Tag: Universal Learner

Study Hall (SH) is a separate learning offering recently launched by Arizona State University that utilizes Universal Learner Courses (UL). Building on an existing partnership, ASU, Crash Course, and YouTube have launched Study Hall, which aims to become the destination for college hopefuls to understand how to navigate college, explore majors and fields of study, and start earning credits for first-year college general education requirements with as little friction as possible.

On April 4th, 2023 at 7pm CDT, Homeschooling for College Credit is hosting an information session with Arizona State University’s Universal Learner team to discuss what the Universal Learner and Study Hall programs are, how they can be used by homeschoolers to earn college credit, and answer any questions attendees may have about the two programs. Sign up for the information session here

Here is the Recording from the event and the Q&A Document.

What is the Universal Learner (UL) program?

ASU’s Universal Learner program, formerly known as the Earned Admissions program, is a unicorn in the college world. Students of any age in any part of the world can sign up for regionally accredited (the gold standard) college courses with no hassles, no need to send your transcripts, no red tape, no placement tests, and no risk to a student’s GPA. If the student doesn’t get the grade they want, simply do not pay the $400 at the end of the course and there is no record of the course. Retake the courses as many times as needed for just a minimal $25 sign-up fee and pay the $400 to transcript the course when you are satisfied with the grade. Find out the full scope of the program.

What is Study Hall?

Study Hall (SH) is a separate learning offering recently launched by Arizona State University that utilizes Universal Learner Courses (UL). Building on an existing partnership, ASU, Crash Course, and YouTube have launched Study Hall, which aims to become the destination for college hopefuls to understand how to navigate college, explore majors and fields of study, and start earning credits for first-year college general education requirements with as little friction as possible.

On March 27, 2023 at 7pm CDT, Homeschooling for College Credit is hosting an information session with Arizona State University’s Prep Digital team to discuss their concurrent college courses program, how they can be used by homeschoolers to earn college credit, and answer any questions attendees may have about the programs. This program allows homeschool high school students to take college courses at a discounted rate from the regular ASU college course catalog ($200/cr + books/fees) versus ASU’s Universal Learner/Study Hall programs that offer a shorter list of college courses at an even deeper discount ($425/course inclusive of books, plus GPA protection). Sign up for the ASU Prep Digital Information Session here. The zoom event will be capped at 100 attendees and will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Live Q&A from attendees will be at the end of the event.

There are a couple of great advantages that I think will help many of our families using this program:

1. This program allows students to take almost any course from the ASU regular course catalog, including upper-level credit, as long as prerequisites are met, and the course isn’t restricted. Upper-level credit is much harder to get access to at a discounted rate, and as a high school student, so this potentially opens many doors for degree planning and savings on college tuition!
2. Students can send the transcripts from other colleges to ASU for evaluation and to fulfill prerequisites for other courses at ASU
3. The student can get assistance from their success coach to determine what classes are needed for the degree plan – this is a great advantage for students planning to attend ASU for their 4yr degree!

These courses are available to our homeschool community as part of the “part time” program at ASU Prep Digital. ASUPD will be specifically discussing this part-time program, the college courses our students can take from the full regular catalog at ASU at a discounted rate while in high school, and a tiny bit about their high school courses for high school credit only. (ie if you’d like them to teach Algebra 1, or 9th grade English, etc… – for high school credit only).

ASUPD does have a full-time online virtual school, but we will not be discussing that program tonight, as it’s outside the scope of our group. Families interested in their full-time school would need to attend one of the information sessions posted on their website for questions about that.

For those interested in also attending the ASU Universal Learner/Study Hall information session to learn more about this unique program, sign up for that session being held on 4/4/23 at 7pm CDT here!

Both the ASU Prep Digital Information Session and the Universal Learner/Study Hall Information Sessions will be recorded and made available along with the Q&A document from each session.

Here is the RECORDING from the 3/27/23 Information Session with ASU Prep Digital.

Join our HS4CC with ASU Courses Facebook group on Facebook for help selecting courses, course reviews and discussions, and much more! We discuss ASU’s various programs such as Universal Learner, Study Hall, and ASU Prep Digital from a homeschool point of view.

Arizona State University has several programs, and each has pros and cons. If you’re wondering about the differences between the various programs offered by Arizona State University- this post explains how each works in your HS4CC program.

A bit of History

A little history might help! In the early days of MOOC’s, ASU created a program called Global Freshman Academy on edX – the last vestiges of the program can be seen in the link provided. Students could choose from a small selection of classes, pay a small fee, take the course, and pay $600 (at the time) to transcript the credit at ASU. The Earned Admissions program spun off from this, originally targeting adults returning to college, and addressed, to a certain extent, the concerns of many adults to pass the 3 areas that are traditionally blockades to earning a college degree: English, Maths, Sciences. The pitch was to earn 24 credits with a C or higher and receive auto admissions to ASU.

What is the Universal Learner (UL) program?

As word spread, the courses began to gain traction among a wider group of students, such as gifted students, homeschools, and public schools. ASU’s renamed the Earned Admissions Program to the Universal Learner program last year to better encompass and represent this widening demographic. The program is a unicorn in the college world, we know of no other program that includes all of the features this program provides. Students of any age in any part of the world can sign up for regionally accredited (the gold standard) college courses for $25, with no hassles, no need to send in your transcripts, no red tape, no placement tests, and no risk to a student’s GPA. If the student doesn’t get the grade they want, simply do not pay the $400 at the end of the course and there is no record of the course. Retake the courses as many times as is needed for just a minimal $25 sign-up fee. Students can sign up with a photo ID, such as a driver’s license, passport, public school ID, or some have used homeschool ID’s. Find out the full scope of the program.

Students who solely take ASU UL courses at ASU are considered “visiting students” and are NOT considered a regular “fully enrolled” student at ASU. We discuss these differences deeper in the “fully enrolled” students section below.

What is the HS4CC UL Portal?

By 2020, our regular contact with the (at the time) Earned Admissions Support team led to new opportunities for our members, such as access to beta courses not open to the public, and it was determined that we needed a better way to manage these special options for our members, rather than adding each individual student to each new option. Initially, our members’ students were temporarily placed in the “hs” portal (the URL had hs.ea.asu.edu in it, once logged in), which sort of lumped us together with other related groups. Later we were given our own HS4CC portal (the URL has hs4cc.ea.asu.edu in it once logged in), which is what we see today when we log in to and arrive at the student dashboard.

The HS4CC UL portal is a an educational partner portal that allows ASU to easily deliver special courses, pacing options, etc to our members. Students in the HS4CC UL Portal have access to ALL of the courses available in the main “public” Universal Learner Portal. We also have access to a growing number of courses ONLY available for enrollment from our HS4CC portal. At the time of this post, we currently have two different Poetry in America courses that will run back to back Fall and Spring semesters, as well as ENG105 Advanced First-Year Composition, which combines ENG101 English Composition 1, and ENG102 English Composition 2 into a single self-paced course, with faculty feedback, designed to run with a normal school year (August – June). Students must be in the HS4CC portal to see these courses and enroll.

Please note that Homeschooling for College Credit volunteers run the HS4CC with ASU Courses Facebook group and the HS4CC ASU UL Portal. We do not make money from ASU or the HS4CC portal; these are run as a service to the homeschool community.

What is ASU Prep Digital?

ASU Prep Digital is another unrelated program from ASU for smaller cross-section of the UL demographic: primary and secondary aged school children. Prep Digital is ASU’s virtual online school program, which is free to Arizona students or for a fee any primary or secondary school student outside of Arizona can join. While they also offer the virtual school for lower grades, for our purposes, we will focus on the high school/college credit portion of the program, which ASU refers to as “concurrent credit”. Full-time ASU Prep Digital students can take high school courses, and concurrent credit college courses at a discounted rate from ASU’s regular catalog of college courses. Prep Digital also allows students who don’t wish to be a full-time Digital Prep student, to take ala carte courses as a part-time student through their program. Students can optionally choose to take ala carte concurrent credit college courses from the main ASU catalog (along with fully enrolled college students). They charge about 1/2 rack rate, so ~$600/3cr – it’s charged per credit, plus fees, plus books, and unlike the Universal Learner (UL) courses, there is no opting out if you don’t like the grade. It’s like taking them at any other college for dual credit/enrollment/concurrent credit – there are drop dates, you pay upfront for the course, buy your own books, etc. If you withdrawal from a course, you will have a W on your transcript.

There is one other unique advantage to ASU Prep Digital concurrent credit courses that may make this option attractive to some students – nearly all of the ASU course catalog is open to their students to take, including upper level courses, provided prerequisites have been met, and there are no restrictions on the course. Upper level credits are extremely hard to source for concurrent/dual credit/enrollment students – Columbia College is the only other college that allows their dual credit students to take upper level courses, that I know of. If you’ve found other colleges/universities that allow access to upper level courses via dual credit, or if Columbia’s policy has changed, please share in the comments!

If your student is planning to attend ASU, and they have run out of UL courses to take, using extra courses through ASU Prep Digital would be another way to save money on tuition.

Students seeking discounted dual credit rates outside of their home state might find more attractive discounted rates on our Nationwide Dual Credit list (Under Type 1 RA Graded Credit | DE Master List — there are 3 separate classifications, revised annually).

To find out more about ASU Prep Digital programs, we suggest parents attend one of their Live Information Sessions. Be aware of some potential lingo changes while communicating with the college, as each state varies in how they define the terms dual credit, dual enrollment, and concurrent credit. While this is an old post, I believe it still holds true in how ASU defines these terms.

What’s the difference between taking courses in the ASU Portal and being a Regular “Fully Enrolled” ASU Student?

Students strictly taking courses through any ASU UL portal are considered “visiting students” at ASU, just as a student would be considered a visiting student if taking community college courses over the summer break from their regularly enrolled 4 year college. This means you do not have access to all of the services available to “regularly enrolled ASU students”, UL students can’t live in the dorms, and UL students aren’t eligible for financial aid.

A “regularly enrolled”, or sometimes we say “fully enrolled”, student at Arizona State University, has applied to ASU through the normal application process, and been accepted. Students can be admitted directly from that process, or admitted via the “earned admissions” route if the student fails to meet standard admissions requirements, but has completed the 24 credits via the Universal Learner program. “Failure” to meet standard requirements could be something as simple as not having the required number of documented high school science “labs”, exam scores, or it could be for other reasons. Once enrolled, they are an ASU student, rather than a “visiting student”.

ASU is a well known tier 1 research university that offers traditional on-campus degrees, and they have a sizeable list of fully online degrees. Note that students pursuing fully online degrees are still eligible for Federal student loans and grants, but they are not eligible for scholarships open to on-campus students (often called “merit aid”). ASU does have unique relationships with some businesses, such as Starbucks, and Uber to provide free tuition to their employees.

One other note! Do keep in mind that being admitted to ASU doesn’t guarantee that the student will be immediately admitted into the program of study of their choice. For instance, if the student is targeting an engineering degree, which is traditionally a highly competitive program to enter at any university, “earned admissions” does not guarantee admissions into the engineering program, only the university itself. Students may need to take courses and apply to the program again later for possible admissions into that specific program. Likewise, students planning to pursue degrees in less competitive programs may automatically be admitted into the program without issue.

How Can I Tell Which Portal I’m in?

To verify the student’s account is part of the HS4CC portal look at the URL after the student logs in – there should be “HS4CC” in the URL. See the URL example at the top of the image below (it has hs4cc.ea.asu.edu as the beginning of the URL):

Looking for free or discounted tuition options for Arizona State University? You’re in the right place! There are at least 3 ways to get 100% free tuition. Following is a list of current discounts that we are aware of

Occasionally, parents need to talk to the Universal Learner Support team about their student’s account. If you’re talking to the team with your student present, no problem; but if your student isn’t present, you’re going to hit a wall. In this post, we tell you how to assure that you’ll have access!

To verify the student’s account is part of the HS4CC portal look at the URL after the student logs in – there should be “HS4CC” in the URL. See the URL example at the top of the image below (it has hs4cc.ea.asu.edu as the beginning of the URL):