This article is from Careerbuilder, through a business partnership with CNN.com. 

“Today’s economy has many people returning to school in lieu of working full time, while others have chosen to enhance their education to make themselves more marketable to employers.

“In a CareerBuilder survey of more than 8,000 workers, 21 percent said they were going to school to make themselves more viable for employers. Of that group surveyed in March, 7 percent go to school full time, 3 percent attend part time and 5 percent take classes online.

“Have you toyed with the idea of going back to school, but didn’t think you could? Here are 10 stories from workers who thought they didn’t have time for school and how they made it work.”

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This article is from the Webster University Journal.

“Online education has its benefits, such as not having to worry about parking or wearing pants.

“But a recent report commissioned by the Department of Education concluded that online education may also be better than traditional classroom education.

“‘On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face education,’ states the 93-page report by SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research company.”

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This article is from WDBO Local News. 

“Seminole Community College taught its first online class in 1996 — to four students.  Today, over 4,000 are logging on to their lessons.

“SCC officials say enrollment since last fall has increased by 27%, spurred no doubt by the desire of some people to improve their job prospects in this economy.

“The phenomenal growth in SCC’s online classes is a direct reaction to student demand, Distance Learning Services Manager Wilma Hodges says.

“‘It’s easier for students to work them into their schedules.’”

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This article is from the Washington Post.

“Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which ‘going to college’ means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.

“The real force for change is the market: Online classes are just cheaper to produce. Community colleges and for-profit education entrepreneurs are already experimenting with dorm-free, commute-free options. Distance-learning technology will keep improving. Innovators have yet to tap the potential of the aggregator to change the way students earn a degree, making the education business today look like the news biz circa 1999. And as major universities offer some core courses online, we’ll see a cultural shift toward acceptance of what is still, in some circles, a ‘University of Phoenix’ joke.”

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This article is from The New York Times. 

“When Wendy Scarbrough lost her job after 10 years as a television news producer for NBC, she decided it would be smart to pursue a new career and to improve her skills.

“At a job fair, she learned about a course that she was sure would make her more marketable to employers. Within weeks, she was enrolled in that course, in project management, at Northern Virginia Community College, alongside 15 other laid-off workers.

“It felt a little odd enrolling at a community college, Ms. Scarbrough said, because she already had a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University. Still, she said, not only were the instructors knowledgeable, but also the course involved visits from prospective employers, and she was able to polish her skills in budgeting, personnel management and other areas.

“‘I learned a lot,’ she said. ‘It also helped me psychologically after looking for a job for a year and feeling discouraged. It gave me a new direction and has certainly been helpful for networking.’”

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This article is from The New York Times.

“A recent 93-page report on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, has a starchy academic title, but a most intriguing conclusion: ‘On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.’

“The report examined the comparative research on online versus traditional classroom teaching from 1996 to 2008. Some of it was in K-12 settings, but most of the comparative studies were done in colleges and adult continuing-education programs of various kinds, from medical training to the military.”

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This article is from the Daily Globe.

“Faced with ever-expanding technology, many of today’s grandparents and greatgrandparents are learning to do things a little bit differently than they may have in the past.

“Instead of writing out checks, they are using cash cards. Instead of referencing the card catalog at the library, they are looking information up on computers. And instead of writing letters, they are sending e-mails and keeping tabs on family through social networking sites such as Facebook.

“For some people over the age of 55, computers have even become an avenue for them to take collegelevel coursework.

“District 518 Community Education has made it possible not just for seniors, but people of any age, to expand their knowledge through online educational courses. The classes require computer access, but allow participants the opportunity to learn on their own schedule.”

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This article is from Time.

“Community colleges are deeply unsexy. This fact tends to make even the biggest advocates of these two-year schools — which educate nearly half of U.S. undergraduates — sound defensive, almost a tad whiny. ‘We don’t have the bands. We don’t have the football teams that everybody wants to boost,’ says Stephen Kinslow, president of Texas’ Austin Community College (ACC). ‘Most people don’t understand community colleges very well at all.’ And by ‘most people,’ he means the graduates of fancy four-year schools who get elected and set budget priorities.

“Many politicians and their well-heeled constituents may be under the impression that a community college — as described in a promo for NBC’s upcoming comedy Community — is a ‘loser college for remedial teens, 20-something dropouts, middle-aged divorcées and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity.’ But there’s at least one Ivy Leaguer who is trying to help Americans get past the stereotypes and start thinking about community college not as a dumping ground but as one of the best tools the U.S. has to dig itself out of the current economic hole. His name: Barack Obama.”

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This article is from Carolina Coast Online.

“As computers evolved from occupying a huge air-conditioned room to being so small they fit into the palm of your hand, how you use them has too.

“For example, communication with friends and family now zips through e-mail and gets posted on social networking sites, movies are rented online to arrive two days later in your mailbox, and grocery, gift and bargain shopping all happens on auction and discount Web sites — also to be delivered directly to your home, saving you time and gas money.

“But one of the largest growing fields for online usage is education. More than 3.9 million college students took at least one online course in the fall of 2007 — the most recent year with data available — according to an annual study done for the Sloan Consortium.”

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This article is from Center for American Progress. 

“President Barack Obama has proposed an ambitious agenda to reform and improve U.S. education at all levels, including by harnessing the power of technology to deliver education in new and innovative ways. He is backing up these proposals with plans for a significant increase in the federal investment in education geared to reclaiming the world’s number one ranking in college completion by 2020, producing the skilled and educated workers our economy needs to boost productivity and wages, and ensuring that the opportunity to learn and gain new skills is widely available, including to dislocated workers struggling to find well-paying jobs. Few long-term policy initiatives are as important as this for our nation’s broad-based economic growth and prosperity in the 21st century.

“Key members of Congress get it. This past week the House Committee on Education and Labor responded to the president’s call for new investments in college access and completion and in the nation’s community colleges by passing the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, which authorizes and funds the major parts of this initiative. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is working to develop a counterpart bill as part of the 2010 budget reconciliation process, and we applaud the members of theses committees for pushing ahead with President Obama’s key educational objectives in this arena.”

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