Which US college has the best program for non-degree seeking adults?

(I'm a university professor)

What kind of "program" exactly are you looking for?

I'd expect that most good state schools admit non-degree students. Mine (the University of South Carolina) does. I've had some in my classes, who were excellent students.

That said I'm unaware of any "program" or organizational structure. You fill out some paperwork, sign up for the classes you want, and that's it. At any university, some of the classes will be great and some of them will suck. Beyond that --

- If you want advising as to what courses to take, find out who the undergraduate director is in whatever department you're interested in and ask if you can make an appointment. If you have questions about an individual class, look up and email whoever is teaching it next.

- If you want to participate in the university's social or intellectual life beyond your classes, then these are often open to the public anyway.

- If you want to form study groups, these usually aren't organized by the university; just try to make friends with the people sitting next to you.

- If you want tutoring or advising, you can probably access the same resources available to degree-seeking students.

Unfortunately (for you), classes are likely to be 8-5 MWF. For popular classes there might be classes available at off-hours, but for smaller niche classes there isn't enough demand for them.

My suggestion would be to drop your (3) and seek opportunities at any good university that's close to where you live. Good luck!

You might look at University of the People: https://www.uopeople.edu

It's a free, accredited online university. All course materials are OER. If you wanted the actual degree, you'd have to pay $60, I think, at the end of the course as an exam fee. Otherwise, just take the course for free.

If I remember correctly, they've got 4 focuses: business (bachelors & masters), computer science (aa & bachelors), public health (aa & bachelors), and education (masters).

You have to enroll to get access to the courses, and I don't know if you can enroll in courses outside of the degree. I actually enrolled a while back as a part of a career change, but almost immediately realized I wasn't going to do anything thing a business degree would help me with. I realized I could access the syllabi and textbooks without actually enrolling or re-applying, so I've worked through a few courses in each area (I get distracted lol).

The application costs, I think, $60 and is really pain free to submit (doesn't require any of the usual things...it's meant for the kind of person that would struggle to provide those).

The courses are designed by people at the top of their field, almost all full professors at Ivy-league-caliber university. Then, the courses are taught by volunteers who get a small amount of money for each course. So if you get stuck, you have a professor to ask, plus discussion posts are likely part of all the classes.

Sounds exciting. I would love to do something similar.

> In person classes

I think we'd need to know your geographical location?

> in my experience online content suffer from two issues. One is lack of roadmap - hard to tackle unknown unknown. Two is lack of community and interactivity - when I get stuck on a problem, it's hard to get help; there is also no quizzes, homework, and tests that facilitate learning.

Also, there's a lack of access to experts. If I'm learning a new programming language, it sure helps to have an expert in it who can look at my work, see what I'm missing, and send me in the right direction. It's the same with history, philosophy, or anything else.

> I'm just looking to learn; signaling is not important

My thought: If I do enough, or close to enough, for a degree, I might as well get it. If you're focusing on one subject, and if you really want to learn it well, then that's what the degree is - a program where you learn it well. I'd take the piece of paper if I did the work.

And it's not just signaling. The degree is for you too, or most of all; humans need ritual and reward; there's pride and joy and confidence and satisfaction in it. People spend thousands of hours leveling up in a game, and that's not even real!

you could try out some classes at the local community college. I know that they tend to have working professionals teaching course, so if you're taking a class like drawing, or finance, where the teacher having professional make a difference, it's a safe bet. I am not sure about how the liberal arts topics fare though

The entire California State University system is good for this; they have the system-wide Open University program for non-degree students [0] and campuses tend to have a fair number of evening and weekend classes (though not all classes of interest will be offered on that schedule.)

[0] https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/professional-and-continuing...

I know San Francisco State has something called Open University: https://cel.sfsu.edu/openuniversity/ so you might look for something similar at other places but even so there probably aren't many places with classes outside of normal working hours. In that case your best bet may be a community or city college like https://www.ccsf.edu

Have you looked into auditing classes?

If you aren't familiar with it, you can join the class but ungraded and for no credit. So you have less pressure, but still learn. The details of how it works varies by school and instructor, but sometimes you don't have to pay full tuition, and often don't have to actually do all the work. It is intended for exactly what you are talking about - learning material from a course without it actually being part of a degree path.

Stanford via SCPD https://scpd.stanford.edu/ has some great courses. They have programs that cater to working professionals but they are all remote with group-work.

Just go back to any college. If the degree is not relevant, you can just get accepted anywhere you want and take whatever classes you want. No one’s going to bother you to stay on track and finish a major.