He soon discovered Northern Arizona University on a blog and enrolled in the 116-year-old institution’s new competency-based education program—formally known as the Personalized Learning initiative—after being impressed with what a student in the program had to say.
The online program offers degrees in computer information technology, liberal arts and small business administration for a flat subscription fee of $2,500 per six months. Students can begin year-round and study at their own pace.
Cakmak, 28, a native of Turkey who works as a sales director for a hotel chain in suburban Philadelphia, said he is glad he found the program because “it really allows you to do the work faster if you can, and if you have other stuff going on in your life, it gives you the flexibility to work on your schedule.”
Asked if the stuff he was learning at NAU’s competency-based program was worthwhile, Cakmak said: “Yes, because you don’t have to go through the things you already know.”
“For example, I had a couple of lessons where it was mostly about business and customer relations and all that, which I think I’m an expert of because of the last ten years I spent my time in hotels with guests and numbers and the business aspect of the hotel business,” Cakmak said. “For me it was easy to go through the lessons because those were the things I already know.”
But when it comes to his computer information technology classes, Cakmak said “there was a lot of lessons about database systems and technical things which I didn’t really know,” so he went at a slower pace.
