EarnMyDegree.com has just launched a new section of their website featuring, “Made In USA - Jobs That Will Never Be Outsourced.” We really like this new section because it mentions seven current career tracks that are offered online by Gatlin Education Services.
This post comes from Forbes.com. Sweden may be better known for cars and couches than computers, but when it comes to access to broadband and cellular networks, it’s tops. The Scandinavian country leads the world in “technological readiness,” according to the World Economic Forum. To rank high on the list–one of 12 included in the WEF’s annual Global Competitiveness Report–countries need to have tech-friendly government policies as well as high tech usage. In the ranking, the WEF focuses on information and communication technologies (ICT), such as cellular connectivity and broadband Internet, noting that “ICT has evolved into the ‘general-purpose technology’ of our time … responsible for a large part of productivity increases.” Click here to read the rest of this article.
This post comes from Forbes.com and it contains workplace trends predictions by Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc. a job placement consultancy firm. The article predicts things like the end of business travel, a four day work week, and good-bye to corporate headquarters. To read this article click here.
This article comes from The Denver Post.
“When a student enrolling in the online school at Colorado State University asked administrators to waive the registration fee so he could buy a tank of gas, the school’s CEO had an idea.
The 38-day-old CSU Global Campus online school has 40 enrollees on track to start in the fall. During June, CEO Rich Schweigert waived the $50 registration fee for everyone.
“The folks enrolling in the online university are trying to better themselves,” Schweigert said. “Money is tight, let’s make it easier.”
As the price of gasoline swells by the day, online education appears to be one industry that has grown sweeter for those hoping to get a degree.
The wait list at the University of Colorado Denver’s online program is up 90 percent from last fall. The number of students enrolled in CSU’s distance-learning courses is up by 300 students from last year.
At Regis University, another 300 students are enrolled in online programs compared to last year. And in the spring, the University of Phoenix saw an 8 percent increase in its online enrollment.
“People are a lot more thoughtful when it comes to getting in the car and driving even 15 or 20 miles,” said Tammy Fernandez, vice president of the University of Phoenix in Denver. “It’s on everybody’s mind.”
The rush to enroll in online schools — which are more expensive than going to a building — came far quicker than administrators could handle.
At UC Denver, for example, department chairs will likely look for professors willing to take on teaching more online classes to meet the demand, said Bob Tolsma, an assistant vice chancellor at the school.
Nationally, online enrollment has jumped roughly 20 percent each year from 2002 to 2006, said Jeff Seaman, who works with the Sloan Consortium, which researches online education and quality.
There are about 3.4 million students nationally taking online college courses.
Not having to get in a car to get a master’s degree in city leadership was an added perk for 30-year-old Jeremy Elliott.
The Loveland city government employee spends about $30 per week on gas, and said one of the reasons he opted for online education is that it’s more affordable without the commute to Fort Collins, where he is enrolled at CSU.
“The online thing was a convenience, and it kept me in school,” Elliott said.”
This post comes from The Chronicle.
The proposed merger of the nation’s two satellite-radio networks, XM and Sirius, got a major boost this week from the federal government after the companies agreed to set aside 12 channels for noncommercial programming. College officials were quick to express interest in using the proposed channels.
The boost came from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who recommended the merger after XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio agreed to the channel set-aside, as well as some other concessions.
Lawrence M. Miller, a telecommunications lawyer at Schwartz, Woods & Miller who is tracking the issue, said there was precedent for broadcast companies promising to offer educational content in exchange for government approval. “This is comparable to what the commission requires in television,” he said.
“It would certainly be open to higher education,” he added, noting that if the merger goes through and the new radio channels materialize, “you would expect there to be some higher-education presence.” Click here to read the rest of this article.
This post comes from MarketWatch.
Unemployment lines were a little shorter last week as applications for first-time jobless benefits fell by 5,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
But claims were still in the range suggesting weakness in the nation’s labor market, despite dropping to a two-week low of 381,000 for the week ended June 14.
The drop in initial claims was tempered by a two-month high in the four-week average of initial claims. That number ticked upwards, to 375,250, last week.
Over the past eight weeks, the average of new claims has risen to 374,000 — a new cycle high which indicates recession, noted Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.
“This is recession territory, at least if the experience of 2001 is a guide,” he wrote in an email. In early March 2001 — the first month of the recession — the eight-week average of claims was just 362,000. It rose rapidly thereafter.
“The pace of layoffs is now quite high, with no prospect of any reversal or even a leveling-off in the near future,” wrote Shepherdson.
The four-week average takes into account one-time events like strikes or weather-related disruptions, and it’s considered a measure of underlying trends.
Meanwhile, there was some relief to be found in the number of continuing jobless claims in the latest week.
The number of persons continuing to collect unemployment benefits fell back to 3.06 million in the week ended June 7, a drop of 76,000. That’s the lowest level since April, but it’s still far above the year-ago number of 2.52 million.
The four-week average of continuing claims also fell, dropping by 2,000 to stand at 3.1 million. It’s the lowest since May 24.
Continuing jobless claims have stayed stubbornly above the 3 million mark for about two months, an indication that workers keep having trouble finding new jobs as the labor market cools.
The insured unemployment rate, representing the proportion of those out of work covered by unemployment insurance who are receiving benefits, fell to 2.3% from 2.4%, the Labor Department’s data showed.
This post comes from Information Week.
Young people with disabilities are expected to get a helping hand with new online IT services thanks to national grant monies garnered by the Computing Technology Industry Association Educational Foundation.CompTIA announced this week that a $25,000 grant from the NEC Foundation of America would pay for the first phase of the program, which will provide training, mentoring, certification, and job placement assistance. It aims to create employment opportunities so students with disabilities can enter the nation’s high-tech workforce.
CompTIA hopes to offer the services to 65 high school students within a year. The program is part of Creating Futures, a CompTIA Educational Foundation initiative to provide career development opportunities for people who have been underrepresented in IT fields.
Employers help identify hiring needs so Creating Futures can tailor education and training programs to give potential hires the technical, business, and communications skills they need.
“Creating Futures is important not just for high-tech companies, but for companies across all sectors of our economy,” John Venator, president and CEO of CompTIA, said in a statement. “Virtually every industry relies on technology to conduct business. They also rely on a skilled IT workforce to manage their technology infrastructure. Through this training effort, we are reaching out to new groups of talented individuals who are ready, willing, and able to contribute to the growth and success of our industry.”
The NEC Foundation of America started in 1991 with a $10 million endowment. It makes grants to nonprofit organizations with national reach and impact in assistive technology for people with disabilities. Its philosophy holds that technology can advance society and enable people to realize their full potential.
This article comes from The New Zealand Herald and was written by Anthony Doesburg.
For a growing number of students, going off to class doesn’t mean sitting down at a desk in a schoolroom or lecture theatre. It takes place in the virtual world of Second Life, where school’s in at an hour that suits you - and you can fly to class.
Second Life is the five-year-old online creation of San Francisco company Linden Lab and, at last count, was inhabited by more than 13 million residents.
Education is just a small part of what goes on there. Essentially, whatever preoccupies people in the real world is also being engaged in by the avatars, or virtual beings, in Second Life.
Especially sex. By one account, about a third of the economic activity - yes, there is a Second Life economy, with Linden dollars as the currency - is to do with sex.
But that hasn’t stopped Ohio University from establishing a virtual campus within Second Life. According to a promotional video clip on YouTube, students at the virtual university “thrive in an environment unbridled by space, time or even the laws of physics … where the classroom has not just been recreated, but reinvented”. Click here to read the rest of this article.
This article comes from The Chronicle for Higher Education.
The 230 miles of Texas highway linking the plains of Lamesa to the hill country of Junction is familiar terrain to local college students accustomed to traveling long distances to class.
But with gasoline prices averaging $4 per gallon, students in the community-college district that stretches between those two west Texas towns, like their peers in other rural communities, are feeling the sting.
Aware of the increasing burden of fuel costs on their students, the administrators of rural community colleges are looking for ways to help students stay on track with their studies even as their monthly transportation bills rise, in some cases approaching the several-hundred-dollar range.
“The price of fuel has always been a factor” for rural students, says Cheryl T. Sparks, president of Howard College, in Big Spring, part of the 13,000-square-mile Howard County Junior College District. “It’s just as it increases, it becomes even more of a factor.”
In large swaths of rural America, where a journey of 50 to 100 miles to reach a destination is the norm, community-college officials say students are being forced to make tough decisions about what they can afford. Some are dropping out. Others are turning to online classes for relief from gas pumps. Click here to read the rest of this article.
This post comes from the Salt Lake Tribune.
It’s quitting time on the kind of beautiful day that tempts office workers to skip out early, but not a cubicle is empty. Pizza is served on paper plates, but work rather than food is the attraction. Periodically someone jumps up to ring a big copper bell. All eyes turn to a whiteboard where the bell-ringer scribbles the latest win - a job lead, a referral, an interview. Then it’s back to the phones.
This weekly ritual began in February at recruiting firm Instant Technology LLC’s downtown office in Chicago after January sales dipped 30 percent because of sluggish hiring. Managers organized the Tuesday Night Supper Club - part contest, part morale-booster and drum-up-more-business effort.
”We’re all in it together,” said Vice President Elizabeth DeFazio. A sputtering economy, which saw the nation’s unemployment rate take its biggest monthly rise in May since 1986, is testing employers’ ability to enlist workers’ goodwill at a time when it’s needed more than ever. At plants that no longer hum with overtime, managers search for ways to keep their best employees from leaving despite offering them fewer hours. At stores where traffic is down, supervisors mete out fewer shifts to salespeople, while asking them to redouble their efforts to please customers. In offices, leaner staffing means extra work for those who remain. Click here to read the rest of this article.