Affordable online sociology bachelor’s degrees (2026)

Fee units, residency eligibility, and placement conditions come from each school’s published terms:

Kennesaw State University: Credits are semester credits. The program page states the Bachelor of Science in Sociology "is available entirely online or as a face-to-face class option", prints "Number of Credit Hours: 120 Total Hours" and offers four concentrations: Culture and Social Change, Criminology, Medical Sociology and General Sociology. Kennesaw State's E-Tuition (Online) and Fees schedule for Fall 2026, Spring 2027 and Summer 2027 lists one undergraduate online tuition figure of $192.00 per credit hour and prints no resident or non-resident categories. The separate standard undergraduate schedule for the same year charges Georgia residents $192.00 and non-residents $722.00 per credit hour, so confirm with the university that an out-of-state student enrolled in this online program is billed the online rate. The same online schedule adds an "Online Learner Fee" of $594.00 that is shown as one figure for every credit load from 1 to 15 credits, so it is a per-semester charge rather than a per-credit fee. It is not entered in the per-credit fields and no total is presented; the schedule's own 15-credit total is $3,474.00. The schedule notes that fee waivers do not apply if a student registers for on-campus or hybrid courses, and that students living in on-campus housing are charged full mandatory fees. The tuition and fees pages publish no account of required one-time charges for undergraduates, so the one-time fee field is null rather than zero. No transfer-credit ceiling was published on the pages read.

Fort Hays State University: Credits are semester credits. The published online undergraduate rate includes tuition and fees. Additional program-specific costs are not fully listed, so ask the school for its fee list. Residency does not change the published online rate. Availability and admission still require confirmation with the school.

University of Arkansas at Little Rock: Credits are semester credits. The $292 per-credit-hour figure is the standard rate for students declared in an approved UA Little Rock Online program and the university says it "include[s] tuition and fewer fees". Treat it as a published bundled base cost, not as pure tuition. The university publishes a different per-credit schedule for the same major on campus (Sociology and Anthropology: $233.75 resident, $669.00 non-resident, plus a $15.50 per-credit-hour technology fee). The online rate page points online students to the separate schedule quoted here. Social Statistics, Research Methods, and the Senior Capstone Seminar are each offered online only once a year and must be taken in a fixed order, so the remaining credits cannot always be finished as fast as the arithmetic suggests. No whole-degree transfer ceiling is published, so ask UA Little Rock how many credits it will accept.

Arkansas State University: Credits are semester credits. Two official pages disagree about fees. The program page says the $302 per-credit rate is charged to all U.S. residents and that "All fees are included", while A-State's online fee page lists $50 per credit hour of required fees plus a one-time undergraduate graduation fee of $60. The published text does not say whether those fees sit inside or on top of the $302, so ask A-State which applies to you. The program page also mentions special course fees for some laboratory courses and a lab kit charge. Transfer credits are advertised up to 90 hours; the school evaluates each credit itself. No academic year is printed on either page, so this rate should be re-checked before you rely on it.

Lamar University: Credits are semester credits. The $314 per-credit rate includes the distance learning fee, and Lamar says university fees are included in the tuition listed, so no separate per-credit fee is added. Lamar accepts up to 90 transfer hours, and the total cost depends on your transfer credits and advising. A $25 application fee is listed. Check that Lamar offers the online program to residents of your state before you apply.

University of Mount Saint Vincent: Credits are semester credits. The programme page states the degree is offered "100% online" and its fact panel prints "Per Credit Hour $324", "Transfer Credits Up to 90" and "Credit Hours 120" together, so the identity, whole-degree credits, delivery, transfer ceiling and rate all come from one page. Two optional specializations are published: Criminology & Justice and Social Service/Social Work. Neither the programme page nor the online tuition page prints a fee schedule, so mandatory and one-time fee fields are null rather than zero and feeCoverage is unknown. Ask the university for the current fee list before comparing totals. The pages read print no resident/non-resident categories and no academic year, so treat the $324 figure as the currently published rate and confirm both the year and whether it applies to every student.

Southwest Minnesota State University: Credits are semester credits. The online program page states "Total Credit Hours 120" and calls the degree a "100 percent online program"; 37 of those credits are sociology major credits across 13 courses. The same degree is also offered on campus. The official Fall 2026 & Spring 2027 schedule publishes off-campus undergraduate tuition of $349.62 per credit hour plus $56.63 per credit hour of itemised mandatory fees, and its own total column is $406.25 per credit hour. Those fees are student activity $10.11, student center facility $17.64, athletic $6.25, health services $5.07, technology $14.00, off-campus maintenance $2.76 and Students United $0.80. The program page rounds the same figure two ways - "$407 per Credit" in its summary box and "Cost per Credit Hour $406.25" beside "Total Estimated Cost $48,750" for 120 credits. The official schedule's own per-credit total ($349.62 + $56.63 = $406.25) is used here, and the $407 display is not treated as a separate rate. SMSU bands undergraduate tuition and fees: a student enrolled in 12 to 18 credits in a semester pays a flat $4,972.87 tuition plus $739.24 fees ($5,712.11) for that semester instead of the per-credit amounts, and students over 18 credits pay the band plus the per-credit rate. The calculator multiplies a per-credit rate, so ask SMSU for a semester bill for your planned load. The schedule applies one off-campus rate rather than resident and non-resident rows, and SMSU states it offers in-state tuition rates to all students. Minnesota reciprocity and the Midwest Student Exchange Program are conditions for other rate treatments, not for this one. A $12.00 per semester sustainability fee appears in the same table as a flat charge that does not vary with credits, so it is not included in the per-credit fields above. One-time charges: the fee schedule lists a $30.00 degree processing fee assessed prior to graduation and a $20.00 undergraduate application fee that the program page calls waivable, so only the $30.00 processing charge is entered. New students are also charged $70.00 (part-time) or $135.00 (full-time) for orientation in their first term. Differential or programmatic tuition of roughly $8.30 to $30.82 more per credit applies to Studio Art, Introduction to Art, Art Education, Science Labs and Culinology and Hospitality Labs courses, which are outside the sociology curriculum. No transfer-credit ceiling was published on the pages read.

Bemidji State University: Credits are semester credits. Bemidji State's Extended Learning site lists the Sociology BA in its Online Degree Programs menu and the page opens with "Sociology online from Bemidji State!"; the page itself does not restate a credit total, and the delivery evidence for this one degree is the university placing it in the online degree catalogue. The sociology area of the university's catalogue states "A total of 120 semester credits are needed for the Sociology B.A. degree and include the following: 40 upper division credits (level 3000/4000), 36 required major core credits" plus core curriculum and BSU Focus and Nisidotaading requirements. The filed catalogue page does not print a catalogue year. The 2026-2027 tuition and fee rates page charges undergraduate tuition of $353.97 per credit hour for 1 to 11 credits, and then a flat banded rate of $5,076.67 per semester for 12 to 18 credits, so the per-credit figure above is the part-time rate and a full-time student pays a lower amount per credit. Summer tuition is charged per credit with no band. The same table lists per-credit fees totalling $50.44: technology $13.65, health service $7.50, student union $13.34, student activity $8.90, athletic $6.25 and St. Assoc. $0.80. Entered as mandatory fees per credit. The table also shows a flat $12.00 sustainability fee that does not change with the credit count, so it is not included in the per-credit fields and no total is presented. The rates page shows one undergraduate column with no resident and non-resident rows; ask Bemidji State how residency affects the online rate before relying on it. The pages read published no application fee or graduation charge, so the one-time fee field is null rather than zero. No transfer-credit ceiling was published on the pages read.

Southern New Hampshire University: Credits are semester credits. The programme page states that at "$354 per credit hour for undergraduate programs, SNHU's 120-credit bachelor's in sociology has a total tuition cost of $42,480", with 40 courses, 8-week terms and a transfer allowance of up to 90 credits. A community health concentration is offered inside the same BA; it is not a separate award or a separate price. The programme page publishes a $250 per credit hour rate for online undergraduate active duty military students and a $30,000 120-credit total. That rate is conditioned on military status, which the calculator cannot establish, so it is not the modelled rate. The 120-credit total the page quotes is tuition only. A $100 conferral fee appears on SNHU's separate tuition page, but that page is not a dated current excerpt in the set we can cite, so the one-time fee field stays null and feeCoverage is partial; no total is presented. Confirm the fee and any other mandatory charges with SNHU. The programme page did not render for automated text fetching (HTTP 403); it was read in a browser at the URL above.

CUNY School of Professional Studies: Credits are semester credits. Admission requires at least 24 transferrable credits from an accredited institution with a minimum GPA of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale, so this is not a program to start from zero. The per-credit rate applies to students of fully online programs: $305 per credit for New York State residents and $350 per credit for everyone else. Students registered in a fully online program before January 2023 pay the NYS rate regardless of residency; students who first enroll or are readmitted in January 2023 or later pay the non-resident online rate. Term charges sit outside the per-credit rate: CUNY Technology Fee ($125 full-time or $62.50 part-time per term), a $75 per-term infrastructure fee for online degrees, a $15 consolidated services fee per session, and student activity and student senate fees. A one-time $70 application fee applies to undergraduate programs. Ask CUNY SPS for the complete fee list before comparing totals.

Sam Houston State University: Credits are semester credits. The 2026-2027 undergraduate catalog states the Bachelor of Arts in Sociology "requires a minimum of 120 hours of coursework", and the program page lists the BA and BS with "Location: Huntsville, Online" and "Type of Instruction: Online, Face to Face". Texas resident tuition is $50.00 per semester credit hour plus designated tuition of $194.00 per semester credit hour, so $244.00 per credit hour for 2026-27. Non-resident tuition is $455.00 per semester credit hour plus the same designated tuition, i.e. $649.00 per credit hour, which is not modelled here; the wildcard row is left null so a non-resident student is not shown the Texas rate. Per-credit mandatory fees in the same catalog chapter: institutional services fee $80.00 per semester credit hour, intercollegiate athletic fee $20.00 per semester credit hour in fall and spring, student service fee $17.60 per semester credit hour capped at $250.00 per semester, plus a $101.00 per online semester credit hour distance learning fee for courses designated as online. Those four are entered as the per-credit fee figure of $201.00 (institutional services, athletic and distance learning). Three further fees are charged per semester rather than per credit: student center $100.00, medical $75.00 and recreational sports $100.00. They are excluded from the per-credit fields, so no total is presented, and students enrolled fully online and living more than 60 miles from campus may be eligible for waivers of the recreational sports and student center fees. Because the student service fee is capped and three fees are per semester, the per-credit fee figure is an approximation for planning rather than an exact per-credit charge; the published semester schedule is the authoritative bill. The catalog bundles its tuition and fee tables per semester and describes them as estimates subject to additional course and program fees, so ask SHSU for a bill for your own enrolment. The catalog also documents other adjustments that do not apply by default: a higher rate for students repeating a course for the third or more time and an excessive-hour rate for resident undergraduates past the state limit. No transfer-credit ceiling was published on the pages read. The $17.60-per-credit student service fee is capped at $250 per fall or spring semester, so it is not included in the per-credit fee above. For students outside Texas, SHSU's Fall 2026/Spring 2027 nonresident billing schedule (revised January 27, 2026) is based on $478 tuition plus $194 designated tuition per credit hour ($672), while its 2026-27 catalog states $455 plus $194 ($649). Until SHSU resolves the difference, no out-of-state estimate is shown. Online courses add a $101 per-credit distance learning fee.