Run three checks in order: the accreditor, the school's federal graduation and earnings numbers, and the date of your first full refund. All five schools passed accreditation, so graduation data is what separates them.
This guide links to providers we may earn commission from. It never changes what we recommend or the order of any ranking.
To check an online college before you enroll, do three things in this order: confirm who accredits the institution, read the federal graduation and earnings figures for the school itself, and get the date and terms of your first refund window in writing. Everything else, the rankings, the testimonials, the friendly enrollment counselor, comes after those three. An hour on this can save a year of tuition.
We ran that test on five schools: Arizona State University, Liberty University, Colorado Christian University, Purdue Global and the University of Arizona Global Campus. The results were uneven enough that the order of checking matters.
Regional, institutional accreditation is the baseline for federal aid and credit transfer. Arizona State University says it and its online programs are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. So does Colorado Christian University and Purdue Global. Liberty University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. The University of Arizona Global Campus is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission, which reaffirmed it for six years in June 2025, per the University of Arizona's own update.
All five pass. That is the point: passing is cheap and nearly universal, and it did not separate a 68 percent graduation rate from a 19 percent one. Where it does matter is program-level approval. Counselling, nursing, teaching and social work often need specialized accreditation or state approval for a licence. Liberty lists a string of them, and CCU names nursing and counseling bodies, but a school's list is a starting point. Ask the licensing board in your state whether it accepts the program, because we did not verify any board's position.
The Department of Education's College Scorecard publishes graduation rates and typical earnings for each school, and College Navigator gives prices, retention and accreditation from the same federal data. Here is what the Scorecard shows for our five.
Read these with care. They describe whole institutions, so the online experience can differ, and the Arizona State figure sits on the campus record because the online unit shows no separate number we could find. Typical earnings do not follow the graduation order, either: Liberty, CCU and UAGC graduates sit within a few thousand dollars of each other. A low graduation rate beside a mid-pack earnings figure may mean the payoff goes mostly to the minority who finish, though the Scorecard does not say so directly.
Retention and graduation answer different questions. Retention, the share returning after year one, tells you whether the first term worked. Graduation tells you whether the whole plan did. Colorado Christian's 81 percent return rate beside a 31 percent graduation rate is the pattern to look for: students who stay a year and still do not finish. Ask what happens in years two and three, when the novelty has gone and the bills keep coming.
Ask the school for its own numbers, too. Purdue Global publishes a graduation rate disclosure showing 31 percent for its 2019-20 bachelor's cohort. A school that will not give you a cohort figure for students like you has told you something.
The first check you write is where policies diverge most. Arizona State refunds 100 percent for short sessions only through one week after the session begins. Liberty's eight-week schedule returns 100 percent in week one before your first assignment, 75 percent through week two, then 50, 25 and nothing after week six. Colorado Christian says courses must be dropped before the drop deadline, and we could not find that date on the pages we read.
Two schools offer a trial. Purdue Global's FAQ describes an introductory three-week period with no financial obligation, although its degree page adds that students who continue are billed for the full first term including those three weeks. UAGC's Promise says no charges or debt if you do not progress and participate in an academic activity during week four of your first course, yet technology and materials fees there become non-refundable after day three, or week three for students covered by the Promise schedule. Both are real protections, but the fine print narrows them.
The federal borrower defense rules list aggressive and deceptive recruitment as a ground for discharge, including pressure to decide immediately, discouraging you from consulting others and repeated contact after you ask a school to stop. That list works as a checklist for your own calls. If a counselor says the price rises tomorrow, or that you do not need to look at other schools, close the call.
The record shows why this matters. A California court found in 2022 that Ashford University, now UAGC, gave students false or misleading information about career outcomes, cost, pace and transfer credits. That conduct predates its current ownership. The lesson for a student today is to get costs, timelines and transfer decisions in writing, not to assume any single school is the culprit.
This is general information, not legal or financial advice. If you already hold federal loans and think a school misled you, read the borrower defense page for current status, since a federal injunction has paused adjudication under the latest rule, and speak to a legal aid organization.
Price and outcomes are not the whole record. The Department of Education fined Liberty University $14 million under the Clery Act in March 2024 for crime-reporting failures, and Liberty's response page acknowledges incorrect reports and unsent warnings while disputing the department's methods. An online student rarely visits Lynchburg, and we would still weigh how an institution handles a complaint.
Search each school's name with the words fine, settlement and Department of Education, and read the primary document, not the headline. We found nothing comparable for Arizona State University or Colorado Christian University in the sources we opened. That is a limit of our search.
Keep reading
Liberty is cheapest at about $52,700 for 120 credits, and the lowest per-credit rate is not always the cheapest degree. Per-course fees, quarter credits and pace swing the total by tens of thousands.
Read the guide →Both schools are public nonprofits that used to be for-profit. Purdue Global still pays Kaplan up to 13 percent of revenue under a 30-year contract; UAGC became part of the University of Arizona in 2025.
Read the guide →