It’s a VERY sad fact that the cost of college textbooks has risen at 20 times the inflation rate in the last 20 years (according to the US Government) and I’m sorry, but this is just CRAZY. The poor economic situation brings this to light even more so, and finally there appears to be some good news - the education community is finally starting to “get it” - the time digitial textbooks is NOW.

Yes, there are still opposing camps on this subject. But the biggest opposition I’ve read comes from college faculty that fear they will be left out of the selection process, and worst case, state governments will eventually “mandate” certain books for certain classes. But since the cost of textbooks are such a huge burden on students today, some local governments have already started to write laws to make them more affordable.

These opposing views can’t stop the tide. Here’s some examples of what’s happening today in the move towards digital books:

CourseSmart is a company that has several thousand books in digitial format, costing half the price of printed versions. They have served over 6,500 students (and saved a few trees in the process, too )

Amazon is taking part in a study with seven universities to test and evaluate the success of digitial textbooks

Orange Grove Texts Plus is a partnership between the University Press of Florida (the Florida university system’s nonprofit publishing arm), Integrated Book Technology (a Virginia publisher) and The Orange Grove (Florida’s digital database of K-20 teaching material). This program offers students digital versions of over 140 textbooks and scholarly monographs for free, and bound printed versions for $30 to $50. Eventually, Orange Grove Texts Plus plans to stock more than 1600 titles.

California is also starting an initative similar to that in Florida. However this appears to be targeted to High School textbooks (probably because the state forks out the money for those.)

So, maybe in the very near future we won’t have to add the cost of textbooks to the other stressful activities along the college road.  Let’s hope it’s sooner than later.

If you’ve been searching for an online degree program, you must have run into the University of Phoenix. If not, then you’ve really not been looking that hard.

What you may not know, is that in Florida UoP has several “Learning Centers” throughout the state. Now they have announced that they are expanding their hours to provide daytime classes as well.

This is important since until now they have only offered evening hours and weekend courses.

For now, only four learning centers will have the daytime class options (9am to 1pm). These are located:

The Miramar Learning Center, located at 11410 NW 20th Street in Miramar
The Cypress Creek Learning Center located at 550 W. Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale
The Westshore Learning Center located at 4805 Independence Parkway in Tampa
The South Orlando Learning Center located at 8325 South Park Circle, Suite 100

For more information about these extended hours, you can check out either one of these four websites:

phoenix.edu/centralflorida
phoenix.edu/northflorida
phoenix.edu/southflorida
phoenix.edu/westflorida

Being a fan of the state (since one of my daughters live there) I thought I’d pass this along to all my online degree dorm room buddies from the Gator state.

In short, if you are a working adults in Texas and you did not get the chance to finish your BA degree, now you’ll have the chance to do it on a fast track basis.

This is possible because three University of Texas System institutions are collaborating on what they call a “Bachelor’s Accelerated Completion” program. If you have 60 or more semester credit hours you can take the remainder of your required courses all online.

As I understand it, these classes will be offered to students throughout the state. At the beginning, the only accelerated track degree programs will be in humanities, university studies and multidisciplinary studies. However, other degree plans will be added over time.

If you have more than 60, then the UT TeleCampus staff will work with you to identify online courses or traditional classroom courses at universities or community colleges to help complete your degree.

You of course have to qualify for admission to the UT System, but the good news is that there is some financial aid is available as well.

This all is due to the The Lumina Foundation’s grant that they gave to UT TeleCampus (about $500,000) to help launch the program.

Here is the link to the site for more information:

Just wanted to wish all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Peace, Love, and Joy - let’s try to keep Christmas all year long!

(For those who do not celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a great Holiday Season, and a great 2010)

The press release was created for Degree.com, and it states:

“Not only is the tuition a trifle detail, the classes you’ll need to take are fewer than those of traditional universities, and therefore you’re paying less money for the credits you would no doubt need to graduate. The average amount of credits one needs to graduate from a four year college is between 100 and 120. Getting your degree online may trouble you for about a year –that’s about 20 to 30 credits”

I had just one thought when I read this…

…are you KIDDING me?

The last time I checked, legit degrees online meant having to earn the same number of credits, or nearly so, as a traditional school.

So I when over to the degree.com website. Headline there was “Top 25 Online Degree Programs”. But as I read through the site, I couldn’t find that list of degree programs anywhere. There were a few of the general fields listed, along with links to some Universities like Kaplan and Phoenix that offer online degrees.

Oh, and there was also the note that you can get your degree in less that two years…

…so what happened to the “get your degree in one year” comment on the press release?

Now I haven’t tried to contact them or the universities that are probably paying for adversiting on their site, but my guess is that you’ll be looking at a little more time than one (or even two) years to get a “4 year degree”.

I know that degree.com is a very popular site, but I think they should be tring to make getting a degree sound so easy, or affordable. It’s a little misleading if you ask me.

Is an online degree as good as traditional degrees?

Well, it seems that the US Government set out to answer that question (with your tax dollars)

The United States Department of Education recently announced the results of at 12 year study and they concluded that online degrees (which they defined as a result of online classes and examinations) are “somewhat more effective” than the traditional degrees.

More effective? Yep, that was the conclusion. Most of which was based on the fact that online classes are convenient, interactive, and interesting (due to the audio, video etc materials used in teaching), not to mention the fact that having direct access to the professor or lecturer normally makes for a more effective experience that traditional face-to-face classes.

Now, i have to admit that if you’re a student in a traditional college environment, you can certainly make your classes more interesting by being more particpative, and you can always get access to the professor. But evidently an online environment provides those elements without you having to do much in return, which certainly makes it easier.

But no matter which way, the same old adage applies: you’ll get out of it what you put into it…

But hey, at least it’s “official” - an online degree is just a good of an experience (if not better) than a traditional one.

All night cramming parties excluded, of course

There are a lot of different ways to earn a degree online, but one of the easiest is with college credit you already have.

This could mean that you’ve taken college level classes in the past, and can now use them towards an online degree. But another, even better way is the CLEP.

What is the CLEP? CLEP stands for College Level Examination Program and utilizing the CLEP program can help you get your degree online faster while saving you a ton of money.

In fact, I’d day that taking the exams offered by CLEP actually benefit you in two ways:
1) When you study for these exams (yes, you HAVE to study!) this will help you improve your study skills and give you the confidence and self-discipline, both of which are skills that you will need to complete your online degree. 
2) The credit you earn through CLEP helps you to get the mandatory general education courses out of the way, and so you would then have the possibility of taking more specific and interesting classes that could be more targeted to your degree program or personal interest.

CLEP, is must less expensive than taking first and/or second year college courses. You can earn up to 12 credit hours by completing the tests successfully. And what’s even better is that there are over 2900 colleges and universities that are both CLEP testing centers and that will honor your credits based on your scorces. Just remember that each college has their own policy regarding CLEP credit. Some may accept credit differently than others, so make sure you check out your schools, rules and policies.

And since you don’t have to be picky about where you school is located when you are in an online degree program, you can chose the school that will accept the most credits for successful CLEP examination scores, and save a lot of money in tuition fees.

There are 34 exams available through CLEP, and you can easily define your own course of study and testing since exams are offered all the time. Each CLEP test costs $72 to take plus a small administrative fee.

There seems to be a trend shaping up if you look closely at the results, and the trend is that folks are getting more serious about the exact program they want to go for.

Maybe this is due to the fact that, with today’s job market, many are realizing that you have to be very focused on what kind of job you want, which translates to a more definiitive search for the degree program that fits that goal.

So people are make much more definite decisions about where they want to go, and how to get there, as well as understanding that they want to have a degree that will immediately prepare them for a competitive job marketplace.

So what are the most popular online degree programs?

The top 3 are business administration, nursing and criminal justice degrees, followed by health care, education and engineering.

Rounding out the remaining 4 of the top ten most popular online degrees are computers and IT, Psychology, Legal/Paralegal Degrees and Public Administration.

Now that Fall has officailly begun, I was wondering how everyone spent their summer. Hopefully it was a great one full of sun and fun.

I do know of a few that actually did have a wonderful summer, and for one I was happy to play a very small part in their stories.

I’m talking about the nearly 8,000 kids who attended a Fresh Air Fund camp this summer, and had the time of their lives.

You’ve probably read a few of my posts about the Fresh Air Fund before, but just in case, they are an independent, not-for-profit agency, that has provided free summer vacations to more than 1.7 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877

Yep, you read that right - 1 8 7 7!

Want to know how it all started? Well there’s a great story about that on their website that you can read HERE.

Oh, and while you’re there, you can see a great video “highlight reel” of some those 8000 kids having a great time this past summer.

If you ever wanted to feel like you’ve “made a difference”, then do something for a child. Trust me

And one of the best things you can do is give a child a great summer! So head on over to The Fresh Air Fund and check out how you can help.

Believe me, it’s well worth it

Ben

Baker has history of supporting America’s military, and recently was named on the top Military-Friendly universities in the USA.

Baker’s tradition with the military goes way back. How far back? Well, as an example of it’s history, Abraham Lincoln donated $100 to the school in it’s early years to help construct Parmenter Hall on the Baldwin City campus. Now that’s a rich history

Military personnel and their spouses can get discounts on tuition of up to 50%, and Baker is also working with the Department of Veterans affairs to offer even more assistance through the Yellow Ribbon Program. Through this program, eligible military personnel seeking an undergraduate degree can get $500 per year off their tuition ($1000 per year for graduate studies).

And in case you’re wondering, Baker does offer online degree programs (more about that later)

Here’s another great benefit that you’ll find at Baker University - they offer college credit for all training received in the military. And you don’t even have to go to them to learn about their programs. Baker University has specialists that travel to military bases to educate folks on their programs and benefits.

So, what happens if you you’re attending Baker and get deployed?

Not problem. Baker has a special process driven by its Student Services department that lets you withdraw and re-enter your degree program without any hassles.

Baker offers all kinds of degrees, including business, liberal arts, education, and many more. And Baker’s programs offer something for everyone; from the first time college student to the seasoned profession seeking a graduate degree. And as mentioned before, there are several online degree options as well, such as a BA and MBA program in Business Leadership. By the way, that MBA program is ranked as one of the top 10 online Master’s degree in the country.

And here’s another great reason to consider them. With Baker’s accelerated format, two years is all you need to complete the majority of their programs.

Here’s a little more info on Baker. They started in 1858 (remember Abe?) and they are ranked as one of the top 30 colleges in the Midwest, and recognized as one of the best universities around. They are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. And they’ve had this accreditation since 1913.

To find our more about Baker, and their School of Professional and Graduate Studies, call (800) 995-7747