Go to online college

Generally speaking, the community colleges that teach online (most do these days) will have the lowest per credit cost, especially your in-state community colleges.

Of the four-year colleges, most of us agree that Louisiana State University and Brigham Young University are bottom dollar and great quality per course but neither offers a full degree online.

The least expensive option would be to use Excelsior College, Thomas Edison State College, or Charter Oak State College as recipients of transfer credit from several sources (community college, local state U, online programs, CLEP/DANTES, ACE credit for experience, etc…) as these will accept nearly 100% of the degree requirements in transfer. Take your required courses at the least expensive source you can find them and transfer them in.

The fastest that you could possibly complete any legitimate bachelor’s degree (online or classroom) by coursework would be 2 full calendar years. This is based on maximum courseload over minimum semester lengths and a truly full-time learning schedule. You’d have no other life (and I truly mean that) for two years. The potential for success is very low doing this – most people (not all) would either burn out or fail out.

Many accelerated programs can be completed in 3 years or slightly less by attending a full load of classes throughout the year with no breaks; these are most often far from the cheapest options.

You can either have cheap or fast — not both. Remember, if it took less than four years to get a bachelor’s degree, we wouldn’t call it “a four-year degree” — the average time to completion of a bachelor’s degree is five years.