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)

I’ve always suspected that the morally screwed essay-writing-service industry was real, but couldn’t quite let myself believe that such moral larceny could occur in academia. I’m sure everyone else has always understood its existence to be true, but I’ve always worked hard to maintain the lie (to my obsessive, rule-following little self) that essay-writing services were evil myths, like Munchkins, that thing under my bed that won’t stop drooling, and that freaky tooth fairy bitch–stealing children’s teeth? Not unlike collecting the ears of your enemies.

It turns out you really can pay someone to do your writing for you in high school, college, and grad school. You just need a fistful of cash and a moral compass that’s lacking a true north. Outsourcing your brilliance is dumb. But apparently if you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed and your written communication looks like this:

“You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”

This:

“did u get the sorce I send
please where you are now?
Desprit to pass spring projict”

Or this:

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now”

Then maybe paying a professional is the way to go.

Oddly, I have a huge amount of respect for pseudonymity guy, Ed Dante, who wrote about his career writing strangers’ papers for money in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I somehow find only his clients to be reprehensible. He’s part of the machine, sure, but I’m going with the argument that if there weren’t a market for his services, he wouldn’t be writing other people’s essays. Please add to that the fact that Dante makes more money writing emergency thesis chapters for sub-par grad students than he could at almost any above-board writing gig.

Here’s what he says about the money:

I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work.

The endless admissions essays:

I have become a master of the admissions essay. I have written these for undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs, some at elite universities. I can explain exactly why you’re Brown material, why the Wharton M.B.A. program would benefit from your presence, how certain life experiences have prepared you for the rigors of your chosen course of study. I do not mean to be insensitive, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I’ve written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies.

Seminary students:

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow.

And retirement:

…there is little discussion about custom papers and how they differ from more-detectable forms of plagiarism, or about why students cheat in the first place. It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation. As for me, I’m planning to retire. I’m tired of helping you make your students look competent.

You should read Dante’s whole confession. He’s damn smart, and makes such beautiful points about higher education and the levels of academia that are shockingly (maybe only to me) rife with cheating. It’s an unpleasantly shite-ful situation, but Dante’s article made me feel all warm inside. I do love honesty, but I think perhaps it was seeing the dirty unmentionables behind the curtain that did it for me in the end.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(moral compass)

Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in America is Ryan’s account of the research he did comparing and contrasting two high schools in Richmond Virginia. There is an unfair, and–one would hopefully argue–un-American disparity in the educational opportunities for each school’s students. Mr. Ryan not only lays the situation out for us all to fully comprehend, he also offers solutions to a problem we are smart enough to have solved by now.

Sadly, our severe lameness as Americans–who continually spout off about freedom and equality and the right to a decent education (we drive the proverbial big truck), in order to compensate for the fact that our public schools are lacking (in order to compensate for our proverbial, unfortunately sized penises)–has mightily contributed to the less-than-illuminated public education system in this great nation of ours. I love America and that damn National Anthem makes me cry every time, but that doesn’t mean I have to love the way politicians allocate funds.

Martha Minow’s In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark, covers what has and what hasn’t been achieved since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka[italics] brought the idea of racial equality in public schools to the forefront. How equal are American public schools? Is it possible they’re more segregated now than they were before Brown?

Minow, in case you’ve not heard every Obama speech, was the professor Obama spoke of in a 2008 campaign speech, “When I was at Harvard Law School I had a teacher who changed my life—Martha Minow.” She’s Dean of the Harvard Law School, but more impressive (to me) is the fact that she’s considered an expert in human rights and advocacy for persons with disabilities, women, children, and for members of racial and religious minorities. All of which is to say that she uses her powers for good and I am always appreciative of that quality in a fellow human.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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)

Want to be a lawyer but you have a conscience? Do you find yourself sympathizing more with the planet than with your fellow humans? Angry with mankind for hosing the planet utterly? Do I have the career for you! Environmental law is the perfect way for smarty-pants lawyer types who want to use their fighting powers for good to stick it to the man while saving the world.

The law firm Shems Dunkiel Raubvogel & Saunders PLLC has two environmental law blogs to peruse: The Renewable Energy Law Blog and the Vermont Environmental and Land Use Law Blog.

I would also recommend looking into the law schools below as they all offer environmental law in one form or another. Some schools offer only graduate degrees in environmental law, while others offer environmental law coursework as part of another law degree. Georgetown University, for example, includes environmental law as part of its Masters of Studies in Law (MSL) Degree for Journalists.

Environmental Law Programs:

Lewis and Clark Law School
Vermont Law School
Pace Law School
The University of Maryland School of Law
NYU Law
Berkeley Law
Stanford Law School
Georgetown Law
GW Law
Yale Law School
Columbia Law School
Colorado Law
Tulane Law School
UT Austin School of Law
University of Oregon School of Law
University of Washington School of Law
Harvard Law School
Duke Univ. Environmental Law and Policy Clinic
Boston College Law
University of Utah College of Law
Florida State Univ. College of Law

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Studying for the California Bar exam? Have an extra $1000 burning a hole in your freshly-law-degreed butt-pocket? Then by all means check out BarMax: California Edition. One of the only iPhone apps to cost that much money, its creator, Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ’06 Harvard grad, says it has everything one might require to study up for the bar.

Ghaffary has an MBA and as of December 2009, is a member of the California Bar; so he’s got that whole I’m business savvy and I studied for and conquered the bar exam thing going for him.

As with all things iPhone, it’s portable and weighs a lot less than the fifty pounds of books you’d be buying and dragging around town if you were to go the dead-tree route. So handy! Also, if you contact BarMax, they’ll send you a free trial version so you can evaluate the materials before forking over a decade’s worth of ramen money.

BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.

TechCrunch reports that Mike Ghaffary, a former law student and current director of business development at TrialPay, envisioned BarMax as an alternative to BarBri’s pricey classes and digital offerings. Ghaffary partnered with successful app developers in Los Angeles, and enlisted some fellow Harvard Law alumni to guide development. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Big dreams and no money. Such is the situation colleges, universities, and the students who attend them are struggling with. The schools want to teach students to think outside the box, to be able to look ahead and improve the future of humanity. The students want to learn how to think wider and deeper and bigger and more. The President wants the schools to kick some researching butt and find ways to get us out of this mess (pick one).

Too bad there’s a global economic crisis, and the recession our country is experiencing is sucking the life and the funding out of everyone’s Big Dreams balloons. Now the schools and the students are walking around carrying sad little limp and deflated aspirations, jettisoning the deeper-thinking, big-picture courses and degrees for the more utilitarian/practical ones.

I won’t bore you with numbers, but there are an astonishing number of folks doing pre-professional undergrad work, and a ridiculous number of business degree holders in this country. I think we’re good on the ‘future of money’ front; someone learn something that’s helpful in a different way. Think outside the box, people. Don’t give up on the idea that knowing how to think in non-linear directions is conducive to the survival of mankind.

Read this piece in the NY Times:

The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. Even as universities, both public and private, face unanticipated financial constraints, the president has called on them to assist in solving problems from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery.

American universities have long struggled to meet almost irreconcilable demands: to be practical as well as transcendent; to assist immediate national needs and to pursue knowledge for its own sake; to both add value and question values. And in the past decade and a half, such conflicting and unbounded expectations have yielded a wave of criticism on issues ranging from the cost of college to universities’ intellectual quality to their supposed decline into unthinking political correctness. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

I wrote previously about Steve Bogucki (Educated Soldier) and his Law School vs. Special Forces quandary. He recently wrote a powerful post about his decision to quit (his term) Special Forces training and to continue with his higher education goals. He explains his thoughts on the topic and his reasoning, all of which are interesting and make sense.

It’s no small thing to decide to just drop such a major chunk of your life. I quit school three years into my second degree because I finally saw what my intense academic focus was doing to my family, my daughter especially. Like Steve, the actual realization and the subsequent decision-making moment went fairly quickly. But even though I could see how necessary it was for me to quit, it still sucked. It’s hard to just stop.

It’s dangerously easy to stay on a path, whether you’re happy to be there or not, simply because you’ve wanted it for so long and have invested so much time, effort and emotional energy into that goal. Walking away from something tremendous is usually more difficult than staying the course. I’m very impressed with Mr. Bogucki’s decision and the ballsiness it took for him to quit. And he sounds happy. Effing busy with school, but happy.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

photo: Jeff Sullivan

Steve Bogucki at Educated Soldier has a post up in which he works through his Special Forces vs. law school quandary. It’s very interesting, as is his blog. I think he and I are probably at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect him as a dedicated soldier and as an intelligent student. Also, his Mom pointed me in the direction of his blog, and he refers to her as his ‘confidante’, so he can’t be all bad.

Posted by Alexa Harrington