Methodology
Most Affordable Online Christian Colleges
Eligible schools for this list must meet the following requirements:
- Christian 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 emphasis on online education, we wanted our rankings to focus on schools with significant online student representation. Therefore, all ranked schools must have at least a quarter of the student population represented as distance learners based on enrollment data from the NCES' Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).
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 NCES, the primary governmental entity that gathers and presents data related to education, and this data is updated annually.