Key takeaway: 1,895 of the 2,817 institutions in our directory that offer fully online programs report membership in the Department of Defense Voluntary Education Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (IPEDS IC 2024). The schools below are drawn from that group and ordered by BOC Score. This site does not rank or describe education benefit programs, and eligibility is determined by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or a service's education office. DoD MOU membership is a service-standards flag, not a payment decision. Admission, graduation, licensure, and employment are decided by the institution, the licensing board, and employers, not by any benefit. This site is not affiliated with DoD or VA.
Active-duty students need a school that can survive a duty-roster change, a time-zone shift, and a deployment pause without forcing a restart. Federal reporting does not measure those policies one by one, but it does record whether an institution has signed the DoD Voluntary Education Partnership MOU, a written floor for advising, credit transparency, and recruiting conduct.
Schools to Compare
These accredited institutions report DoD Voluntary Education Partnership MOU membership and at least one program completable entirely online (IPEDS IC 2024). Ranked by BOC Score within that group.
How We Rank Schools
Every school list on this site is ordered by the BOC Score, computed from the most
recent school-level data published by the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS).
To qualify, a school must be currently operating and accredited by an agency recognized by the
U.S. Department of Education. Each eligible school is then scored on five measures, percentile-ranked
against schools at the same credential level:
BOCSCORE
- Graduation rate 30%
- Median earnings, 10 years after entry 25%
- Average net price (lower is better) 20%
- Retention rate 15%
- Fully online availability 10%
Schools without enough outcome data appear after ranked schools, without a score.
Advertising never affects these rankings. Read the full methodology.
Graduation rate
93%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$102,772
Avg net price
$12,116/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 98%
- Programs offered: 64
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
97%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$124,080
Avg net price
$13,807/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 98%
- Programs offered: 100
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
89%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$71,588
Avg net price
$6,541/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 172
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
9%
Graduation rate
93%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$82,511
Avg net price
$12,548/yr
TuitionIn‑state$15,203
Out‑of‑state$49,403
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 161
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University Commission · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
94%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$83,648
Avg net price
$13,138/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 98%
- Programs offered: 206
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
96%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$91,885
Avg net price
$14,860/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 99%
- Programs offered: 105
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
27%
Graduation rate
87%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$84,943
Avg net price
$12,470/yr
TuitionIn‑state$16,758
Out‑of‑state$50,958
Key stats
- Retention rate: 94%
- Programs offered: 133
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University Commission · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
91%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$72,200
Avg net price
$11,655/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 117
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
29%
Graduation rate
86%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$80,735
Avg net price
$14,251/yr
TuitionIn‑state$15,722
Out‑of‑state$49,922
Key stats
- Retention rate: 94%
- Programs offered: 134
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University Commission · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
86%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$81,054
Avg net price
$14,355/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 95%
- Programs offered: 177
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
What DoD MOU membership means in the data
Institutions that sign the Department of Defense’s Voluntary Education Partnership Memorandum of Understanding agree to a set of standards for serving servicemembers. Membership is reported to IPEDS as VET5. It is not a quality ranking and it is not a promise about tuition, course load, or any education benefit. It is a floor: the school has committed to specific practices in writing, including academic advising and transparent transfer and credit policies.
It works as a filter on institutional conduct. The policies that actually govern a duty schedule sit in each school’s catalog, and they are described in the sections below.
Education benefits, without promises
This site does not rank or describe education benefit programs. Eligibility and payment for education benefits administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or a service’s education office are determined by those offices, usually through an installation education counselor and the school’s certifying official. DoD MOU membership, the filter on this page, means the school reported signing DoD’s Voluntary Education Partnership MOU. That is a written floor for serving servicemembers, and it is not a payment decision about any course or term.
Admission, graduation, licensure, and employment are decided by the institution, the licensing board, and employers, not by any benefit. The school cards on this page are ordered by BOC Score inside the IPEDS service filter, which is built from reported institutional characteristics rather than from anything a benefit might cover.
For the cluster-wide wording, see military support services at online colleges.
What MOU membership does not record
Signing the MOU commits an institution to a defined set of practices. It does not describe the operating details that decide whether a specific program fits a duty schedule, and the IPEDS survey does not collect those details either. Five of them vary widely among the MOU members listed above.
Share of the program delivered asynchronously. Programs run from fully asynchronous to a required weekly live seminar at a fixed hour, with fixed-window proctored exams occupying the middle. Live sessions and fixed exam windows are the parts that collide with watches, underway periods, and time-zone differences. The share of required live meetings appears in the catalog and the syllabus rather than in federal data.
The leave-of-absence process. Some catalogs carry a documented military pause-and-resume path that preserves earned credit and requires no new application. Others treat an interruption as a withdrawal followed by readmission, which can bring the current catalog requirements in place of the ones in force at first enrollment.
When the registrar evaluates a Joint Services Transcript. Some institutions issue a written evaluation before enrollment, and others evaluate after matriculation. Credit for military training lands most often as elective credit and least often against upper-division major requirements. The institutions that report the service are listed on online colleges that report credit for military training.
What the dedicated point of contact actually covers. IPEDS records whether a contact exists (VET3) and nothing further: not staffing, not hours, not response time, not whether the office serves fully online students several time zones away. 2,268 online institutions in our directory report having one.
Programmatic accreditation. Nursing, teaching, counseling, and similar licensed fields depend on the program’s own accreditor in addition to the institution’s. The two designations are separate, are granted by different bodies, and are recorded in different places.
The four service indicators the IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey does collect (VET2 through VET5) are reported by the institution itself each fall: credit for military training, a dedicated point of contact for veterans and servicemembers, a recognized student veteran organization, and DoD MOU membership. Each is a yes or no field with no supporting detail attached, which is why a school reporting all four still varies from its peers on everything described above. The distance education program flag (DISTPGS) is a separate field, and it is what establishes that a program can be completed entirely online rather than in a hybrid format with campus residencies. The full IPEDS checklist behind these distinctions is on military support services at online colleges.
Scheduling features published by online programs
A school can report every military-support flag and still run a program that only works for a student who can sit a weekly seminar at 7 p.m. Eastern. Scheduling is a separate axis from service reporting, and the features published across online programs include:
- multiple start dates a year, ranging from two to monthly
- coursework completed inside a weekly window rather than at a fixed live meeting time
- a written policy for missed deadlines during official duty, held at the institutional level in some programs and left to instructor discretion in others
- advising hours spanning more than one U.S. time zone, and in some programs remote proctoring available around the clock
- terms of eight weeks or less, which shorten the block of time a single schedule change can disrupt
Graduation and retention figures sit on the cards above and come from federal sources. They are reported independently of the service indicators, so the two data sets describe different things about the same school.
Quick Answers
What does the federal data record for active-duty students?
It records service indicators rather than program fit. 1,895 of the 2,817 online institutions in our directory report DoD Voluntary Education Partnership MOU membership, 2,197 report credit for military training, and 2,268 report a dedicated point of contact (IPEDS IC 2024). Asynchronous delivery, leave-of-absence terms, and the timing of a Joint Services Transcript evaluation are institutional policies published in each catalog, not federal fields.
Does DoD MOU membership mean a benefit will pay?
No. MOU membership is a service-standards flag in IPEDS, not a payment decision. Education benefits administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or a service’s education office are settled by those offices. Admission, graduation, licensure, and employment are decided by the institution, the licensing board, and employers, not by any benefit.
Will a school guarantee credit for my military training?
No school on this site is described as guaranteeing credit. Schools that report credit for military training have a process for reading a Joint Services Transcript. How much credit you receive, and whether it applies to electives or the major, varies by school and by degree.
Are these online colleges accredited?
Every institution in our directory holds accreditation from an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Where a professional license depends on it, the specific program carries its own programmatic accreditation, a separate designation from the institutional accreditation recorded in our directory.
More in this section
Benefit eligibility is determined by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and your service’s education office. Nothing on this page guarantees education benefits, credit transfer, admission, or a particular cost. Confirm every detail with the school’s military or veteran services office before you enroll.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey (IC 2024), DoD Voluntary Education Partnership MOU indicator (VET5) and distance education program flag (DISTPGS); directory counts as of the September 2026 data refresh.
