FROM THE CREATORS OF BEST COLLEGES, MONEY RELEASES ITS FIRST-EVER BEST ONLINE COLLEGES LIST

As with Money's Best Colleges, the editorial team analyzed schools and gave them a star rating instead of a numerical ranking, giving users a more useful and nuanced research experience. This rating system is based on the philosophy that there is not one, singular best college for every student. Instead, there's a variety of outstanding, high-value colleges across the country.

"With so many excellent universities offering an online degree program, it's logical that Money expands its flagship Best Colleges franchise into this space," said Mike Ayers, executive editor of Money. "Readers will get a sense of what the ROI is with an online degree program and be able to make the most informed decision about their future prospects."

For the Best Online Colleges, Money teamed up with College Factual to create a robust, one-of-a-kind methodology. We started our analysis with a list of all schools in the United States offering an undergraduate bachelor's degree program as reported in the federal government's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

From there, we filtered the list to include only the following:

• Must be a public or private, not-for-profit school (for-profit schools excluded).
• Must be a regionally accredited school.
• Must enroll at least 500 exclusively online students in their undergraduate programs.
• Must offer at least 20% of their programs at least partially online.
• Must have sufficient, reliable data to generate a score in key factors.

Money and College Factual scored colleges' quality and affordability to create a value-focused list. The quality data points take into account graduation rates, the robustness of a college's online offerings, typical student borrowing, employment rates and average earnings. Affordability includes costs per credit hour and net price of attendance.

For Money's complete list of the Best Online Colleges go here. For the complete methodology, click here. 

Money Best Colleges editor Kaitlin Mulhere and College Factual's Josh McWilliam are both available for interviews.

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SOURCE Money