The program is open to applicants who have shown some initiative in developing career credentials in business administration. The program is open to applicants who have completed an associate’s degree.

To qualify for the Small Business Leadership Scholarship, applicants must work for a company with fewer than 500 employees, have completed an associate’s degree or at least 60 hours of collegiate coursework with a GPA of at least 3.2, and be admitted to WGU. Scholarships will be awarded on a competitive basis–applicant GPA, letters of recommendation, and essays will be considered.

Scholarships will be awarded to enrolled students in one of five business degree options which include two of the fastest growing job classifications today: Information Technology Management and Human Resources Management.

“Small businesses are vital to the U.S. economy,” said Patrick Partridge, WGU Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment. “To help them compete with larger companies, these businesses need employees who have completed their degrees from a high-quality college or university.” The additional specialization options for scholarship applicants are Marketing Management and Accounting, along with the generalist specialization of Business Management.

“WGU is committed to help these businesses and their employees meet their goals by offering rigorous degree programs that prepare employees for work in the real world, continued Partridge. “This scholarship program will allow more employees of small businesses, which often can’t offer tuition reimbursement, the opportunity to finish their bachelor’s degrees.”

The use of Web 2.0 tools along with the widespread broadband access makes arts education programs possible. The barriers between teaching degrees and distance learning are increasingly being circumnavigated by creative efforts put forth by both faculty and administrators. According to BU, the new degree program will have these advantages:

• An accelerated curriculum and competitive cost
• Access to Boston University’s extensive, world-class resources
• Exposure to esteemed faculty who are talented artists in their own right
• An intimate program approach, focusing on artistic growth and child-centered art education
• An optional, on-campus studio session focused on personal artistic development
• No GRE requirement

The degree in Art Education is matched in the audio sector by an existing Master’s in Music Education program that launched online a couple of years ago. The BU music faculty has developed the tools and the software design to deliver both music theory classes and the mechanics of music education utilizing online education formats. There is a PhD in Music Education available online as well.

In the University’s words: “Now, graduate degrees in music education are available for working professionals worldwide through the Boston University School of Music online education program. The master and doctoral degree in music education provides students with a highly immersive experience via a variety of instructional approaches.
Boston University’s online music education students receive the benefit of a time-honored music education program and a proven curriculum.”

Both of these programs are golden opportunities for teachers who wish to move into fine arts education and need the educational credentials to do so. The bigger challenge may be finding K-12 schools that still have music and fine arts programs.

• Earn your online music degree via part-time study – Complete coursework in about 17-20 months (Master’s students) or 24 months (Doctoral students).
• Learn from renowned music education faculty – Each faculty member is a recognized authority in music education, music theory, or musicology.

Anything less than a bachelor’s degree in the profession has proven to be a career barrier for tens of thousands of nurses; Capella is now making an online degree program available to RNs from any part of the country.

The University announced two additions their extensive offerings in psychology. They are introducing a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology with a specialization in General Psychology. In addition, they are providing a combined BS/MS Psychology Degree option.

This allows eligible BS in Psychology students to begin earning master’s-level credits after completing at least 100 undergraduate credits. These master’s-level credits can be used toward completing the BS in Psychology and may also be applied toward a Capella MS in Psychology degree. The result is a significant cost savings and the opportunity to shave two semesters off the Master’s in Psychology program.

The other changes that are now part of the Capella University catalogue are all in the public service sector. They are offering a Master’s in Public Health (MPH), replacing their Master’s of Science in Public Health. In addition, they have added a Bachelor’s degree in Security Management and Master’s programs in Homeland Security. Their final addition is a Master’s in Public Health degree for professionals who are looking for a distance learning opportunity that will lead to a career in Health Care Administration.

Health Minister Ann Keen said: “Nurses are the largest single profession within the health service, and are critical to the delivery of high quality health care. Degree level education will provide new nurses with the decision-making skills they need to make high-level judgments in the transformed NHS (National Health Service).

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, also welcomed the change. “This is an important and historic development, which the RCN has been in support of for many years,” he said. “”All nurses need to put quality care at the center of what they do, and they also need extensive knowledge, analytical skills and experience to work in a range of settings.”

The shift towards more complex roles for nurses is occurring in England just as it is in the United States. A clinical nursing degree requires focus on a great deal of technology because of the machinery that now populates hospital wards. In addition, health care in Britain is becoming more mobile.

Garth Long, the education advisor at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the country’s regulatory body for nursing, said that in future more nurses will have to learn how to work on their own in the community. “There’s been a tendency to think that nurses should work in residential settings [like hospitals] to consolidate their skills.

“But there will be much more health care in the community in future. Nurses need to be more confident and analytical in their work. More people are seeking a degree course that will provide a future career, so this will help recruitment.”

Public health care clinics are also becoming a prevalent feature in the U.S. medical environment. Depending on what happens with the pending healthcare legislation, it’s possible that health clinics will become a primary source of treatment for millions of people. Health administrators and registered nurses will be in high demand for new public institutions.

According to the New York Times such was not always the case. The Department has recruited for years trying to attract quality police officers and diversify its force. Now that they are drawing record numbers of applicants, the city budget has forced them to limit hiring severely. Currently the force has 34,301 members – about 6,000 fewer than in 2001.

Currently the Department requires applicants to hold a bachelor’s degree or have assembled 60 college credits, with no particular requirement for a course of study. With the influx of educated, out of work applicants for the Police Department the educational demographic for their work force is changing.

In the Police Academy class that graduated in December 2008, 281 of the 1,126 graduates had four-year degrees (about 25 percent). In the class that graduated in July, 113 of 256 officers had four-year degrees (about 44 percent). In the current class studying in the academy, 144 of the 261 potential officers have four-year degrees (about 55 percent).

Over half of their applicants this year hold bachelor degrees. The missing statistic is the percentage of officers currently in the ranks who are engaged in a distance learning program in order to further their management opportunities in the Department, but there is no question about the rising level of education in the ranks at the NYPD.

One of last years enrollees, now working on the beat is Officer Ricardo Montilla, who had been a financial manager for Washington Mutual in Brooklyn. The pay raises had stopped and he was concerned about the security of his job. He gave up a larger salary for the security – and the benefits – associated with an NYPD job.

Henry Chung left a position as financial analyst at Merrill Lynch a year ago and went to the Police Academy. He held a position as vice president there, but finds more security in police work, as well as more variety. “It’s a little different than looking at a computer monitor trying to figure out why there’s a million bucks missing in the firm’s accounts.”

This is a quick take on a survey conducted by Michigan State University’s College Employment Research Institute. The portion of this story that is not news is the ongoing unemployment rate; when this survey came out a year ago national unemployment was 6.8%. Today it’s 10.2%. It’s by poking around in the data for this report that we can find some interesting facts and perhaps some encouraging ones for people who are pondering a career choice or a career change.

One of the statistical surprises that jumps out of the report is the projection that hiring for students with master’s degrees will decline by 11%, “based on a weaker labor market for accounting students.” On the other hand the MBA degree is still golden, with a projection for an 11% increase in 2009. For years the accounting profession has enjoyed enormous growth; apparently that growth has reached a plateau. MBA grads can still get in the door for an interview. In any case, by far the largest segment of college graduates looking for work and the largest number hired will hold bachelor’s degrees.

“Large companies, those with more than 4,000 employees, plan to decrease hiring of all graduates by 3%, and medium-sized companies, those with between 500 and 4,000 employees, expect to lower hiring by 11%.”

Employers with fewer than 500 staff members said they expect hiring at their companies to jump by 15%. These companies will hire 11 new graduates on average in 2010, and 8 of them will be at the bachelor’s level.”

This isn’t the first survey that has suggested the economic recovery will ride on the backs of small businesses and new businesses. What is interesting about this set of interviews is that one third of employers said they would consider graduates regardless of their major. Liberal Arts schools aren’t quite dead yet; employers are coming to value the wider perspective of college graduates with a broad education over the technical skills of a graduate with a narrow outlook on the world in general and business in particular.
Psychology degrees for example might have some value in the upcoming job market as both are good choices for careers in human resources management.

Finally, the report tells us that “the most sought-after graduates are those who majored in environmental science and statistics, for whom job opportunities will climb by 6% and 11%, respectively.” With regard to statisticians, the report’s author stated that they are in demand because they are “quantitatively literate and companies are looking to tap into people that can manipulate and understand numbers.” From another perspective, statisticians are financial analysts or supply chain management professionals without business training. There’s plenty of math in any business degree.

The flash drive contains all of the course work required for completion, except the textbook(s). The contents of the drive includes all lectures, slide presentations, videos, tests, class notes and the software required for making use of all that academic material. You can both review and utilized the material on the memory device as any software that is needed for writing or preparing other documents is provided. Each flash drive has two gigabytes of memory.

Last year the college experimented with these devices and this year, with the aid of a $250,000 grant form U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) they intend to expand the program. They will offer 40 courses over the next two years that will be delivered entirely via flash drives. The drives offer the functionality of the college’s typical 12-week, asynchronous online courses, without the need for a continuous online connection.

Thomas Edison is a state school that is designed for adult and continuing education, providing year-round registration and extensive tools for credit transfers for adults with previous college experience and for every branch of the military. Their typical student is working while attending school, so the flash drive provides the opportunity to use more than one computer for class work – completed assignments and tests can be uploaded whenever an online connection is available.

Police offices pursuing the school’s criminal justice degree, for example, will be able to carry their coursework in a pocket for use during a break. Students who are studying for one of the College’s specializations for business administration will be able to utilize commute time for studying.

Thomas Edison State College currently has 17,000 students with an average age of 35 years. All of the Liberal Arts degrees are available as majors, along with majors for growing job sectors including healthcare management, marketing and accounting.

The project would create an electronic database where people could post documentation about the college credits they have earned from various institutions, their work training and other relevant educational experiences.

The frustration over credit transfer has become a major issue for community college students, whether graduates or dropouts when they seek enrollment in a four year college. Currently, faculty members have a lot to say about the legitimacy of transfer credits. You would think that core courses for accounting degrees or the requirements for an electronics technician program would be fairly standard at the associates’ degree level, but that has not proven to be the case for thousands of returning students.

Colleges and universities then essentially would bid for the opportunity to enroll those students by indicating how many credits they would accept, what additional courses would be needed to complete their degrees and how much it would cost. In order for this to work, much of the additional coursework would require that online degree technology be in place and fully operational.

“This would be a one-stop shop where persons from throughout the 12-state region could deposit their credits,” Larry Isaak, president of the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, says. Institutions then would “see if they have programs that might match in helping those students finish a certificate or associate or bachelor’s degree.”

The Midwestern coalition is composed of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The research is being financed by a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

It’s a great concept, but standardization of the “education modules” required for a university degree is the last thing that many schools, especially public land-grant universities, want to see. “Brand value” is the newest buzzword in the academic lexicon. Distance learning schools are far more responsive to the credit transfer issue than traditional universities, and that applies for outgoing as well as incoming students. That’s one of the important aspects of accreditation, a status that has become mandatory for today’s online academies.

The education grant will offer two options for students seeking a master’s degree in education (MEd): 1) a complete online degree MEd, or 2) a hybrid master’s degree that combines online classes with traditional face-to-face classes.

“This grant will not only infuse the master in education program with technology, it will also provide flexible course delivery for working adult students,” said Dr. Robert LeBlanc, UST School of Education dean. “We will concentrate our efforts on achieving Hispanic graduate student enrollment that mirrors the percentage of Hispanics in Houston and the surrounding area.”

The University of St. Thomas will begin teaching graduate education online courses in the fall of 2010. Scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 will be awarded to Hispanic and low-income students in the second through fifth years of the grant. Graduate student fellowships are proposed to increase enrollment of Hispanics and low-income students in UST graduate programs.

Proposed solutions include increasing the information technology infrastructure for online and hybrid delivery of six masters-level education courses per year in the areas of dual language instruction, special education and education administration. By increasing access to and completion of these programs, the University of St. Thomas will not only boost enrollment but also help to fill the critical shortages of P-12 masters-level educators in these areas.

“UST’s master’s education graduates are leaders who will train other teachers and thus have an influence far beyond a single classroom,” UST President Dr. Robert Ivany said. “The success of this program will impact the educational pipeline for Hispanics at virtually every level.”

Radiologic Technologists

Training in this field is usually through an associate degree program. While radiology is still an important diagnostic tool, the shift in specialization for the field is toward magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computer tomography (CT scans). Most of these positions are in hospitals or in imaging clinics and employers are often looking for someone who can manage both radiologic exams and scanners. This professional category is expected to expand by fifteen percent over the next several years, but people who have trained in the newer technologies will be in demand. The average salary in this field was $52,210 in 2008. There are currently almost 200,000 people employed in the field so the number of new jobs will be substantial.

Cardiovascular Technician

These technologists assist physicians in diagnosing heart and blood vessel ailments. Their day-to-day duties often include scheduling appointments, explaining procedures to patients, and maintaining equipment. Cardiovascular technologists generally specialize in one of three areas: invasive cardiology, echocardiography, or vascular technology. Some cardiovascular technicians learn the trade in a radiologic technology school, and some enroll in two year programs that are dedicated to the cardiovascular specialty.

This profession is projected to grow by over twenty five percent over the next several years along with the number of medical procedures that require a cardiovascular technician in the operating room. The median salary for this position in 2008 was $47,010.

Diagnostic Medical Sonographer

Sonography is the use of sound waves to create images of the human body based on the echo that returns to the sonography machine. The result is an image not unlike an X-ray but obtaining it is much safer because there is no radiation exposure for either patient or sonographer. The job entails positioning the patient for image exposure similar to what X-ray technicians do, making the exposure and handling any processing of the image that may be required.

The technology is new enough that researchers are still experimenting with various types of diagnostic procedures using sound waves as an alternative to radioactive technology. Job openings in the field are expected to increase by nearly twenty percent over the next several years. An associate’s degree in the field is sufficient for an entry level position; some people still refer to the training program as ultrasound technician school. The average annual salary is $61,980.