Best Online Colleges in Hawaii for 2025

Online Higher Education in Hawaii

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Online higher education is popular in Hawaii. This could be due to many factors, but the fact that students can pick degree programs on other islands is surely a significant motivating factor. For example, a student on Oahu can attend their desired degree program on Maui without having to commute between the two islands for class. In fact, nearly half of all Hawaiian undergraduate students, 47%, take their courses exclusively online.

Graduate students in Hawaii are less likely to take their degrees through an exclusive online system. Only about 20% of Hawaiian graduate degree students are exclusively online students. A similar percentage of Hawaiian graduate students are taking some courses online, leaving over 60% who take no online courses whatsoever.

Find Your Online Hawaii Program

When it comes to costs of a college degree, Hawaii offers some very affordable options. Those undergraduate students who choose an associate degree for their first two years of school save a lot of money overall. This is because their coursework costs just over $3,000 for a year. Meanwhile, one of Hawaii's public, four-year institutions runs for more than twice that. For out-of-state students, costs jump dramatically with a two-year college costing over $8,000 for a year and a four-year institution running $21,000 per year. However, out-of-state students whose home state participates in the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) can apply to that program and then enjoy the same costs as a Hawaiian native.

Private schools naturally don't enjoy the same public funding and so their costs are higher, but at least they are uniform regardless of a student's home state. For a private institution in Hawaii, costs run around $23,000 per year per student.

For graduate work, the costs rise significantly. Hawaiian residents who take graduate courses in one of the state's public institutions pay around $15,000 per year while non-residents pay twice that amount. Private schools are more in line with this cost, charging a competitive $16,000 per year regardless of where a student calls home.

Our School Rankings Methodology

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When it comes to ranking Hawaii's higher education institutions, our researchers employ the most objective methods possible. First, they determine whether a program offers online degree programs and then they dig into the educational statistics. Chief among these are each school's retention rate, graduation rate, net price, and the outcome measures. Outcomes are typically the salary rates students might expect were they to graduate from the institution.

Retention rates are often unfamiliar to non-educational researchers. This metric shows the number of first-time, full-time students who return to a campus for their second year. A high retention rate indicates that most students have found the institution's curriculum, faculty, student body, and campus resources to be stimulating and of good value. Schools are required to report how many of their full-time students are retained for a second year. However, most also elect to report how many of their part-timers also return. For urban campuses, the number of retained part-time students can be of great use.

Ultimately, our researchers rely on objective statistics that are gathered by the U.S. government. These figures are used to assess each school so that students can then apply their own standards to each school. For instance, some may be interested in athletic programs and others are more interested in the school's proximity to a city, beach, or other geographic feature.