If however, you’ve been looking for a job the recovery may seem as if it’s happening somewhere else. The lack of jobs did make it into the headlines today, with a report that October’s unemployment figure was at 10.2%. That’s the highest figure since 1983, says the Washington Post story; moreover, “employers cut a net 190,000 jobs” during the month of October.

The upside of this particular benchmark in unemployment according to the proverbial analysts is that the gross domestic product rose 3.5% in the third quarter of 2009, accomplished in the manufacturing sector without benefit of additional employees. In other words, efficiency is up among the remaining employees so that the dollar side of the economic picture continues to improve.

Alas, the human side does not. While the net job loss doesn’t reflect economic improvement, analysts pointed to the addition of 34,000 temporary jobs to the market as a positive sign, suggesting that employers are beginning to make cautious steps towards returning to normal. Some would argue that replacing long term employees with temporary jobs, which require no provision of benefits, as a minor gain at best and the continuation of a deeply disturbing trend.

“Employers became leaner and more efficient in the third quarter. Wages, meantime, remain flat or falling. The result is that productivity — output per hour of work — jumped at the fastest pace in six years.” Productivity rose at an annual rate of 9.5 percent in the July-September quarter, according to the Labor Department.

They made that announcement yesterday, along with reporting a lower than expected number of applications for unemployment. “On Wall Street, the better-than-expected jobless claims report and an upbeat forecast from Cisco Systems Inc. buoyed investors. The Dow Jones industrial average added nearly 204 points to 10,005.96, and broader indexes also gained.”

Today the stock market isn’t doing much but it isn’t in the red either, because the unemployment rate’s move into double digits simply doesn’t have the throw-weight of big profits for big businesses. The news stories today are full of hopeful signs that can be found in these economic tea leaves if you ask the right analyst – for example, it’s considered a positive sign that job loss was less than projected. That’s like saying it’s only a cracked vertebrae and we won’t have to operate on your back.

It seems that there’s a profound disconnect here. The value of the consumer market to the nation’s economic health is more about interest payments than anything else, including employment. We are dependent on companies that are too large to be allowed to fail, rather than a workforce that has gainful employment and spends earned dollars rather than borrowed ones.

All of this suggests that those of us who have been sucked into the job market implosion should look to new careers in industries where, for better or worse, growth is inevitable. Criminal justice careers are going to grow, particularly in the Homeland Security field. Those who are interested in law enforcement can probably break in with an associate’s degree.

Many of the medical training schools are turning students away and still there are projected shortages in nursing, in medical technology of all types and for health information technicians, to name just a few. You can qualify for any of these with an associate degree and with the exception of the clinical training for RNs; you can obtain your degree online – often in less than two years.

The grants will help cities and colleges in New York, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and California dramatically increase the number of young people who earn a degree beyond high school. These grants recognize that successfully reaching that goal will require education, business, and civic leaders working together to coordinate and streamline the guidance and services young people need to get into, and through, college.

The dropout rate for both two and four year colleges is higher than is necessary. But if there is an at-risk subset for college students in general, it’s those who are pursuing an associate’s degree. Often these students didn’t acquire the study habits in high school to carry them; just as often they are working and often supporting a family while going to school.

In these situations the value of an online degree program becomes readily apparent. These are the situations that the Gates’ grants will hopefully address. People who need child care more than they need money for textbooks are often the reluctant college dropouts today.

Class schedules can be flexible; degree programs can be completed in eighteen months or three years, it’s up to the student. It’s also worth noting that the average completion rate for associate’s programs today is three years, so distance learning students can get ahead of the game easily if they’ve got the discipline.

According to the Obama Administration, job growth for graduates with associate degrees over the next twenty years will outpace those with bachelor’s degrees. Job growth today is in the service industries, but in services that require training. Health care careers will put you in an industry with chronic shortages of trained personnel and a steep projected growth curve.

Engineering careers are expected to grow at a rate well beyond the national average. Engineering technicians’ careers are going to grow right with them. Then there’s the IT careers, some of which require an associate’s degree – such as computer repair technicians, installation technicians and network administrators. There can be great value in an associate’s degree if it’s in the right industry. It can also be a stepping stone to further education when positions up the ladder are within reach.

Beginning fall 2010, the University of Texas System will offer the Bachelor’s Accelerated Completion program – the BAC – a group of fully online bachelor degrees. Courses will run every six to eight weeks, so that working adults can finish out their bachelor’s degree faster. According to the University, “You’ll be learning from expert UT faculty, and your diploma will come from an accredited UT institution.”

Once an applicant has reached agreement with the University on transferrable credits, a university counselor will assist in working out the academic requirements for completion of a bachelor’s degree. The options available in this first year of operation are essentially liberal arts degrees that vary in areas of focus. Students enroll with the campus that is offering the online program and will receive a degree from that campus upon completion.

From the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) there will be the Bachelor of Arts in Multidisciplinary Studies. From the Arlington campus online degree students will be studying for a Bachelor or Arts in University Studies. And from the campus in the Permian Basin the available degree will be a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities.

Completion programs already in place through UT’s TeleCampus include the bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and in health services technology. The University has been offering online courses for ten years, many of which lead to graduated degrees such as the MBA and several masters’ in education options. The school also has many online certificate programs, two of which reflect the state’s location and ethnic mix: one is in border administration and the other an ESL program.

Recruiting coordinator Laura Wiese explained that the University’s availability to the state’s vast rural regions adopted new technology as it developed. With the advent of the telephone came telephone-intensive courses. When television appeared on the scene, the University provided video broadcast. Today with the Web further simplifying connections, UNL offers 26 online degrees and 499 courses the same course material and the same degree that’s available on campus.

At the UNL Extension, graduate level the Journalism School offers a Master’s in Journalism and Mass Communications, with a course load that takes a thorough approach to the multimedia element essential to journalism today. The School of Education has programs for both a special education degree and for child development.

The College of Business Administration offers an MBA program with several specialization options. At the undergraduate level the principal options are for degree completion programs, although there appears to be just a single option for a bachelor’s degree. A student must have 64 transferable credit hours or an associate’s degree, which can be applied towards a bachelor’s degree in applied science. This course of study according to the school prepares a graduate for the “application of science in society.” It appears to be a hybrid of natural sciences, mathematics and liberal arts courses.

The University of Nebraska appears to be approaching the notion of undergraduate studies with caution, for fear of sullying the school’s “brand,” the current term in education circles for academic respect. Their approach to graduate programs is much more open, with participation from several of the liberal arts colleges, the agriculture programs – still important in Nebraska – and the business school. One hundred years of distance learning has brought the school about 90% of the distance to full online education options.

The Board of Regents (TBR) has devised a program that gives students at all its campuses access to distance learning programs offered on any campus. The Campus Collaborative offers degrees and workforce training by sharing resources among its 46 affiliated schools. Through Regents Online Degree Program (RODP) and Regents Online Continuing Education (ROCE), students register at one campus but choose distance learning courses from any participating institution.

“Students get to take classes from all kinds of instructors,” says Dianna Rust, an associate dean in distance education at Middle Tennessee State University. “And they get to take classes that their institution might not have been able to offer because it didn’t have enough students to justify it.” Currently, RODP programs are asynchronous, which means students complete the coursework independently on their own schedule. That’s important to students who work odd hours or juggle work, family and school.

If you’re interested in this new venture, the TBR website has a multimedia school orientation on the home page. There is also a list of any new online degree options; at the moment they’re featuring a degree in health information technology. This degree program draws classes from several of the state’s public universities and colleges; it’s an example of a new degree which requires the teaching resources for just one campus but is available to students from all.

In the spring of this year they launched an online associate degree in nursing that is designed to prepare students for the RN exam. “The establishment of a program designed to deliver the didactic component in an online environment, as well as the opportunity to ‘share’ faculty resources in teaching/supervising the clinical component of the curriculum allows the current associate degree programs to increase capacity while maximizing resources.” This program is meant to help with the critical shortage of nurses in Tennessee, and to do so ASAP.

There is no single technological protocol for teaching effective online courses. At UT-Knoxville, for example, most professors use voice-over IP technology to deliver lectures and interact with students in real-time. It’s somewhat like a conference call, but on a computer. It works well for student-teacher contact, fostering mentoring relationships between the professor and online students, which are especially critical in graduate-level courses. There are currently online versions of graduate degrees in education and human resources along with several other options.

Also, according to Assistant Dean of Distance Education George Hoemann, “There are quite a number of counties in Tennessee that don’t have broadband access,” he explains. “When you are thinking about creating a distance program, you still need to design to the lowest common denominator and then take advantage of broadband in an incremental way.”

Chinese universities are turning out engineers and IT professionals at a much higher volume than the United States or the European nations. Their manufacturing sector now possesses hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs that were once part of the U.S. economy. The government is moving swiftly to get its finance sector into global markets, authorizing banks to enter the insurance business and to some degree, inviting foreign investment. Finally, they own about $1 trillion in U.S. debt which has led to some speculation that the dollar’s days as the global coin of the realm may be limited.

In an effort to expand the use of Chinese language, specifically the Mandarin dialect, in global business the University of Peking has developed an online education program in conjunction with the Malayan firm EBS Technologies. MyChineseLearning.com offers distance learning courses and programs of study to students who wish to participate in the next wave of global economic development.

Just as learning Japanese was an enormous asset for business degree graduates twenty five years ago, learning Chinese communications skills will be an invaluable asset for upcoming MBA students, technology students and even accounting school graduates who want a role in a multinational company.

The other emerging economic power, India, does not have the same communications problem as China because for decades it was a British colony and English was both spoken and taught in a significant segment of the population. That’s not the case with China. Since the industrial age began, English has been the universal language of business. The Chinese may think it’s time for a change.

The university’s focus on continuing education and degree completion has shaped a number of its education offerings, as illustrated in the new academic programs they have announced. Their new certificate in computer forensics can provide an entry level opportunity in law enforcement or be a continuing education option for a professional who is already in the field.

Two additional certificates provide options for current professionals in corrections and law enforcement. Among the new offerings are certificates in juvenile justice and criminal investigation. Professionals who have completed probation officer training and want to move into the juvenile justice field will find this certificate a helpful addition to the resume.

The fourth new certificate program at Grantham is in emergency operations management. This program is tailored to the public administration professional who is interested in emergency management or someone with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in criminal justice that sees a job opportunity in emergency leadership and wants to take advantage of it.

Certificate programs like these are great opportunities for working people with some specialization experience and training who wish to zero in on job opportunities opening up either with the agency for whom they work or with another jurisdiction. There is a particularly acute shortage of juvenile justice teachers and counselors today; many jurisdictions are changing their system models to allow for less stringent educational requirements.

Despite the call for an educational structure to support the sustainability movement, MSU intends to close six of the thirteen departments in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Among them would be the Earth Sciences Department, the school’s focal point for environmental and green degrees. The Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders would also be shut down, a small but significant research and teaching division for audiology and the role of communication in child psychology.

A lot of students in graduate programs were in shock over the potential vaporization of their field of study. As an example there is a graduate program in American Studies slated for elimination, but MSU won’t close down some of these programs immediately because of their obligation to currently enrolled students. The substantial budget savings are two to three years out.

Given all of the debate about the current cost of public universities, where the average annual tuition is over $7,000, the option of online education continues to make more sense. When you add up the cost of living near school and having limited employment options, the debts that emerging graduates are asked to shoulder seem unrealistic.

Additional casualties in MSU’s current plan are the veterinary technologist program, a field that has become a mainstream option for many community college students and now, an option at the four year degree level. There are also six hundred staff jobs that will be eliminated; the future of tenured professors in these departments has yet to be explained.

Collins College in McKinney, Texas has teamed with five Universities to offer a unique learning consortium on one campus. Collins is a school that has traditionally focused on vocational training and associate’s degrees. They will provide the first two years for any degree program offered by the other schools.

Dallas Baptist University, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman’s University, the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the University of North Texas (UNT) plan to offer courses there next term. Each University is offering a selection of classes that is unique to the five school consortium. Business degrees, criminal justice and computer science degrees will be offered by UTD.

Texas Women’s University will be teaching classes for child development degrees, education and nursing degrees. Dallas Baptist University also in intends to provide a master’s in teaching, the basic degree that leads to a teaching credential. The University of North Texas will have graduate programs in education and in engineering.

Texas A&M intends to offer a Spanish major, and degrees in both counseling and psychology. Doctoral degrees will be offered as well as the bachelor’s and master’s programs currently being planned. The Collin Higher Education Center, as the facility will be called, was approved last week by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Classes will be held in a new $30 million building right off one of the Interstate Highways north of Dallas.

There are now graduate programs that focus on supply chain management. For many MBA graduates who have been working for some years, it’s a concept that wasn’t taught as a primary business focus ten or fifteen years ago, and the technology that is now employed was not then in place. Penn State and the University of San Francisco program in supply chain logistics online for executives who don’t have time to get to class.

Supply chain management has also come to the fore in business analysis because of the globalization of many industries. Offshore manufacturing has supplanted a large piece of the U.S. industrial base that flourished in the twentieth century. White collar businesses are also shipping business modules offshore: Indian accounting graduates are now churning out tax return material for U.S. accounting firms. Some engineering firms are sending work to foreign countries for visual workups. Supply chain management is not limited to warehousing products and product components.

Kaplan University offers an MBA degree online with emphasis on supply chain logistics. University of Phoenix has a bachelor’s in business degree with emphasis on “integrated supply chain and operations management.” There are degree options in the field at many levels, although the certificate programs are designed for business graduates.

It’s also important to note that IT degree programs focused on information systems often focus on supply chain management as a primary business function for computer modeling. Graduates from some information technology degrees aren’t far from qualifying as logistics experts for certain types of businesses today.