Before Susan McLeod started an online graduate program, a key question crossed her mind: How long would it take to earn a master’s degree, especially while working full time?
“Given my age, I was interested in getting it finished as quickly as possible,” says the 56-year old, the president of a media management firm in the suburbs of Chicago who graduated in 2014.
A director of the program — an online Master of Science in integrated marketing communications from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism — helped McLeod map out her expected schedule. Her plan of action: take two courses per quarter, and finish in a little more than a year and a half.
Experts say many prospective online master’s students — who often plan to balance their education with a job — wonder about how much time they will spend earning a degree as they aim to move up in their current role or switch careers.
“They want to know how long they should plan on a degree taking as they will be working it into their lifestyle,” says Vickie Cook, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois–Springfield.
The simple answer: It depends on the program, among other factors including how many courses a student takes each term.
Data submitted to U.S. News by schools in an annual survey offer a glimpse into the most common amount of time it takes students in ranked online master’s degree programs across disciplines who enrolled between July 2015 and June 2016 to earn their degrees.
The table below also highlights the most frequent target time for each type of online program, referring to the amount of time it would take students to finish if they don’t drop or skip any courses. It also displays average three-year graduation rates. The number of programs that submitted each of these data varies across disciplines, and unranked schools were not considered for this report.
| Category | Most frequent duration of time for new students to graduate (mode) | Most common program target time to graduate (mode) | Average three-year graduation rate |
| MBA | 2 years | 2 years | 62.7% |
| Business (excluding MBA) | 2 years | 2 years | 58.7% |
| Criminal justice | 2 years | 2 years | 62.6% |
| Education | 2 years | 2 years | 61.9% |
| Engineering | 3 years | 2 years | 55.4% |
| Information technology | 2 years | 2 years | 54.3% |
| Nursing | 3 years | 2-3 years | 67.8% |
Calculating How Long It Takes
Among individual online students, these numbers can actually range widely. To determine how long an online graduate program will personally take you, there are various factors to keep in mind.
Among the most important factors to look for when calculating program length is whether or not there’s flexibility in how many courses students can enroll in at once and how they arrange their schedules, experts say. Some online programs are cohort-based, for instance, meaning that all enrolled students progress at the same pace and graduate together.
“I chose a program where they lay everything out for you,” says Brittany McLean, an online student pursuing an education master’s degree at North Carolina State University. “They tell you in the beginning you’re going to take two classes per semester. So that was super helpful for me to know kind of what to expect.”
Other programs let online students decide how many and which online courses to take at once. That decision often boils down to their other work and family obligations, experts say. Many pursue one or two classes per term after enrolling part time, though this also varies, experts say.
“Each student’s case is going to be quite different, which is why we assign academic advisers to each student coming into our program,” says Terrill Cosgray, executive director of online graduate programs at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
Cook agrees that meeting with a program adviser or faculty member before starting is a good idea, especially to determine what courses to take at the same time and when these classes will be available.
Students should also research whether their program operates around semesters or another type of schedule, which varies among schools.
[Explore five questions to ask about online program academic calendars.]
And, they might look into whether their program has any accelerated options, though Cook says some of these may require a larger workload each week. There are also competency-based programs, which focus on ensuring that students gain concrete skill sets, often enabling them to progress through what they already know at a faster pace.
The Weekly Commitment
In many cases, online degree programs are just as challenging as those offered on a physical campus, experts say, requiring many hours of coursework each week.
Lynda Hambourger, an academic adviser for online students at North Carolina State, says multiplying a course’s number of credit hours by three provides a rough estimate of a class’ weekly commitment. Others say online classes can require 15 or more hours of coursework each week.
Still, “The number of hours in a week varies, and it really depends on what the student’s background is,” says Elizabeth Vitullo, assistant dean for graduate business programs at the West Virginia University, which offers many online graduate degrees.
[Discover the weekly number of hours that online students study.]
For instance, a student already working in a field related to their program’s discipline might progress more quickly based on their previous knowledge.
“I’m more of a theoretical person than a quantitative person, so I have to work a little harder on the quantitative courses, so those took more time, although I found them to be enjoyable,” says McLeod, the Northwestern graduate. “But I would say it could be maybe 10 hours per course, on average.”
Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.
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U.S. News Data: How Long It Takes to Earn an Online Master’s Degree originally appeared on usnews.com
