5 Best Value Online Schools in Louisiana

As the only school on this best Louisiana online colleges ranking with a majority of distance learners, Northwestern State University of Louisiana clearly attracts plenty of online students. The school claims to be Louisiana's "first and largest electronic campus," and the degree offerings are certainly numerous enough to justify that title. Alongside over a dozen undergraduate degrees, NSU provides twice that number of associate's, specialist, post-baccalaureate, and certificate programs. In total, NSU offers hundreds of fully online courses each semester, and you may even be inspired to pick up an extra certificate or two while studying for your bachelor's! But variety aside, it's the school's stellar reputation for distance learning and hard-to-beat tuition rates that make it one of the best online colleges in Louisiana.

NSU has been offering online education long enough that some of its older online help material still recommends using Netscape! Overall, this institution's wealth of experience in distance learning - coupled with its Quality Matters certification and versatile learning options - make it one of the strongest schools on this accredited Louisiana online degrees ranking. As an added bonus, NSU provides two distinct course schedules to accommodate students' needs. If you're comfortable with an accelerated pace and want to complete your degree entirely at a distance, NSU's eight-week Nichols Online programs will fit the bill perfectly. If you prefer a less frenetic learning experience, the school also offers traditional 16-week "WWW" courses.

The online undergraduate options at McNeese State are fairly standard: the school offers degrees in Criminal Justice, Family and Child Studies, Sociology, Psychology, and Management. But MSU also provides an abundance of certificate programs in specialized education topics like Academically Gifted Education and Reading Specialist, making the school ideal for future teachers who want to carve out their niche. Many of MSU's affordable online college courses in Louisiana come courtesy of the school's electronic learning labs, which provide distance learners with a live classroom experience using two-way audio and video.

In contrast to SLU, the University of Louisiana at Monroe offers an abundance of fully online bachelor's degrees - 15 in all, in subjects ranging from Modern Languages to Risk Management. UL Monroe built its distance learning degrees for adult learners seeking career advancement or a new career altogether, and the school offers Prior Learning Assessments that enable students to get credit for knowledge and skills they already have. This top online school in Louisiana also continually tweaks its programs to ensure they're convenient for students with work and family responsibilities. For example, UL Monroe recently began to offer accelerated eight-week sessions so that online learners can take fewer courses at once but still complete their degree on time.

You'll find three affordable online degrees in Louisiana at SLU: a fully online RN to BS in Nursing program and partly online undergraduate degrees in General Studies and Family and Consumer Science. Considering the popularity of the first and the extreme flexibility of the latter two, Southeastern Louisiana University manages to pack a powerful punch into their slim selection. The Family and Consumer Science degree includes concentrations in Family Studies, Fashion Merchandising, and Nutrition, while the bachelor's degree in General Studies enables each student to design her own coursework (with concentrations in arts, science, business, and more). Course structure is also flexible, as classes are available in web-enhanced, blended, telecourse and fully online formats.