Methodology

Most Affordable Online Catholic Colleges

Eligible schools for this list must meet the following requirements:

• Catholic affiliation was reported to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
• Institution is accredited.
• The school meets OnlineU's online representation requirements.

Schools are then ranked by tuition.

Tuitions are manually researched and reflect the bachelor's level. Out-of-state tuitions are used unless in-state tuition is offered to all online students.

Online Representation

In order to qualify for our rankings, a school must have sufficient "online representation." This means that a school must have at least five programs at the bachelor's level that are administered online. A fully online degree is defined as such when the majority of lectures, discussions, and assignment submissions occur through a remote learning management system. OnlineU manually collects this information from college websites. Schools with programs that require some on-campus coursework are still considered for our rankings if the amount of required in-person work is limited to two weeks per year.

To maintain a strong focus on online education, OnlineU's rankings focus on schools with significant online student representation. Therefore, all ranked schools must meet at least one of the following thresholds for online representation:

• A significant percentage of the student population is represented as distance learners.OnlineU calculates our chosen threshold by pulling data from the NCES' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
• The median number of online students for a certain degree level is proportionate to typical online representation across institutions.

Data Sources

Manual Collection

Tuitions and online degrees are manually researched. Out-of-state tuitions are used unless in-state tuition is offered to all online students. Colleges with tuitions over $30,000 are excluded from rankings. Figures are accurate at the time of publication; please check with the institution for current tuition rates.

If you are a school representative and have corrections or additional data on your school's offerings, please contact us.

National Center for Education Statistics

Religious affiliation, online enrollment and accreditation information is based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The NCES is the primary governmental entity for gathering and presenting data related to education and are updated annually.