The most affordable online master's degrees

Trying to determine what the cheapest graduate online degrees is very difficult to do. A Google or Bing search for the top most affordable online graduate programs will return dozens of articles showing varying lists of schools and or programs. Sometimes the lists coincide or overlap but oftentimes the lists are completely different. Furthermore, many of these lists include paid advertising that will confuse the reader. Why is there no definitive list that can be verified and agreed upon? One of the reasons is that many schools publish costs using different units. For example, half the schools may display a cost per credit while others will publish a yearly tuition and yet others might publish a total estimated cost. This makes ranking schools by cost like comparing apples and oranges. Another complicator is the fact that schools generally charge differently rates for in-state students and for out-of-state students. Some schools will set a third price for online programs. 

To address these variations, I have compiled a list based on the lowest published cost-per-credit. The list was seeded with the most popular degrees and programs mentioned in the top articles claiming to have the list. The schools were then combined into a larger list and each school was then manually looked up. This task involved much investigation given there is no standardized format schools use to disclose costs. Many times schools have a cost per credit for all graduate degrees but other times costs vary by degree within the same school. I used the lowest graduate program cost per credit regardless of in or out of state differences of the most affordable degree I could find on their websites. I also made sure to include the source you can check for yourself. 

Let me start with the lists I found. 

BESTCOLLEGES.COM

An article with the title "Most Affordable Online Master's Programs" [https://www.bestcolleges.com/online-degrees/masters/affordable] is one of the first to appear on searches. It lists the top ten most affordable Master's Programs according to the ranking website "bestcolleges.com". The website gets over 2 million unique visitors a month and is frequently cited. They place University of Florida as the most affordable option followed by many schools under the California State University system. Almost every school in their list is a reputable school with high academic rankings.

1. University of Florida
2. California State University-Dominguez Hills
3. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
4. CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6. California State University-Fresno
7. Stanford University
8. California State University-Fullerton
9. California State University-Northridge
10. University of South Florida-Sarasota-Manatee

INTELLIGENT.COM

The same top three schools make the of an article titled "Most Affordable Online Master's Degree Programs of 2024" [https://www.intelligent.com/most-affordable-online-masters-degree-programs] on intelligent.com. This website showcases the longest list of school (42 total) ranked by affordability. Intelligent.com seems to have put the most effort into compiling the list. Most of the schools listed are well ranked academically as well. 

1. University of Florida
2. California State University Dominguez Hills
3. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
4. John Jay College of Criminal Justice
5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6. Fort Hays State University
7. California State University
8. Chadron State College
9. Stanford University
10. Arkansas State University
11. Amberton University
12. California State University at Fullerton
13. CSUN - Tseng College
14. Georgia Institute of Technology
15. Southeast Missouri State University
16. Southern New Hampshire University
17. Florida International University
18. Arizona State University
19. Western Governors University
20. Georgia College and State University
21. Wayne State College
22. University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
23. University of South Florida
24. Graceland University
25. Colorado State University Global
26. Marshall University
27. University of Louisiana at Monroe
28. Texas A&M International University
29. University of Central Missouri
30. University of Maryland Global Campus
31. California State University, San Bernardino
32. Western New Mexico University
33. Texas A&M University - Commerce
34. Midwestern State University
35. University of West Georgia
36. Cameron University
37. University of Wyoming
38. Valdosta State University
39. University of Texas at Tyler
40. Sam Houston State University
41. Emporia State University
42. Lamar University

THE GRAD CAFE

University of Florida again tops the list from an article called "Top 10 Cheapest Online Masters Degrees in the US [2023]" [https://blog.thegradcafe.com/cheapest-online-masters-degrees] . The Grad Café is a very useful user-contributed website that publishes real student admission results. They also feature a blog with interesting content. This article also features lots of information about each of the universities that made their list.

1. University of Florida
2. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
3. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
4. Georgia Institute of Technology
5. University of Southern Indiana
6. California State University-Dominguez Hills
7. Missouri State University
8. Eastern Illinois University
9. University of Arkansas
10. Fort Hays State University

EDSMART.ORG

EDSmart is a website full of articles about higher education. They are a popular website with over 50k unique visitors. According to their article "The Most Affordable Online Master's Programs 2024" [https://www.edsmart.org/online-degrees/affordable-online-masters], the top 20 schools are:

1. North Carolina State University
2. Columbia Southern University
3. Aspen University
4. Fort Hays State University
5. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock
6. Wayne State College
7. The University of Texas of the Permian Basin
8. Amberton University
9. Southeast Missouri State University
10. American Public University
11. Midway University
12. East Carolina University
13. Liberty University
14. Lamar University
15. Western Governors University
16. Colorado State University
17. Oklahoma State University
18. Wilmington University
19. Purdue University Online
20. Arizona State University

GREATVALUECOLLEGES.NET

The article "Top 10 Most Affordable Master's Degrees Online" [https://www.greatvaluecolleges.net/affordable/online-masters] uses a special ranking methodology that factors not only the out-of-state tuition costs but also the student-to-faculty ratio and a score base on what they call "national recognition." Many of the schools are present in previous lists.

1. Chadron State College
2. Arkansas State University
3. Fort Hays State University
4. Southeast Missouri State University
5. Wayne State College
6. Western Governors University
7. Georgia College and State University
8. University of Arkansas
9. University of Louisiana at Monroe
10. University of Maryland Global Campus

AFFORDABLESCHOOLS.NET

This website published a long list (25 universities) ranked by affordability. The article "25 Most Affordable Public Colleges with Online Master's Degrees" [https://www.affordableschools.net/rankings/most-affordable-public-colleges-online-masters-degrees] explains the methodology of their research claiming the data was queried directly from the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) website. They then ranked the schools by calculating the average tuition plus fees. Their list includes many schools that previous lists did not mention.

1. Sul Ross State University
2. Fitchburg State University
3. Fort Hays State University
4. Cameron University
5. Northeastern State University
6. Missouri Southern State University
7. Western New Mexico University
8. Georgia Southwestern State University
9. East Central University
10. Southeastern Oklahoma State University
11. Wayne State College
12. Texas A&M University-Texarkana
13. New Mexico State University
14. Texas A & M University-Kingsville
15. Texas A & M University-Central Texas
16. University of Nevada-Reno
17. Chadron State College
18. University of Nevada-Las Vegas
19. University of Texas of the Permian Basin
20. Texas A & M International University
21. Missouri State University-Springfield
22. University of Wyoming
23. University of Texas at El Paso
24. University of North Georgia
25. Midwestern State University

ONLINEMASTERSCOLLEGES.COM

This website, while not the most popular, put together a list of their own in the article "What are the most affordable online masters programs?" [https://www.onlinemasterscolleges.com/most-affordable-online-masters-programs] mostly based on a cost per credit.. 

1. Purdue University Online
2. Arizona State University
3. Wilmington University
4. University of Texas of the Permian Basin
5. Lamar University
6. North Carolina State University
7. Wayne State College
8. Fort Hays State University
9. Southeast Missouri State University
10. Midway University
11. The University of Alabama
12. Valdosta State University
13. Georgia Institute of Technology
14. The University of Wisconsin
15. The University of Florida
16. Sam Houston State University
17. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
18. Eastern Carolina University
19. Oklahoma State University
20. Liberty University

GRADEHACKER.COM

Finally, the shortest list of all I found on a small website called Grade Hacker under the article "Cheapest Online Masters Degree in 2023" [https://www.gradehacker.com/blog/cheapest-online-masters-degree]

1. Fort Hays State University
2. Western Governors University
3. American College of Education
4. Eastern Illinois University
5. Wilmington University

So who is right?

Though many schools repeat across many of these lists, it is difficult to make any definitive conclusion about who is the most affordable. There are a total of 79 schools listed across the websites. None of these lists are definitive but they serve as a good base to research low cost online graduate degrees. I placed these schools in a spreadsheet and began looking them up individually by searching for tuition information on their websites. This information was often hard to come by or hidden among other costs. The truth is that what students actually pay over the course of their studies will rarely be accurately itemized on any school website. The reason is that there are multiple costs to consider, namely:

• most schools list a cost-per-credit but different degrees require different number of credits;
• the cost-per-credit varies for in-state and out-of-state students;
• sometimes there is a separate cost-per-credit for online degrees, other times not;
• there are additional fees associated with the total tuition. These fees are unevenly charged across schools and across degrees within schools;
• some schools only publish average total cost per degree others do not and yet others publish the exact known cost.

In order to get a better idea of what schools should be in the list of most affordable schools I looked up the "lowest possible cost per credit" available on each school's website. This allowed me to make an initial assessment of who should or should be in the list to begin with.