There are those who are born to teach. That is their one and only dream in life...to become an educator...a teacher.

Money has nothing to do with this dream...goodness knows teachers are overworked and underpaid. Still, teaching is the only thing that will fulfill the lives of born teachers.

In order to become an educator, however, one must first obtain a college degree, which is a lot easier said than done.

Attending a brick-and-mortar college or university and getting a degree that allows one to teach means four full years of attending classes, lectures, labs, etc.

Is it cheap? Not a chance! The cost of a four-year college education is far outpacing the rate of inflation.

There aren't a lot of hard-working American families who can afford to send a child to college for four years without some financial help. Scholarships and student loans become part of their dinnertime conversations.

During the course of the struggle to figure out how to pay for a college education, some families and potential college students discover that courses can be taken online. Whole degrees in education can be earned online -- and at a fraction of the cost of a four-year career at a brick-and-mortar college or university.

The outcome is the same...a degree that allows the born-to-teach teacher to teach and without starting out so deeply in debt that they will spend years crawling out from under it.

The thing a potential online student needs to find out for himself or herself is if an online degree is accepted be the school at which he or she wishes to teach.

Online degrees are being accepted more and more often now but all schools do not accept a degree that was totally earned online.

Sometimes a mixture of brick-and-mortar college courses and online college courses is the best answer.