If someone were hesitant about being able to complete 15 credits through TECEPs in one go (to bypass the residency fee), would WGU Academy be a solid option for someone?
Right now, the two clear front-runners are Waymo and Tesla, though they’re taking very different paths.
Waymo is ahead today in terms of proven Level-4 deployments, operational experience, and regulatory trust. It’s already running fully driverless services in multiple cities and logging millions of miles without safety drivers.
Tesla, however, is closing the gap quickly. Its recent driverless testing in Austin sparked renewed investor enthusiasm and helped push Tesla to a roughly $1.6T valuation. Tesla’s approach which is camera-only perception plus massive data and AI training remains controversial, but it scales differently than Waymo’s sensor-heavy model.
Elon Musk has gone as far as to claim that fully autonomous driving is “pretty much solved” during a recent event for xAI, though critics argue that technical success, safety validation, and profitable deployment are very different milestones.
One inevitability worth discussing: at some point, there will be a headline about a robotaxi killing someone. When that happens, we’ll be forced again into the classic trolley-problem debate:
Do we judge autonomous systems against human perfection, or against human averages?
So the real question may not be who gets there first, but:
Who earns long-term public trust?
Who can make the economics work at scale?
And will there be one winner or regional and platform-level winners instead?
Curious to hear how others see this playing out.
And what happens to Uber?
Does it adapt and become the dominant platform for robotaxis, or does it risk becoming the Blockbuster Video of ride-hailing, disrupted by the very technology it helped popularize?
I just graduated from Thomas Edison State University Dec 12, 2025. I was able to knock out 45 credit hours between March and November 2025, including 3 Sophia classes and 1 Straighterline.
After much research, I chose the MS in Engineering Management at University of Arkansas. You have to have a STEM degree that is ABET accredited as well as a 3.0 GPA in last 60 credit hours to get accepted. Their website says you must have an engineering degree, but apparently this was changed in the last year to include Engineering Technology majors. TESU's Electronic Systems Engineering Technology degree meets all the requirements.
What I like about the EM at University of Arkansas is 1) major school recognition 2) their Engineering Management program is certified by the American Society of Engineering Management, and 3) the price is $1089 per 3 hour class all in (I just registered and paid for Spring 26). So far it has been a smooth process. You can have a Masters in Engineering Management from a major school for literally under $11k!!
I'm currently enrolled or registered or whatever, for a BA and an AAS. (two different AOS's)
When I look at my MyProgress page for each, it says my General Education requirements are waived.
But if I try to game out a different degree scenario, that section takes a 3 credit course, sticks it in that space and says:
".01 of .01 Credits Completed."
I'm confused why isn't it waived there too?
And why it's putting a 3 credit course there instead of say leaving it open for some random 1 credit course I may take in the future?
It feels like a waste of 3 credits.
If I were to enroll in that degree instead of the ones I'm currently in would it fix itself and be "waived" there too?
And what if I decided to do TWO BA's would it still only be waived for one?
As the Eptein files saga has progressed, I became interested in a little sidenote. Apparently, one of Epstein's closest associates was Lawrence Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury.
Several years ago, New's Poetry in America series of classes was a bit of a rage on this board because it was possible to take five different courses in poetry at the Harvard Extension School for $250 each. That is $62.50 per graduate credit. This was a steal and I took all five courses for a total of 20 graduate credits in English for $1250. I am a high school English teacher and this qualifies me to teach dual credit classes. Following this, I moved to a different state, took a different job and now teach AP English classes as part of my schedule. AP does not require 18 graduate credits to teach, but this made me the obvious choice for the spot.
Well, as the Epstein files have dripped out, it appears that the Poetry in America series and New appear in the Epstein files and both Summers and New traveled to Epstein's island.
Epstein's foundation even gave $110,000 to New's poetry initiative.
I really cannot say anything bad about the classes themselves. They were about the cheapest graduate credits in English that a person could take anywhere and they really do appear on a Harvard transcript. I enjoyed them, learned a lot and benefitted from them.
And, surprisingly, as I looked into this, it appears that Harvard still offers a scholarship for teachers who want to take the classes at $250 per class. I told my co-worker about this and he is signed up for next semester and was approved for the scholarship.
It is still a great deal. It's so good that there must be something funny going on.
City Vision University recently announced that DEAC has approved a new doctoral offering, namely a Doctor of Organization Leadership and Innovation (DOLI). The degree comprises 40 credit hours, and can be completed in 2 years, for just about $13k ($333.33 per credit hour).
The DOLI degree has 5 concentration options (actually six, when including the "diversified" personal concentration):
Executive Leadership & Fundraising. Develop and implement plans to grow an organization in its impact, financial health and relational health. Audience: Existing or aspiring CEOs.
Nonprofit Program Leadership & Social Entrepreneurship. Improve the effectiveness of nonprofit programs by implementing best practices. Audience: Program & social enterprise leaders looking to advance their skills.
Organizational Culture and Change Management. Develop and implement plans to improve organizational health and adapt to change. Audience: HR leaders and executive leaders wanting to focus on people side.
Trauma-Informed Counseling Management. Develop and implement plans to establish trauma-informed culture of health throughout an organization. Audience: Licensed counselors seeking increased training in Christian methods, the management side of counseling and/or interested in starting their own center.
Education Leadership and Innovation. Apply disruptive and continuous innovation principles to designing courses and programs to provide radically affordable and practical online education.
Perhaps most interesting, is that the program includes 9 options for an applied/action research capstone project to complete the program (detailed in the attached image).
CVU is a unique institution, that while organized around a Christian ethos, has programming widely applicable to work within the non-profit sector. All of their offerings are very affordable, and they aim to intentionally leverage technology to disrupt the higher education space to make the whole enterprise more accessible.
I was reviewing Excelsior website and came across this, not for any other degree but Business: Fixed rate tuition (BS in Business program only. Effective beginning with registration for Spring 2026 Trimester.) $3,200 per trimester for eligible students. This all-inclusive fixed-rate pricing includes tuition, course materials, the Academic Services Fee, and Technology Fee.
Someone needs to email them to see if you can complete the 15 credit residency requirements entirely using this fixed rate tuition. IIRC, I don't think they allow the capstone to be completed in the same trimester. Thus, you'll be stuck with an extra trimester to complete the business capstone course. You may want to do the associates capstone for the 15 residency credits, and get an extra Associates on route to the Bachelors.
I was just on Sophia Learning's website and have found that Central New Mexico Community College seems to have recently partnered up with Sophia Learning and StraighterLine. Current students at the Community College and I believe anyone who plans to apply and attend can transfer in certain classes from either place for credit.
I did not look into this deeply, but I see that they don't accept every class from Sophia Learning and StraighterLine. It's mostly general education or pre-requisite courses for your degrees. Either way, I think this might be a great option for New Mexico Residents or anyone who just wants to save money on education in general. This might be great for anyone who wants to study Business Administration because, it seems like the majority of the classes is geared toward that program.
I'm posting a list of links below for anyone who wants to read on this further. Also, contact the admissions office too if you have any question about this.
Hello, I've been researching information for the past 6 months and there are still a few questions I have regarding TESU that I hope people can help me answer here (as well as some personal questions that maybe I can get some advice on).
I'm a french citizen, in my late thirties, currently living abroad. I have autism spectrum disorder that made my life trajectory difficult, as a result I only have my high school diploma (baccalaureat) and no higher education degree. In 2019 I completed a programming school in France that delivers the equivalent knowledge of a Msc in software engineering (not comp sci, no maths /stats / etc, purely coding) but does not deliver a degree. I did manage to find a job after that as I'm decent at coding, but due do my personality the corporate environment has been challenging to navigate, not to mention France being less in tune with neurodiversity than somewhere like the US for instance. I pivoted into freelancing and then went founder mode but failed multiple times. Currently I have enough money through some investments that I made so I'm in no immediate need of a job and can support myself for the next couple of years without the need for an income.
So. Basically I want to get a degree. First of all, for my self esteem, second, because I'm planning on relocating to an Asian country (I like the culture), maybe China since I've started learning Chinese as well, and it's basically impossible to apply without at least a bachelor. Getting an online degree like WGU and TESU came up, the former doesn't accept international students so I decided to apply to TESU (my application is currently being reviewed).
There are three fields I'm mainly interested in. The first is obviously programming, it's not exactly my passion but it's something I'm good at and I enjoy doing. However I really dislike the corporate environment, and the competition (I'm autistic so my self esteem is down the drain and I don't think I can compete with emotionally adjusted people or people with excellent track record from FAANG and stuff), plus I'm old and ageism is a real thing in tech, not to mention my spotty work history with freelancing, failed startups, etc. Then I'm interested in is psychology. For obvious reasons, I've had my fair share of mental issues and I've learned quite a lot when it comes to mental illnesses, counseling, and so on. The last one is finance. I mentioned investing, I've learned a lot about macro and US politics in the past few years via some trading I've been doing in the US stock market (as well as digital assets), it's a field I genuinely enjoy. Macro, probabilities, risk, these are things I'm super interested in and I think I might be decently good at.
So far I've signed up on Sophia and completed a few classes: US History I, Microeconomics, Microeconomics, Intro to Stats. I'm currently working on US History II and College Algebra (which I also quite enjoy but seems more like middle school level?). I'm also currently taking the Foundations in Cybersecurity from Coursera, and I'm interested in a couple other ones, like Cloud Cybersec, Project Management, and Data Analytics.
Currently I'm undecided on which degree I want to do. BA in Computer Science is an obvious choice considering my previous experience, but like I mentioned I don't like the competitiveness and I think the job market is absolutely saturated to death right now. I was considering something closer to Data Science since I like risk and finance, but unsure if it's something I like, statistics are okay but not exactly something I'm a huge fan of. Cybesec / Cloud are things I've also considered, as well as a BA in Psychology.
Couple questions:
1/ I have my IELTS academic, got 8.5, as well as my high school french diploma, I believe that is enough to enroll or are there additional things I need?
2/ Is it possible to do two Bachelor or to reuse the credits? I think I'd like to do something IT related (cybersec, comp sci or data science) as well as the BA in psychology, but only if I can use the credits outside of the area of study in both degrees. Also.... is there a point in having two bachelor (other than the actual knowledge) or is it functionally useless?
3/ After the bachelor(s) I will most likely want to do an MSc, haven't researched yet, but is TESU a good choice? What about a PhD, which probably opens more door?
4/ I don't really understand TEL Learning, it seems to give RA credits but works like a normal uni? I see they offer Chinese and using Oklahoma Christian University for the transcript gives 4 credits but do these work for TESU? I have a pretty good Chinese level so this class should be easy for me and would reduce the amount of credits I have to take at TESU.
Now, the actual big question I have, is how to organize the learning in order to transfer as many credits as I can (90 ACE + a couple RA) in order to remain flexible with my choice of degree as well as possibly doing two bachelor. My goal would ideally be to do courses related to the three main areas I'm interested in (cybersec, data analytics and cloud) and use them as gen ed / electives if I'm not taking said major. Additionally, I'm pretty bad when it comes to remembering stuff and regurgitating it, being autistic, my brain works better when it comes to first order principle, logic and stuff, which is why I'm good at maths and programming and awful at something like history, as a result the open book exams of Sophia are a godsend when it comes to things like history, so I would want to take the TESU credits and exams in things that I can pass, like python programming etc (being a software dev this should be trivial).
This is my current plan:
Sophia - US History I (HIS 1130)
Sophia - US History II (HIS 1140)
Sophia - Microeconomics (ECO 1120)
Sophia - Macroeconomics (ECO 1110)
Sophia - Introduction to Critical Reasoning (PHI 1300)
Sophia - Public Speaking (COM 2090)
Sophia - Principles of Statistics (STA 2010)
Sophia - Precalculus (MAT 1290)
Sophia - College Algebra (MAT 1210)
Sophia - Writing for Success I & II (ENC 1010, ENC 1020) -> this one I'm not sure about, seems sophia also english comp 1 and 2, not sure which ones can be used
Coursera - Cybersecurity Professional (CYB 1200, CYB 1999, ITS 2610)
Coursera - Cloud Data Analytics Professional (CIS 3110, CLD 4300, CYB 4500)
Coursera - Data Analytics Professional (ITS 130, ITS 231, ITS 199, COS 206)
TEL - Chinese? Not sure if accepted for TESU but that could give me an easy 4 RA credits
This would give me 63 credits while satisfying some majors for cloud, cybersec and data analytics depending on which one I want to go with. Rest will be converted to elective, then I have some gen ed in the mix. The remaining credits would be filled 20+ credits from TESU in the core area of study, and more gen ed stuff from Sophia / Coursera / Study.com.
