Forbes contributor Robert W. Wood gives advice about which forms of higher education qualify for tax breaks. Wood lists the following articles for even more information on how to get a break from the IRS for funding one’s higher education pursuits:

Ten Rules for Deducting Career Education
Who benefits from student loans and educational tax benefits?
Two Tax Credits for Higher Education
IRS Publication 970: Business Deduction for Work Related Education
IRS Tax Topic 513: Educational Expenses
Deductibility of Work Related Educational Expenses
IRS: Tax Incentives for Higher Education

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: taxes)

UC Berkeley has a cool page on their site that allows you to click on any of their given majors and get a write-up of what you can do with said major (i.e., grad school, job). It’s fun to check out everything from underwater basket weaving (poli sci, psych, philosophy, etc.) to bioengineering and see the possible trajectories, especially if your parents are demanding proof that a degree in philosophy will lead to a prosperous future. Good luck with that.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(photo: bioengineering)

If Awesome Multi-Tasker is one of your special skills, you might want to consider adding medical assistant to your list of career options. The job requires the efficient juggling of several duties being performed all day. It doesn’t sound like a sitting down job, which sounds right up the alley of any high-energy types out there.

From the Minneapolis-St. Paul Start Tribune:

“The reason that clinics like medical assistants is that they’re cross-trained,” explained Stacey Wanovich, a faculty member in Anoka Technical College’s medical assistant program (anokatech.edu). “They’re a lot of bang for the buck, and nowadays everyone is trying to cut costs.”

Certified medical assistants mostly work in clinics, administering injections, taking blood pressure readings, drawing blood, performing common laboratory tests, working with medical records, scheduling patients and performing electrocardiograms. They often greet patients and escort them to examination rooms and assist providers with procedures.

The economy is a wee bit tight, and that’s helping to illustrate beautifully how valuable medical assistants are to a budget-conscious medical facility. Jump on board now before the economy recovers!

Further Reading:

Top Ten Recession-Proof Jobs
Career: Medical Billing and Coding
Occupational Outlook for Medical Assistants
Medical Assistant Schools

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(multi-tasking)

The nursing shortage is having an effect. Below are just the recent moments of solution finding.

College of Notre Dame of Maryland School of Nursing will be launching a new 4-year BSN program in Fall 2011 to help with Maryland’s nursing shortage.

West Virginia Wesleyan College is installing a new simulation lab, complete with two $50,000 mannequins for their nursing program. Students can practice dealing with emergency situations with the high-tech mannequin patients. Instructors will observe the scenarios through a two-way mirror (less distracting for the students in theory, but I can tell you I would know I had an audience and it would distract the hell out of me).

Michigan State University’s College of Nursing just received a five-year, $1.4M grant; the money will be put toward expanding their primary care nurse practitioner program. Twenty-six other schools received the same grant for their nursing programs.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Nursing has a new $14M Center for Nursing Science. The Center’s larger capacity and increased faculty will help to implement UNMC’s plan to help alleviate the nursing shortage.

Funding where it’s needed, new learning labs, expanded programs: all to the good. On the off-chance no one was paying attention, nurses are necessary.

Further Reading:

Global Nursing Shortage
High Licensing Exam Pass Rates for NMSU Nursing School Grads
New Nursing Degree Program
Top Ten Recession-Proof Jobs
RN Fast Track for Vocational Nurses

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Martha Hill, the Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, wrote this piece about the nursing shortage. It’s not just a problem in the U.S.–it’s global and the numbers are staggering. Here in the U.S., we’ve only got 1,000 nurses per 100,000 people. In developing African countries like Uganda, there are only 20 nurses per 100,000 people. I don’t see that as a workable situation.

Nursing is a solid career choice these days. If you’re leaning that direction but haven’t made your final decision, Hill’s words could very well convince you:

Nurses are well positioned to be major actors on this global stage. Despite the growing nursing shortage, they remain the largest, most widely distributed and most respected group of health care professionals in the world, with an estimated 12 million nurses working to improve health in 125 countries. They are among the world’s thinkers, decision-makers, innovators and trail blazers who are on the front lines in dealing with national and international health issues. And they are poised to address — and capable of resolving — the world’s most pressing health concerns.

But we need more of them. Through global nursing, we can grow and expand the education and positioning of more nurses. These nurses will develop and lead health care delivery capacity — from systems-building to policy making. They will conduct the research essential to determining and measuring the best practices of nursing in an endless variety of settings and locations. They will partner with others to collaborate across borders and overcome obstacles. They will create global solutions.

Further Reading:

Nursing Shortage to Be Addressed by Grant to School of Nursing
Community Healthcare System’s Innovation Keeps Nurses Satisfied, Retained
High Licensing Exam Pass Rates for NMSU Nursing School Grads
New Nursing Degree Program
Top Ten Recession-Proof Jobs
RN Fast Track for Vocational Nurses

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(nurses, nurse with patient)

For-profit colleges, the schools for which I employ my “If you can’t say anything nice, then please keep your sarcastic mouth shut, woman!“ policy, have angered consumer advocacy groups. The advocacy groups have officially complained to the U.S. Department of Education, and now there will be official rules. That’s right. Official. Rules.

Starting in July 2011, for-profit schools, like DeVry and Phoenix, will be required to tell prospective students statistical facts concerning the school’s track records in two specific areas: Graduation rates and post-graduation job placement rates. This information must be handed over to students prior to the application process.

Additionally—and I particularly adore this part—if the Feds find out a given for-profit college is spewing graduates who can’t pay back their student loans (usually due to the fact that the school is academically shoddy and a certificate or a degree from said institution is meaningless in the real world, thus resulting in a significant portion of the institution’s graduates being less than hireable), the school loses its funding. It is an effort for me to dial down the giddy and only hum (not sing) the super fancy Diploma Mills Suck song. It’s really good. And it rhymes.

Further Reading:

Government To Hold For-Profit Schools Accountable To Pricey Tuition
Career Schools May Lose Loans

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: University of Phoenix)

I don’t care how high your SAT scores are: if you’re planning to attend any institution of higher education that isn’t blatantly obvious in its accreditation (Stanford, Yale, etc.), and you don’t take the so-easy-a-monkey-could-do-it step of checking your intended school’s official accreditation status, then you’re an idiot.

Go here or here and get it done. You’ll spend hours more time texting today than you will ascertaining that your institution will hand you a valid degree after you’ve given said school your blood, sweat, tears, time, and money. Avoid this woman’s mistake.

Accreditation Resources:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)
U.S. Dept. of Edu. Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(graduation joy)

Meat school! That might be it. That may be all I’ve got to say about this NPR story. Meat school. One can attend meat school. It makes sense, of course. How else would one learn to cut meat in the days of supermarkets, Styrofoam, and the possibly extinct neighborhood butcher?

Meat school, however odd it sounds, is actually a good thing. The month-long intensive certificate course at SUNY’s meat lab in Cobleskill, near Albany, teaches everything a student needs to know to run their own small meat-processing business. Graduates can then do good things, like keep well-raised, local, small-farm meats local. The farmers can send their animals to a nearby small slaughterhouse, have their meat prepared and handled by a professional.

Raising meat that has been treated well is a lot of work. In the end it’s worth it, as it’s better for the animals, the planet, and the consumer. It would be a shame, and a bit of a backward path, if the animals were raised so particularly only to be shipped off to a slaughterhouse and a market hundreds of miles away. It’s better to do all that work for yourself and your neighbors.

The phrase “meat school” is still weird. Meat school meat school meat school meat school. I’ve thought it too many times. The phrase has lost all meaning.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

We’re all in agreement that economic recessions bite, yes? Since reading this article, I’ve read nothing but articles and sound bites and commentary that all state basically the same thing: The Baby Boomers are getting old(er). Anyone working in the healthcare industry will have an excellent chance to maintain their jobs, careers, and mortgage payments despite the economic downturn. Let the healthcare-ing of the aging process begin!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Sports psychologists and what they do for athletes used to be something of a deep dark secret in the world of athletics. Increasingly they are being viewed as necessary, secondary only to coaches and practice.

Athletes are viewed as the strongest, sleekest, fastest humans on the planet. They are also supposed to maintain an inhuman level of cool calm through the thousands of intense fight-or-flight moments they encounter in their athletic careers. Coolly composed and bizarrely perfect, they perform their made-for-slow-motion moves with an amazing combination of pure instinct and well-planned execution.

They are also supposed to win. Every time. No slacking, not even at practice. All available asses must be annihilated at every waking moment of every day or the fame/prestige/money/contract goes away. Don’t fuck it up, kid. Don’t get hurt. Never ever, even for a second, can you be second best. You’re either a winner or you’re a loser. Win at all costs or we take it all away.

Stunning: an athlete in mid-motion, all body and a quiet mind. Totally focused on making his/her body move with immaculate perfection. Heartbreaking: an athlete frozen in place, a loud mind and an unmovable body. Drowning under pressure from all sides.

Help them get out of their heads. Like all people perceived to be superheroes, athletes have dark sides. Sports psychologists can pull them up and out.

Further Reading:

Ron Artest Thanks Psychiatrist After Lakers Win
Ron Artest Did Not Shrink From Psychotherapy
Wired for Draft Success: Scouting Players with Computer Models and Psychoanalysis
Mind Games: The Psychology of Champions
Western Washington Univ: MS Sport Psychology
Oregon State University: Graduate Studies in Sport and Exercise Psychology
UT Knoxville: Graduate Program in Sport Psychology
Sports Psychology Information

Posted by Alexa Harrington