An Online College Education Overview

There has always been a lot of debate as to whether an online college education is as good as a traditional college education. The answer to this is quite simple; there are good institutions that offer an online college education and there are bad establishments that offer an online college education. So, you need to do your research in the same way when you are looking for the best place to pursue your online college education with as you would an offline course.

Of course you are not going to particularly bother finding out about the location of the colleges that offer an online college education because it really doesn’t matter. However, a lot of the other points that you would consider before attending a college should also be taken into consideration before you enrol with an organisation offering an online college education.

The growth in the numbers of people pursuing an online college education has led to increased competition amongst institutions to attract students. The best way to assess the credibility of a site advertising the best online college education is to ask about the accreditation of its courses. Accreditation means that a governing body for a particular field has endorsed the course and this is extremely important in helping you to decide who to trust with your online college education. If a course is not accredited then you need to find out why.

There may be a number of courses that have not yet received accreditation from an appropriate association or governing body but still offer a good online college education. For example, the establishment may have applied for accreditation but not yet been assessed, in which case you can actually check with the particular body that they are in the process of assessing the application for accreditation. Another reason may be that there is no appropriate body that the course can be accredited to. This is less likely but is, nevertheless, a valid reason and does not indicate that the course offered is not going to be worth taking to advance your online college education.

If, however, you find that the online college education institution has been refused accreditation they are likely to try to tell you that accreditation is not important. This is quite simply untrue. An online college education from a non-accredited institution is not going to be viewed as highly as one from an establishment that is accredited. Choose where you gain your online college education from with care to ensure that you are not wasting your time and money by having an almost worthless qualification.

About the author:
Steve Gargin is the administrator of http://all-college-info.helper-guru.com a website dedicated to updating you on all aspects of college life.

August 1, 2008 · Filed Under Online Education

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3 Alternatives For Investing For Your Child’s Higher Education Costs

With higher education tuition increasing at double digit year over year percentages an effective saving plan for your kid’s education is becoming much more important than it has been before. Most families will discover that their future higher education costs will be much more than they have saved for their kid’s education. This leaves many kids to be faced with obtaining financial aid to pay for a portion of their college education. The goal of this article is to explore the pros and cons of 4 common investment options when saving for college. This article will also explore why some of these options are better than other when considering a portion of your kid’s education may be funded by financial aid.

529 College Savings Plan: – A 529 college savings plan is a fairly new investment option for college saving. It allows just about anyone to save for college. There is a long list of benefits of a 529 college savings plan, but perhaps the most important is that your earnings grow tax free if you use it for qualified education expenses. Additionally, the maximum amount you can contribute to a 529 plan can go as high as several hundred thousand dollars depending on your State. In the event you do not use the funds for college, you can still withdrawal your earnings, but you will have to pay taxes and a 10% penalty. The penalty will be waived if your child receives a scholarship, or your child becomes disable or dies.

529 plans can typically be purchased through a broker or mutual fund company, but a disadvantage is that investment choices can sometimes be limited. Since qualifying for financial aid is based on a calculation that considers your kids assets, another big benefit of a 529 college savings plan is that the money in the plan is classified as a parents assets so less that 6% of the value counts against your kid’s financial aid eligibility.

Uniform Gifts to Minors Act/Uniform Transfers to Minors Act

(UGMA/UTA Custodial Account): – The benefit of a UMGA/UTA Custodial Account is that there is no limit on the contribution and it is easy to set up at most financial institutions. However, the limitations far outweigh the benefits. The first limitation of a UMGA/UTA Custodial Account is that these types of accounts offer very little tax advantage. If your child is under 14, only the first $800 of income is tax free, the next $800 is taxed at your child’s tax rate and after that there is no tax benefit at all. The other big limitation is that the account has to be set up in your child’s name. As a result, if your child needs financial aid all of the assets will be reviewed at a 35% rate. Therefore, this type of account is not advisable for those who may need financial aid.

Coverdell Education Savings Account (CESA): – A Coverdell Education Savings Account is very similar to a 529 college savings plan. The main difference is that with a Coverdell Education Savings Account you can only contribute $2000 per child and to qualify your adjusted gross income must be less than $110,000 if single and less than $220,000 if married filing jointly. The account is classified as a parent’s asset so less that 6% of the value counts against your kid’s financial aid eligibility.

In the end, parents should consider planning for college to be a highly important process. The above 3 alternatives can make this process much more easy and financially sound.

About the author:
Jay Fran is a successful author and publisher at Motorcycle-Financing-Guide.com, a website that offers a wide selection of online motorcycle lenders providing online application facilities for motorbike – motorcycle loans or motorcycle refinancing.

July 31, 2008 · Filed Under Online Education

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Education Needs to Emphasize Soft Skills that Translate into Hard Cold Cash

No Child Left Behind mandates have school systems scrambling to improve teaching, update curriculum, improve teacher quality and analyze data between different populations just to name a few of the many actions each school is facing. Yet, given the recently released Nation’s Report Card, securing significant change is going to require some non-traditional solutions.

Maybe it is time for public education to take a lesson from corporate America who is just now also realizing the impact of soft skills on the bottom line. During the last two centuries, businesses focused on controlling their employees. The work environment was one of control where individual actions required a chain of approval that went vertically up, then vertically down. This type of management style produced excessive waste and failed to capitalize quickly when opportunities were presented.

According to annual Michigan State University’s national college employment survey, today’s knowledge worker must have the following skill sets:

Analytical ability

Communication including verbal and written

Decision Making

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Leadership both individual and group

Personal attributes including work ethics, flexibility, initiative and motivation

Problem Solving

Team Building

Time Management

Yet, looking at most curriculums the focus is on cognitive content specific to the academic disciplines. The presumption is that this knowledge and the supporting skill sets as mentioned above will easily transfer to the workplace. Unfortunately, American business owners know that this is a fallacy because of information that is retrieved from such surveys conducted by Michigan State and other organizations.

For example, American students spend 12 plus years learning how to read and write. Yet if communication is more non-verbal than verbal depending upon how much of Dr. Albert Mehrabrian’s research you believe, then most young people except for those in speech and debate have already been set up to fail because they don’t understand that effective communication extends far beyond reading and writing.

Time management is another great example. Many adults have issues with time management or rather with better self management since you can’t manage a constant that being time. However, the osmosis learning strategy once again rears its inefficient and ineffective head during the kindergarten through high school learning experience. Can you remember as a young student when you actually had a class on effective time management? In today’s classroom with the ever-expanding curriculum, would it not make more sense to actually instruct young people on such a valuable skill instead of leaving it to the osmosis learning strategy?

Developing and nurturing those critical soft skills are what employers know will translate into success for their employees and cold hard cash for them. If public education wants to be truly effective, then the leadership needs to get ahead of the ball and look at the desired end results. Practicing another 33 years of reform where nationally 17 year olds have not gained any reading improvement will absolutely remove us from being the number one world economic force.

About the author:
Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S. speaks nationally to student leadership and works with under performing schools to help them achieve world class status. If improving your school’s performance is a goal, then visit www.processspecialist.comor email info@processspecialist.com or call 219.759.5601.

July 30, 2008 · Filed Under Online Education