Methodology and Sourcing

We currently list 684 online programs at 96 institutions, and record 203 related offerings we checked and did not list (shown on each university page with the reason). Coverage is partial and growing: a program missing from the directory has not been verified yet. We do not claim complete coverage of US online education.

Which institutions are eligible

An institution is listed when it holds a current institutional accreditation from an accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), and offers at least one eligible online degree. Accreditation is checked in the Department of Education's Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP): we record the accreditor, its scope, the current status, the date and the DAPIP record. A university does not need to operate entirely online.

An .edu domain is not evidence of accreditation, and institutional accreditation does not establish that a program meets professional licensure requirements. Specialized (programmatic) accreditation — for example CCNE or ACEN in nursing, CAEP in education, CACREP in counseling, CSWE in social work, ABET in engineering — is recorded separately and only when the university names it for that program. Accreditation badges are never used as decoration.

Which programs are eligible

Every listed program carries an eligibility record: official program name, awarded degree wording, degree level, the decision, an explanation and the official page that shows the degree is offered online. A deterministic gate checks every research decision and can only make it stricter: anything that looks like a certificate, an associate degree, a hybrid campus program or a mislabelled doctorate goes to an editor instead of being published. A professional doctorate is never labelled a PhD; the Online PhD Programs section lists awarded Doctor of Philosophy degrees only.

A program is published only when these facts are verified: the institution's identity and accreditation, the official program name, the awarded degree, the degree level, the online delivery classification, the in-person requirement (or an explicit “not verified”), the official program URL, the administering location and the verification date.

How “online” is classified

Online delivery is several separate attributes, each recorded only as the university states it:

• Academic delivery: fully online; online coursework with required practical placements; online coursework with required campus visits; hybrid/blended.
• Campus visits: none, required, optional or not verified. “No mandatory campus visits” requires explicit wording such as “no campus visits” or “100% online with no residencies”.
• Practical placements: clinical placements, practicums, internships, fieldwork and student teaching. Online coursework with a local placement is listed, but never as having no in-person requirements.
• Schedule (asynchronous, synchronous, mixed) and study intensity (full-time, part-time, flexible), when published.

For bachelor's degrees we separate full degrees open to first-year students from completion programs, transfer-entry programs and credential-specific pathways such as RN-to-BSN, with their prior-credit, license, transfer-credit and residency-credit requirements.

What a state or city listing means

A program is grouped under the state and city where the institution (or its administering campus) is located. That does not mean students must live there, and it does not mean every resident of that state — or every international applicant — may enroll. Whether an institution can enroll you online (state authorization) and whether a program meets licensure requirements where you live are separate questions, answered by the university's own disclosures.

Sources

• Program facts come from the university's own pages: program pages, the online-learning site, the catalog or bulletin, admissions requirements, official tuition tables, and state authorization and licensure disclosure pages.
• Institutional identity (official name, location, public/private control) comes from the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS data; institutional accreditation from DAPIP.
• Search engines and other directories may help us find candidate pages, but never establish a fact. We do not copy their content.

Verification

Every published fact stores the URL it came from and a verbatim quote from that page. An automated check re-fetches the page and searches for the quote; a fact whose quote is not found is stored but never shown. Editors can confirm a fact manually after reading the source. Each fact on the site shows its source and verification date. Tuition, deadlines and authorization notes older than a year are flagged for re-verification.

Unknown stays unknown. Missing GRE information is “not verified”, not “not required”. Durations such as “as little as 12 months” are shown with their condition, never as the normal length. Deadlines keep the term and year the university printed; a past date is marked passed and never rolled into a new cycle. Tuition keeps its category (in-state, out-of-state, all online students), basis (per credit, per term, per year, whole program) and academic year. An estimated total is calculated only from a per-credit rate and the program's published credits, with its formula and exclusions shown, and is never presented as the full cost of attendance.

Order, rankings and sponsorship

Listings are alphabetical by university by default. Visitors can sort by soonest verified deadline, lowest published tuition per credit or most recently verified — transparent orders, not quality judgments. We do not publish “best” or “top” lists. Paid placements are labelled “Sponsored”, appear only when relevant to the page's filters, sit in a separate section and never change facts or the order of the directory.

What we do not claim

• We do not publish or estimate acceptance rates, selectivity, rankings, graduation outcomes, salaries or job placement.
• Listing is not an endorsement, and an institution's absence is not a judgment.
• We are not a university, an accrediting agency or an application service. Apply on each university's official website.
• Requirements, costs and deadlines change. Always confirm with the university before applying.

Corrections

Universities and readers can request a correction with an official source. Corrections are reviewed against official pages; nobody can edit a profile directly, and sponsorship does not change facts.