthwhile investment. Read more below to learn about eligibility requirements and data sources.

While our ranking lists sometimes include our advertising partners, we use the same methodology for all schools (partner or non-partner) when developing these lists, so no preferential treatment is given. All partner schools are also marked with an icon for full transparency.

Eligibility Requirements

To be considered for our Best Affordable Online Colleges, schools needed to meet the following eligibility requirements. Thresholds were adjusted based on the amount of data available for each degree level with the goal of offering a list that represents the best possible combination of high salary outcomes, low tuition, and degree variety.

Bachelor's & Master's
  • Tuition less than or equal to $17k per year
  • Offer at least 10 fully online degrees at the relevant degree level with programs that cover at least three subject areas
  • Have at least 10 programs with data for alumni earnings and count in the first year after graduation from the Department of Education's College Scorecard to ensure that there are a variety of data points used to determine the Salary Score
  • With these eligibility requirements, 234 schools were considered for the bachelor's rankings list and 218 schools were considered for the master's list
Associate
  • Tuition less than or equal to $15k per year
  • Offer at least 10 fully online degrees at the associate degree level with programs that cover at least three subject areas
  • Have at least five programs with data for alumni earnings and count in the first year after graduation from the Department of Education's College Scorecard to ensure that there are a variety of data points used to determine the Salary Score
  • With these eligibility requirements, 138 schools were considered
Doctoral
  • Tuition less than or equal to $20k per year
  • Offer at least three fully online degrees at the doctoral degree level with programs that cover at least three subject areas
  • Have at least five programs with data for alumni earnings and count in the first year after graduation from the Department of Education's College Scorecard to ensure that there are a variety of data points used to determine the Salary Score
  • With these eligibility requirements, 29 schools were considered

Data Sources

School websites

Description

  • Manually collected from official school websites, reflecting data for the 2020-2021 school year.
  • See Tuitions and Degrees for more details.

Data

  • Tuition Rates
  • Degree Offerings
  • Cost per Credit
IPEDS NCES Data

Description

  • A system of surveys conducted by the U.S. Dept of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
  • Surveys are filled out by all schools that participate in federal financial aid programs
  • Data are made publicly available through College Navigator
  • NCES data are updated annually, but the NCES does not release data into downloadable formats until they have been approved
  • We used data from 2018-2019, which were the most current available data when the rankings were created.

Data

  • School locations
  • Accreditation
  • Financial aid recipients
  • Graduation rate
  • Acceptance rate
  • Online enrollment
  • Profit status
  • Phone number
College Scorecard

Description

  • A tool offered by the U.S. Dept of Ed that provides data to help compare college outcomes and costs at the institution- and program-level.
  • Data are provided through federal reporting from schools, federal financial aid data, and tax info.
  • This dataset was released in December, 2020. Data is for students who graduated in 2016 and 2017, with earnings measured in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and inflation-adjusted to 2019 dollars.
  • More info can be found here.

Data

  • Median student alumni earnings
  • Graduate count
  • Above data used to calculate Salary Score

Salary Score

Salary Scores for overall rankings at specified degree levels represent an average of how each individual program at that school tends to perform in terms of alumni salary outcomes. For example, a school offering an economics degree and history degree is evaluated based on how the alumni salaries for the economics degree compare to alumni salaries for economics degrees at other institutions, and how salaries for graduates from its history program compare to salaries for history program graduates at other colleges.

Steps for calculation include:

  1. We calculated a z-score for each degree program at a college by comparing the median alumni salary for the particular degree at the college to the alumni salaries for the same degree at all colleges. To ensure we were comparing the same degrees across schools, we compared alumni salary for programs with the same CIP code and degree level.
  2. Once individual program scores were calculated, the z-scores of all the programs at the specified degree level were averaged, weighted by the number of students in each program.
  3. This average z-score was then converted to a Salary Score.

As the College Scorecard data do not perfectly distinguish between online and offline programs, attempting to narrow down to program areas that included online programs would have resulted in data that would still not be guaranteed to be online specific and less meaningful numbers as a result of losing most data. With that in mind, each school was evaluated based on it's overall Salary Score for all programs that had data.

Tuitions & Degrees

Data for tuition and degree information were collected from official school websites, reflecting data for the 2020-2021 school year.

Tuitions
  • In cases where schools offer a standard tuition rate across most programs at the specified degree level, the standard tuition rate was used. Otherwise, the tuition reflects the lowest tuition rate available at the specified degree level.
  • Out-of-state tuitions were used unless in-state tuition was offered to all online students.
  • Tuition was calculated assuming full-time status. Unless otherwise indicated, bachelor’s programs were assumed to require four years to complete and master’s and associates programs were assumed to require two years to complete.

Fully Online Degrees: Schools with programs that require some on-campus coursework were still considered for our rankings if the amount of in-person work required was limited to less than two weeks. This allows students to retain their current employment or other personal responsibilities.

Limitations of Data

No data set is perfect, including the ones used in our rankings. Below are shortcomings and limitations of the data used.

Tuitions are manually collected and undergo quality assurance checks, but there may still be errors due to the complexity of tuition details and differences in processes for calculating outcomes. If you are a school representative and have questions or resources for how your school's tuition is calculated, please contact us.

The College Scorecard data do not distinguish between online and offline programs, or how many students completed a program online that is offered in both environments. With that in mind, each school was evaluated based on its overall Salary Score for all programs that had data.

College Scorecard also only provides earnings data for alumni in the first year after completing a degree. Starting salary amounts do not account for job and salary growth over time or predict future income, so neither do our Salary Scores

The Department of Education has data based on the earnings of students who received federal financial aid. Students who did not receive federal financial aid are not included.

In order to protect student privacy, College Scorecard suppresses student count and earnings data that could be personally identifiable and adds noise to earnings data, so the data have less coverage and precision than they would without privacy suppression methods. More information can be found in College Scorecard’s data documentation.