Correspondence Schools in the U.S.

Some people cannot attend a school or a university to continue their education. For them there are radio or TV courses and correspondence courses. These courses are different from regular university courses because the instructor and the student never meet each other. Everything is done by mail. The schools mail the books and the assignments to the students. Then the students complete the assignments and mail them back to the instructor. The instructor then checks the assignments for mistakes and at the end of the course, mails a grade to the student.

Correspondence schools are very popular. They offer courses in more than a thousand subjects, from Chinese to biology. Today more than a million Americans are taking some kind of a correspondence course. Many different kinds of people have graduated from correspondence schools: singers like Donny and Marie Osmond, and even "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles Schulz.

Some correspondence schools have courses to give training for people wanting to get jobs in industry. The Cleveland Institute of Electronics has courses to help workers get jobs in companies like Eastman Kodak or Procter and Gamble. Some universities have general interest courses or introductory courses. Other universities offer a complete program. The University of Iowa, for example, offers a Bachelor of Liberal Studies. The courses are general because there is no specific major. To register, students only have to fill out a registration form and mail it in with a check for school fees.

The costs of correspondence courses vary. Some are very cheap, and some are very expensive. A typical course costs about $700 or $900, but some courses can cost as much as $3,000. The program at the University of Iowa costs about $100 a semester.

The biggest problem with a correspondence course is finishing it. Not everyone completes a course, because working at home can be difficult and lonely. Students have to read more and write more. Elora McKenzie says, "You must really want to learn because you have to work hard."

Elora McKenzie took a photography correspondence course from the New York Institute of Photography in Manhattan. She lived on a 700-acre sheep farm in West Virginia and couldn't attend the Institute. There were 30 lessons in the course with instructions on cassette tapes. Elora completed each worksheet and mailed it in with her photographs. Professional photographers recorded their ideas on cassette tape and mailed them back to her. "I really enjoyed the work," she says. "It was well organized, and the instruction was very personal." The course was helpful to Elora. She later won a prize in a national photography contest.