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)

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

Morbidly funny in a tragic, effed-up sort of way: watching patients in busy, understaffed medical facilities croak so someone can save some money. Don’t even get me started. Let’s move right along to the positive angle: studies have shown (really? They needed studies?) that improving nurse-patient ratios keeps more patients alive. Who could have predicted those results?! My mind has been blown. Dude.

You can read the whole NY Times op-ed here. I feel confident it will blow your mind, too.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Being so deeply smitten with brick-and-mortar university campuses, it’s likely I will forever be a hard sell when it comes to the whole online learning extravaganza. Viewing online education from strictly budgetary and global society angles, then yes, I’m totally on board with the shift toward online education. And I’m even one of those perfect-for-online-coursework nerds who is intense and focused and driven toward knowledge-consumption like a surfer is driven to a perfect set at dawn; it’s cold and dark and I haven’t had enough sleep but I can’t not get it done.

Janine Yancho Swenson wrote an article, How Online Universities Really Stack Up about the state of online higher education today, including her own experience with an online graduate program.

From the article:

Global colleges and universities are competing for the title of “Ivy League virtual university.” But debate rages as to whether online education — also called distance learning — can deliver the same quality of degree as traditional schooling.

In 2007, a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education determined that 12.2 million students were enrolled in 11,200 college-level distance learning programs. Of these students, 77 percent completed their programs either away from campus or away from their instructors. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Enrollment at community colleges is increasing at a startling rate. The two main contributing factors being: (a) college students and their parents are pinched for funds and spending a few years at a community college is several thousand dollars cheaper than heading for a four-year school immediately after high school graduation; and (b) adults who have just lost their jobs due to the recession are using the forced downtime to work on improving their career education and/or training.

It blows mightily that just as everyone is flocking to community college campuses, the recession is sucking a lot of funding from public schools. The schools have neither the physical space nor the money to deal with every potential student who knocks on their doors.

Irony is a tricky word, and no one should go around just slapping the Ironic! label on every bummer situation they see. The fact that community colleges have an embarrassment of riches due to incoming students, while simultaneously losing a painful chunk of their funding so they can’t enroll all of those students isn’t technically ironic. But it does get the It Ubersucks! label.

Further Reading (It’s All Bad News):

Community Colleges See Demand Spike, Funding Slip
Community College Enrollment Increase 4.9%
College Funding Dilemma
Demand Has Increased at State’s Community Colleges
3 O.C. Colleges Cut Classes for 2,000 Students
Community Colleges May See Increase In Enrollment
Community College Enrollment Booms At University of Hawaii
Community Colleges See Spike In Fall Enrollment
COCC Closes Fall Admissions
New Data Confirm Increased Enrollments
The Community College Enrollment Boom
Community College Surge

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Ah, the economy. I’ve always assumed that most humans of legal money-earning age have three thought-topics on more or less constant rotation through their minds: food, sex, and money. Those are all directly related to survival, so it makes sense that we’d be hyper-focused on them. And yet, when the media and the government types yell “The economy is tanking!” in a crowded theatre (or country, as it were), everyone comes unglued. All wage-earning adults are suddenly on a mission to make themselves Super-Duper Employable. Were they not toiling to that end before?

There’s nothing wrong with a strong work ethic and a good solid employability mindset. I’m all for being a productive citizen. It’s just odd to watch everyone suddenly scramble around in panicked circles and then run off in an Extra Hireable direction. What was everyone doing before, lolling around eating bonbons and archiving earwax chunks?

Sometimes it’s just bad luck: anyone who was kicking ass in the real estate business a few years ago is having a tough time these days. A lot of adults who had been, until recently, firmly ensconced in their careers are finding themselves less than necessary. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and praying for a miracle, a lot of adults are using the forced downtime to their advantage and are heading back to school.

For anyone who’s concerned that they haven’t been productive enough to survive in the current and near-future economy, here’s some further reading and resources:

Career Schools List
Weighing a New Industry For a New Job Outlook
More Students Spring From Tough Times
The Way To Go When the Economy Slows…Trade Schools
Certificate Programs Can Lead To Good Jobs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image: Emil Rothengatter

In today’s Daily, the University of Washington’s campus paper, there’s an opinion piece that makes some persuasive arguments for increasing the online-ness of UW’s two online learning options, the College of Engineering’s EDGE Program and UW Online Learning. While the EDGE Program—which was kicking online education ass before online education was cool (since 1984, thank you very much)—has a solid list of online graduate degrees in engineering, UW Online Learning offers a few Master’s degrees and certificate programs, and nowhere at UW is an online undergraduate degree to be found.

The UW is ahead of the curve in the area of digital education. The College of Engineering’s EDGE program offers more than 50 online courses and 10 degrees, and numerous courses and certificates can be obtained via UW Online Learning.

However, UW distance-learning programs fall short of a comprehensive approach to online education. There are numerous core classes missing from the list of course offerings, and only graduate degrees are available online. There are rules limiting the number of online courses that can apply to an undergraduate degree and the amount of courses that can be taken during a quarter.

While the Daily’s columnist, Mr. Noon, is arguing for an increase in online learning options at UW, he’s fair in pointing out that not every course is conducive to an online platform. I, myself, have never been able to figure out how some of the messier science-lab courses could be done away from campus. I’m as adventurous and curious as the next science-geek gal, but I’d prefer it if cadavers and chemistry experiments stayed on campus.

There’s also the question of the technological upgrade UW would have to invest in should online education be expanded. College students tend to be among the more spoiled and savvy tech-users, and they won’t stick around for long at a school that has less than badass technology. And have we forgotten that this is the age of instantaneous information? One whiff of a school’s sub-par technology, and it will be shouted virally from the Twitter rooftops. Keep up, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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