Paying for College - through Unconventional Means

Are people getting really anxious about paying for college? It would appear so, going by a craigslist ad. In which a parent, alarmed about his child's student loans (that approached a quarter million dollars), offered his body to science while he was still living. Granted, this would be kind of an extreme step for any parent to take. The point though is, that unorthodox and unusual methods, these days are often necessary. Your average student has not only soaring tuition costs to contend with, but also inadequate financial aid. Paying for college, these days, is no longer just about going to college and taking up a job on the side at the library to help make ends meet. These days, you'll need to get creative and figure out how to make enough money by thinking of a new business concept or selling body parts.

How difficult is it getting for students, to pay for college with traditional means anyway? It's easy to do the math. On average, college costs have risen about 5%. That works out to about $35,000 a year. Scholarships do exist. But there is only about $4 billion in the private scholarship pot for the entire country. And they try to spread their endowments pretty thin - the average scholarship works out to be about $3000. States are so strapped for funds that to have to deal with fewer students, they have been trying to raise the standards students must meet to qualify. Still, college students are remarkably responsible and self-dependent when it comes to paying for college. Three out of four students try hard to pay their student loans themselves. Here are some of the methods they follow.

Did you know that volunteering for charitable work can not only pay well, it can even net you a scholarship? AmeriCorps, the national network of thousands of nonprofit organizations and religious foundations, has about 3000 such institutions on its network. A student, to begin with, can make about $12,000 putting in about 1500 hors of work and earn a scholarship worth $5000 for doing social work. And there are many social work-related scholarships to take advantage of over and above this as well when you serve in the AmeriCorps. Syracuse University and Duke University, for instance, have special scholarships for those who sign up to this organization.

On-campus jobs being quite rare, students need some help in a new town finding jobs. Almost every college now has a career services department and a jobs board. You'll find college students passing out flyers, taking up waitressing jobs and even getting paid medical experiment gigs. Some students start their own commercial websites when they have a bright idea of the run. Some of these business ideas can be pretty smart too. At various colleges, students are known to find success starting a designated driver company for students of the campus. When people need to get back home after a drunken party, the service sends a driver over to help drive them home. Still, the idea of getting into business for oneself may not be for everyone. Some people may just find it easier to donate semen or their eggs.

These days, paying for college is so hard, you really want to crave an education to get anywhere.

Improving your Chances of Free Money for College

States that have been in budget crisis mode for a couple of years now started off taking control back by first cutting our public universities loose in a way that forced them to turn to their students to make up for the shortfall. Now that they realize that bigger tuition fees aren't really enough to fill the holes in their budgets, they're turning to cutting off financial aid. In some cases, they are turning down students whom they have already promised aid to. All of this places families in uncharted waters as far as funding college goes. At this time, states, on average, spend about three-quarters of a billion dollars on aid to needy students in college. That works out on average to an aid package that makes up about 7.5% of your average impoverished student's need for college. If you are thinking that 7.5% doesn't sound like much, several states are considering cutting that down by half. Texas, Illinois, New York - all of them have their own numbers by which to operate. Some states are actually taking back the aid packages they have already granted. Your only hope then would be to find new ways to qualify for free money for college. Here's what puts you in the running for free aid.

If you go by the official last date they publish for when you need to apply for the FAFSA for state aid, it can look like you have until the start of summer, in June. That's not really how it goes in the real world though. States like Tennessee, South Carolina and Oregon announced way back in February that they wanted your FAFSA, ASAP. It's first-come-first-served now until whatever free money for college they have is all disbursed. Families have usually waited until tax filing day to get ready to file their FAFSA. All that is changing now. Just use estimates of your  W-2 and 1099 forms and include your last paystub to it applying as early as possible. Put it off any further and all the money could be gone.

Usually, when you get your financial aid package intimation letter, the first figure you look for is how much free money for college you're getting from the state. State aid is becoming quite difficult to rely on now. They may give it to you or they may change their minds. You probably want to ignore the state aid number you see on your letter. Just look for the college that offers to give you the most help possible with tuition and fees out of its own kitty instead of relying on an outside source such as the government. Times have changed; you can no longer look at your state aid package like it meant something. The colleges' grants are all you have to rely on. If you can't find that kind of free money for college from the institution that you plan to attend, put in a request for work-study. Colleges and the federal government give students opportunities for part-time work. Ask for a community service job and you'll probably get what you ask for.

Is it Sound College Financial Planning anymore to Trust in 529 Plans?

State workers around the country haven't really been having things go their way recently. Their pension plans aren't what they used to be and if they haven't lost their right to organize already, they're about to lose it very soon. Of course, it hasn't been any kind of ideological stand by the government that has led to any of this. Primarily, it is the budget crises in many states that have forced governments to consider moves like this. Those very budget crises however, have other more widespread effects that every family should come to feel sooner or later. For instance, public universities no longer enjoy the kind of funding they once did; and families no longer have access to the kind of aid that they once did, either. The Hope scholarship in Georgia that has been a kind of bottomless barrel of generosity for meritorious students for ages is cutting back; tuition costs in California have risen to unbelievable levels; and in Tennessee, parents can no longer a lock in the tuition they will pay for their children by paying in advance. It might be fair to say that the college financial planning methods that we always thought we knew our way around are due for a change.

In the state of Illinois, families are finding that their 529 college financial planning has gone completely awry. The state hasn't been able to grant them the returns they were promised. And that hasn't even been the most upsetting discovery that these families have made. Up until now, when families invested in prepaid plans to help lock in tuition prices at today's rates they always thought that the lock was completely guaranteed. They have recently been made aware of how should the state somehow not be in a position to meet its obligations, there is nothing anyone can do. If those families always felt that they had a guarantee, it's because they didn't read the fine print that let the state off the hook. South Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and other states, along with Illinois, offer no guarantees. Florida, Washington and Mississippi though, do offer such a guarantee.

If you haven't really seen it happening in your state where the college financial planning that they offer turns out to be underfunded, you could expect it to happen soon. If you have placed your trust in some kind of 529 college financial planning, that isn't a terrible decision to have made, of course. But you do need to set aside some extra money just in case the state doesn't give you all that you were promised.

Creative College Planning that Saves you Money

When people talk about finding a way to send their children to college, usually, they usually only seem to think about taking out a loan and funding college directly for the full four years. Alternative ways that save a lot of money do exist. For instance, college planning can go this way: one can first get two years’ worth of college credits in community college; this can work out to be far cheaper, and one could get a job for more credits. In the end, you can probably save at least $40,000 in college expenses. When you choose a flexible schedule like this, you can usually do your college planning at a fraction of the price other (less creative) people pay.

When a family tries to make a decision about this - that a child should attend community college for the first two years so that the family can save on college expenses, there really is no proper one-stop resource that they can head to for information. You can't just go to community college and bang out two years and hope that it will always save you money. It often won’t. You have to be quite knowledgeable about how the system works. If you end up taking the wrong classes, it could all be in waste. If this is the way you wish to make your way through college, this is how you need to plan for it.

Before you enroll at a community college, you need to know if they have a transfer system that works. Before you actually join, you need to talk to the office to learn how many of their students are known to be successful at an associate’s degree transfer to a regular four-year college. Whatever college you feel you would like to transfer to, you want to speak with the admissions officer there and ask them what rules they have in place to do with accepting transfer students. For instance, how many such students do they accept each year? If you could learn which community colleges they get most of their transfers from, you could target such a community college to join. Doing this, you'll easily come to hear of all the mistakes it is possible for students to make in the process.

Many young people imagine that it can be easy to get whatever course they want at any community college. "It isn't as if one is applying to an Ivy League college, is it?" they tell themselves. Finding a spot in a community college though can be somewhat challenging today. What with how the recession is throwing millions out of work, there is unbelievable pressure on the community colleges to help retrain them. You will really have to be at the head of the line if you wish to get into the community college you prefer.

While it may really save you a lot of money to do your college through a community college, you have to be aware that you can't get a poor grade anywhere. If you fail in an important class, you could end up having to do a whole semester all over again. And that could throw your entire college planning out.

College Textbook Rentals get Big at Colleges around the Country

College tuition fees have never been higher. But the pain for parents and students doesn't end there. Buying the textbooks needed for one year at college can easily total $1200 - just a little bit more to help add to the burden. That's where college textbook rentals come in.

If you think about it, college students happen to be such a great captive market for the textbook sellers. Any time a professor prescribes a certain textbook, the entire class has no choice but to go out and get a copy. There never was a more angry captive market than the college students we have today. All of that could go away with a bunch of great new services that have come up, offering college textbook rentals - services with names like Chegg and CourseSmart - in addition to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Renting textbooks, you can usually save 75% off the cost of what it would take it by textbook outright. But these are e-books that they rent out. If you want the real thing, the National Association of College Stores says that just about every college bookstore this year is ready to enter the college textbook rentals business.

Students have always been able to sign up for some kind of buyback program where they buy new textbooks at the beginning of the semester, paying the full $150 or whatever for it; they get to sell it back to the college bookstore or wherever for $5 at the end of the semester. It tends to not be quite satisfying. On Amazon, the typical college textbook sells for about $200. If you went for the e-book edition to keep, you’d pay $100 for it. If you just wanted to rent the e-book version, you'd just have to pay about $50. That's a great saving.

College textbook rentals aren't for everyone though. The rental programs tend to only keep titles that have mass-market appeal. If your professor happens to prescribe a kind obscure title, renting won't be an option. The rental companies have a reason for doing this, of course. Any time they buy a book to rent it out, they can only do it once per semester. To make a profit on a book, they need to be able to rent it out at least four times. They couldn't be sure of being able to do so if they went and got obscure titles.

Sometimes, renting isn't even the smart choice to make. For instance, what if you have a textbook that you needed the whole year through and not just over the single semester? You might as well go and buy a new textbook for what you would spend on rent. And anyway, a much cheaper option you're likely to have, going to a used books site like Half.com

If you do decide to go with college textbook rentals, you should probably choose paper over e-book. You're likely to save more money.

Does it make Sense Investing in Adult Degrees after 50

With the government seemingly having given up on the jobless, there's one thing people have realized today - it's completely up to them to look out for their interests. A very popular way today that older adults in their 50s or 60s choose, to look competitive in the job market once again, is to head back to college for a new degree in the area of work they are interested in. But of course, we all know that tuition costs are astronomical everywhere. People in good jobs aren't able to scrape together enough to put a son or daughter through college. Do older adult degrees really make much sense spending thousands on? Does a person at 50 getting a degree really help his career prospects any?

One reason so many people think of applying to get older adult degrees is that for hundreds of colleges across the country, the older adult market can be a pretty profitable source of students, and they advertise. People out of jobs or people scraping by in low-paying jobs seemingly with no hope of ever stepping back into the middle class again, when they look at these advertisements for programs specifically designed for them, think it could be worth a try getting new qualifications to put on their resume. Colleges are seeing a 20% rise in the number of applications they get from people over 50.

The American Association of Community Colleges has a Plus 50 initiative in place in dozens of campuses across the country to offer adult degrees specifically aimed at baby-boomers. The University of California has degree programs aimed specifically at boomers too.

But getting down to the nitty-gritty, is it worth it spending about $750 for each class you take at a public college or spending  four times that amount in private college? By the time you get a bachelor's degree one of these places, you end up spending $30,000. Even joining a continuing education program can work out to be pretty expensive - an accounting certificate for instance will set you back about $4500. A Master's degree can set you back $50,000 each year.

Experts are of the opinion that it could be a good idea spending money on getting adult degrees or other qualifications in your 50s or 60s if you have hard figures that tell you that you can expect the job you get with your new degree to pay at least as much starting out as you have to borrow to pay for the degree. You also need to consider how much longer you expect to stay on the job market. If you plan to be working for another 10 years, this could be well worth it.

If you are a senior citizen, many community colleges allow you to take classes for free. If you have a job already, you could probably ask your employer if they offer tuition assistance. Whatever you do spend out of hand, you could probably get a tax deduction for as well.

Making the College Degree Universal - like High School

It's taken for granted now that every child born in this country has to at least go as far as high school. It wasn't always this way though. When the government made a high school education universal more than 90 years ago, it seemed to the entire country that the government was being far too idealistic. What would everyone do with such a fantastic level of education, they wondered. Most people just needed to work the fields or the factories. Why, in Europe, a universal high school education policy was positively discouraged by the intellectuals of the continent. America went ahead with making it illegal for parents to keep their children home from school, and brought schooling to every home in every village in the land. Europe did not at first. As the years wore on, it became clear that America's high school graduates certainly made for better factory workers and farmhands. It took the country forward much more quickly to have an educated population. Sadly though, America seems to have forgotten the lessons it once learned. You can hear it debated everywhere today how it's just craziness that we expect every young person to go to college.

With parents groaning under the burden of expensive college tuitions and many young people everywhere unwilling to put themselves through rigor that a college degree requires, pandering education skeptics seem to have the public ear.  Unfortunately for them, being the country of modest educational expectations makes no more sense today than it did back then.

One reason it is argued that a college degree is unnecessary is that it seems apparent these days that being a college graduate is nothing special. Young people don't seem to get any great jobs just because they have a degree under their belts, they say.

Now this would be a terribly simplistic argument to make. While a college degree doesn't guarantee anything more than a mediocre life, not having one would in most circumstances, guarantee a terrible one. To begin with, better educated people are certainly better adjusted in life - and happier. And then, holding a bachelor's degree can pay off in all kinds of ways in life. Even if one’s job is being a salesperson, a plumber, a carpenter, a car mechanic or a secretary.

One needs to realize that if college were nearly free like it is in, say, Germany, no one would be interested in this argument. The only reason we talk about this in America is that college costs and the loans taken out to handle them, can be crippling.

All this anxiety over unmanageable college costs though doesn't always make sense. At your average public college, a standard degree is only about $2000 a year. It's the private colleges that charge high prices. And when you graduate from college, your pay scale is certainly going to be higher - by 50% usually. When there's a recession, far fewer college graduates lose their jobs than high school graduates.

The biggest surprise in this test, which was done by a team at Georgetown University, was the one that went on to find that people who come to blue-collar jobs with degrees routinely make far more than people who come to the job with nothing more than high school. With education, a plumber can usually do more skilled plumbing work; and the same would apply to a policeman, a secretary or anyone.

Jobs You Can Get With a Music Degree

When I was in high school, I was always told that one of the worst majors a person could choose was in music, because all one could do with a music degree was teach music in school. That is not entirely true. I can attest to the fact, as many of my friends were music majors in college, that there are several different professions where a music degree can be utilized.

One of my friends said he wanted to teach, but not at school, and he certainly did not want to be a band director. He did not feel there was anything wrong with that, necessarily, but he felt that his music degree could be put to better use than trying to spread his knowledge out to 80 or 100 students. He always told me applauded those who could, but he wanted to work with young people on a more individual basis, so he became a different kind of teacher - a tutor.

He used his music degree and all the credentials he had developed to offer private lessons on the piano. He has done this for the last 20 years and makes a very handsome living doing so. I asked him one time if it has ever been hard for him to constantly do the same thing, and he assured me it was not. He said he loved watching children learn and said he never felt like he was working a real job. He could not imagine doing anything different and has built a nest egg for himself so large that he will be able to retire at the age of 55 and live quite comfortably for the rest of his life, if he so chooses.

Another friend of mine who has a music degree plays guitar, and out of college, he started picking up gigs. He loves jazz and blues, so he decided to move down to New Orleans and try to make a living there. He hooked up with some local musical acts and eventually built up a reputation for being a pretty good guitar player. He once told me that he could work every night of the week if he chose to do so, and he lives in a very nice apartment in the French Quarter.

Yet another friend of mine is a violinist. She got her music degree with the specific goal of joining a symphony orchestra, which she did within five years of graduating. With hard work, she moved up the line to become concert mistress, and said she spends her entire day doing what she loves to do most - playing and creating music.

These are just a few of the options for people with a music degree. I have always loved stories of people who disproved a negative stereotype, and all three of my friends have certainly done so!

Defining Accredited Interior Design Schools

Over the years, it has been established that talent is very important if one is to excel in any field but talent only is not enough as it often needs skills to complement it. To obtain these skills in the field of interior design is possible as long as designers join accredited interior design schools. Some people might find joining conventional interior design schools somewhat difficult due to having various commitments in life. For these learning by mail correspondence or through the internet are viable options as long as the schools are accredited. The rest can settle for conventional classrooms. Apart from showing that one is taking their career of choice seriously, going to an accredited school of design helps to gain the confidence of potential clients.

Joining accredited interior design schools can help learners learn much more in terms of furniture placement, fabrics, styles, patterns, colors and computer applications, running a business and so on. There are a number of factors that should be considered when one is looking for a good accredited designer school and they include accreditation locations, timing, costs, and school attendance among others. After careful consideration and research the student should have all the information they need to join an accredited school of their choice.

When looking for good accredited interior design schools, it is important to note that not all of them offer every type of degree. There are those that offer associate degrees, those that offer bachelors and those that offer master’s degrees. Associate degrees normally take 2 years to finish and the course entails the basics like drafting, architectural methods and construction and CAD design. This degree will get a person qualified for the positions of specialist in decorative specialist, design assistant, and junior designer. As for positions such as project designer or manager one will need to get themselves a bachelor’s degree and most of them take about four years to complete. This course will entail most of the associate degree curriculum but will also have added advance design and business courses as well. These include perspective drawing, contract design, public relations and interior environments.

For those whose main wish is to own a design firm, the master’s degree in accredited interior design schools is the best route to take. A master’s degree takes two years and the courses entail environmental psychology, media of digital design, design theory and inclusive design. Since there are very many schools that claim to be accredited it is important that a student ensures that they confirm that their school of choice is accredited to a particular governing body or accredited body. Incase of any questions they can go to the accreditation bodies’ websites and look to confirm if the school they have chosen is listed there. Accredited schools of design are the way to go if one is to be successful in the competitive field of interior design. 

All about Fashion Design Schools

Over the years the fashion industry has grown in leaps and bounds thereby attracting quite a number of people who want a piece of the action. With the increasing number of people interested in this field there is much competition and one has to be really good to stand out and there is no better way for a person to perfect their skills other than to look for the best among the available fashion design schools to join. Fashion schools offer courses on fashion design, merchandising and marketing which are quite necessary and can help one get the necessary skills to compete in the industry. Another reason why it is necessary for one to join a fashion design school is because fashion is basically a way to express current times and it is therefore quite necessary that one keeps up with the very latest trends going around in art and politics. Fashion schools help people explore the two subjects. Having knowledge on how to work with technological tools and devices in the fashion industry is also quite necessary and such knowledge can only be obtained from fashion design schools.

When thinking of joining a fashion school it is important that the student puts some thought into the whole process. Since there are schools that offer courses on particular areas such as casual area and those that offer general courses it is important that people who want to focus on a particular area choose the first kind of schools. It is also good that students are exposed to the real fashion world as early as possible and schools that let their students get involved in things like design competitions and various projects that help students step out are the best to use. One should also check to see if the fashion school of their choice is accredited so as to avoid getting education of poor quality that will be a liability rather than an asset. The curriculum being offered is another factor to consider as there are different subjects offered in different schools.

The cost of attending fashion design schools also matters to quite a number of people. This especially goes for those whom getting the money to join expensive schools can present a problem. It is advisable that a fashion student goes for a school they can afford so as to avoid having to work many hours to pay expensive fess at the expense of their education. There are schools that also offer scholarships to students who not have money to pay for their fees. Since some scholarships are awarded to students who have stood out in fashion competitions then it is wise for students to get involved in as many completions as possible. Thee are also fashion schools that offer job placements to their students and when looking for a  school it is advisable to look into such schools as well.

Why are Students made to take High School Classes Online all of a Sudden?

There are about a million children in America today who take high school classes online - right from kindergarten, all the way to 12th grade. Some educators really love what classes at the lap of a computer can do for children. One of the most popular uses for online classes today happens to be the opportunity these give students to make up in subjects in which they have failed. And then, there are all kinds of electives that a student can opt for if she should be willing to learn from a computer instead of a proper teacher in a classroom. Some of the more obscure elective subjects invite the interest of so few students that it isn't ever viable in a public school setting to actually have a class run for those. In such a case, rather than deny the student that elective altogether, a computerized lesson could offer her a happy compromise. The same goes for advanced placement classes.

But in a time when the country is firing teachers by the hundreds of thousands and when teachers are getting a lot of hate in places like Wisconsin, critics wonder if the whole thing to do with high school classes online isn't just one more way to cut costs and do away with having to pay teachers. There isn't a shred of scientific proof, they say, that can give a parent any kind of reassurance that high school classes online can ever compare in quality to learning face-to-face with a real teacher. Still, some public school districts, and states like Tennessee, are pushing ahead with large-scale changes to bring in computers to replace teachers. In Memphis, for instance, students absolutely must take at least one online course if they want to graduate. Sometimes, students are made to take online classes even when there are real teachers teaching those classes right in a classroom next door. Education officials in the state say that since online classes are quite common in college, all they are trying to do is to prepare their students for what is to come. But considering how much money it is possible for a school to save by plopping a scholar in front of the computer instead of a desk in front of a teacher (high school classes online only cost $150 a year per student) it's pretty difficult to not believe that cost-cutting has something to do with this.

In Florida, the law places a restriction on the number of students there can be under a teacher. Since the state doesn't have enough teachers, they just push thousands of students out into computer labs for their online classes. If there were no classroom size caps, these students would not be learning online. Why, some schools actually come out and admit as much. If there is a foreign language class with only a handful of students, schools feel that they couldn't possibly justify paying a teacher when they are so hemmed in with budget constraints everywhere else. They just send their students to take online classes at places like the Virtual High School Global Consortium.

A Back to School Bulletin Board Really Got My Daughter on Track

My daughter has always struggled to keep on task when it comes to her schoolwork. We have tried to get her planners and decorated notebooks to keep track of what she needs to do every day, and it just doesn't seem to work. Last year, my wife and I were at the end of our wits when we came across a back to school bulletin board, and to our great delight, it really helped her improve academically.

The great thing about a back to school bulletin board is that you do not have to open it. It seems kind of funny to me, but to my daughter, she would use the planners and notebooks for a while, and then they would get tossed to the side with all of her other books, note pads and general clutter. Out of frustration, my wife and I went to a local department store one day and looked for anything that might help our daughter keep to task, and that is when we first saw a back to school bulletin board.

It was about two by three feet in size, and it had the entire month printed out in days along with several lines down below for notes. My wife jokingly said we should get it for her, but I immediately thought it could be something that really benefited her. It was not that expensive, so we decided to give it a try.

When we brought home the back to school bulletin board, my wife and I explained that we had been concerned about our daughter's lack of organization when it came to schoolwork. She sighed and nodded, apparently more eager to get us out of her bedroom than to hear what we had to say. We showed her the back to school bulletin board, and she actually seemed impressed.

We showed her all of the features and told her that we knew there was no way she could miss this every day and that it certainly could not be tossed in among her other books and folders. I even agreed to mount it for her wherever she wanted it in her room.

To our great delight, my daughter used her back to school bulletin board daily, and it was always filled with writing about certain assignments or projects that needed to get done, and how she was going to work on this part of the assignment on these days. It was brilliant.

My wife and I watched as our daughter became more organized and her grades steadily improved, and it was all thanks to the back to school bulletin board we bought when we were at the point of grasping for straws. I am quite proud of her, and quite grateful for the instrument that helped her achieve her full potential.

New Lesson Plans for High School coming in 2014 will Change the Way Children Think

In a popular piece in the New York Times earlier this year, the writer spoke of an ambitious project to reform lesson plans in India where young children would for the first time, be asked to write their own stories to help them think for themselves. While that has been something that's always been done in America, there are those who feel that we may be falling behind in our efforts to help high school children think creatively and on their own. A new experiment in lesson plans for high school in New York tries to address this concern.

Lesson plans for high school usually involve having children read something and then summarizing it on their own - an exercise in reading comprehension. While all that has been useful, one does have to admit that such a plan doesn't stretch the child too much. Everything the child needs to know is right before her and all she needs to do is to paraphrase. The new lesson plans involve assignments where students need to formulate complex thoughts on complex subjects drawing information from a variety of sources. Students, for instance, might find themselves faced with an assignment where they need to write about what it means to have freedom of the press. For this, the teacher asks them to watch Citizen Kane, read up about how in places as far apart as China and Egypt, the authorities clamp down on Facebook the moment they smell trouble, and watch a documentary about a public protest in the 80s against the intellectual Noam Chomsky, and his position on freedom of speech to do with ideas expressed that are deeply offensive to most people.

By the year 2014, if everything goes as expected with these experimental lesson plans for high school, this could be the way all children in America learn. A curriculum standard of this kind is called, the Common Core. Most states have signed up for the new standards - and one hopes that they will help students do a lot more than merely learn math formulas and so on.

The country now finds itself in a situation where the No Child Left Behind law, that punishes schools for failing its students, is seen to be completely inadequate. Schools merely lower their standards when they find that they can't educate their children adequately. President Obama plans to completely revamp the law, and the common core will be a big part of that effort.

The new lesson plans for high school will require that by 12th grade, students already work at college level so that colleges no longer need to impose any bridge courses on their freshman. If a student is asked to read a book, her job will not be to summarize what she's read; it will be to analyze what she's read and come out with new conclusions. If the student has to present something to a class, it won't be just about how she seems to understand what she's learned. She also has to find a way to present it so persuasively that she wins other students over to her point of view. Students will have to find out how when you read something, the writer could have biases.

As ambitious as all these are though, implementation is where everything usually falls by the wayside. Let's hope that the new common core system actually works.

Why are there so Few People Applying to Law School Now?

For the longest time, American presidents have been graduates of the country's top law schools (and our current president was a professor there after having graduated). Legal dramas and movies on TV have always glamorized a profession in the bar out of all reason; and lawyers, if they came out of a reputable law school, could pretty much depend on a life that didn't depart that far from movie depictions - lots of money, exquisite company perks and a great place in society. Those applying to law school today may need to pay attention to the changed narrative that life as a lawyer in today's world.

In a Wall Street Journal review, they’ve found that the shine is quickly wearing off. At no time in the last 10 years have applications to law schools been this slow. About 12% fewer people are interested in a career in the law. Certainly, the public interest in any field of study waxes and wanes from time to time. As far as the law has been concerned though, the general trend has always been upward. Why, people didn't stop applying to law school even through the recession. In fact, 20% more people took the LSAT in 2008. And schools reported an extra burst of applications.

Which is saying a lot. Law schools were cheap to build and to run. You don't need expensive labs, equipment or anything. The country can just build new law schools whenever demand hits. And demand overwhelmed even such ready availability. So why are so many disillusioned with the law as a profession?

Over the last few years, fresh law school graduates have found the going tough in the job market. Law school can be crushingly expensive; these fresh graduates who come out looking for jobs need a reasonable pay scale so that they can expect to pay their student loans back. All they find now are hundreds of applicants for each opening at any law firm. Thousands today are willing to accept mere legal assistant positions for pay by the hour - often at a level that's not far above minimum wage.

One additional possible explanation for this state of affairs could be that since the economy is improving a little bit (unemployment is down by half a percentage point) there could be more people heading for the job market than to graduate school. This is an enduring trend in any country. When job prospects seem to look up, more people think of jumping headfirst into the job market and putting off studying further.

But most of the damage seems to have been done by the constant barrage of reporting from respected journals like the New York Times that have tried to expose the law school as nothing but a waste of time and money that doesn't get anyone anywhere. The keep writing about how since legal automation has become very popular, businesses have just stopped paying lots of money to lawyers to help them do legal research. That's been a great source of employment for fresh lawyers for a long time. With that gone, new lawyers really have no workable alternative. Why would anyone go around applying to law school anymore?

The Much-Disliked Medical School Admissions Test gets an Overhaul

Have you ever spoken to a young person who’s hopeful of becoming a qualified doctor? Usually, they speak in glowing terms about all they hope to achieve in life in the medical profession and how well they have been doing at preparing for med school one day. When the conversation comes around to preparation for the Medical College Admission test or the MCATs, you will usually catch a sharp drop in the kind of enthusiasm say feel. What is it about the medical school admissions test that doctor hopefuls dislike so much?

The medical school admissions test is a standardized exam that requires a great deal of mastery of the pre-medical curriculum area. Usually, young people hopeful of a place in med school don't just study hard to merit a seat. They sign up for a great deal of extracurricular work. They work as an assistant to a doctor, volunteer at hospitals, and so on. The kind of requirements that medical school admissions tests place on them, they usually have to give up all kinds of extracurricular work and devote themselves entirely to studying their physics, chemistry and biology texts. This becomes a point of contention. They feel that the whole admissions process has its focus on the wrong priorities. How sensible can it be to require a potential doctor to give up working to help people so that they can study? Isn't it an ability to care for people that makes a good doctor?

The MCAT is a test they call the SATs for doctor hopefuls. It's been around for about 80 years now. Back then, the test was all about making sure that an applicant for med school was always someone who was really interested in medicine. They had a lot of trouble back then with people applying for med school, and then realizing halfway on that they weren't interested in medicine after all. The test has really been successful; of the 20,000 med school students taken on each year, only a handful quit.

While the med school admissions test might be successful at separating the truly serious medical students from the non-serious, it does absolutely nothing to predict what candidate actually cares about people or who is ethically superior. For this reason, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the body that administers the test is about to make a major change to the way the MCAT is run. They want to test students now for their personal philosophies, their ethics and their sense of fairness.

Some people are worried about the wisdom of tampering with a successful formula. They feel that whether or not someone wants to help people isn't important. That's a quality that's in abundance in the general population. People who just love to help people are almost never in a position to do that. Helping people comes from having the power to help people; it doesn't come from a mere willingness to do it. Still, they're going through with the change. The new MCAT will run in a couple of years.

A Sleight of Hand at the Elementary School Eliminates Kindergarten

The No Child Left Behind act apparently pressures our school system far more than it can handle.  Teachers all over have been desperate to bring on the appearance of competence among many of their students - students whom they just don't have the resources to teach properly with. And now, they are resorting to a new way to get children up to the levels of scholastic competence that the law requires. They are trying very hard to turn kindergarten into first grade in elementary school without telling anyone. They want more time with the children so that they may not fail so pathetically when they reach high school. So what are we talking about here?

More and more, states are starting to allow schools to take children who are as young as four years old into kindergarten. Most parents, who've been pushing their very young children to do well with all those flashcards and Dora the Explorer ever since they have been toddlers, are jumping at the chance to give their children a head start. They are glad to see that their children are going to get their minds molded at an earlier age than before.

And yet, some parents see how hard their children have it. They see that even if it's called kindergarten, what goes on in there looks pretty much like first grade. They see teachers pushing difficult lessons and training on their young children. There is no fingerpainting, there are no sand tables; instead, there are worksheets and homework. Young children who find it physically hard to hold a pencil or who find it impossible to sit there and concentrate on a new task for a long time are being forced to the breaking point. Teachers are desperate to get young children ready for standardized tests as early as third grade. They don't want to waste a minute. And so, elementary school today has become all about a no-kindergarten policy. Children go straight away to first grade even if everyone pretends it’s kindergarten.

But parents who see all of this and see what is being done to their children, sometimes choose to redshirts them. Redshirting is a term that's borrowed from sports. College athletes sometimes postpone the time they will enter competitive games. They try to give themselves more time to develop. Parents who wish to give their children more time to develop before the set them on the schooling treadmill, keep their children out of elementary school up until they are five or six sometimes.

It can seem terribly unfair to some that the cutoff age for when children become eligible to enter kindergarten for the first time can work in such a way that some children in any class will be a full year older than other children. These can be terribly important developmental years. A child who is 10 and in the same class with others who are 11, is going to feel a generation gap. A child who at 6 enjoys playing wargames is going to be terribly scary to a five-year-old who likes to sleep with his soft toy. Parents who redshirt their children want to give them the advantage that they don't have to ever be scared or be left out of any socializing circles. Sometimes, being a little slow can be better.

Back to School at 40

Should Secondary School Teachers Lose their Jobs after Poor Evaluations?

It's a scenario that plays out in hundreds of schools around the country every day - word reaches the school that one of the district’s teacher evaluators plans to show up soon and everyone had better be ready. Every primary and secondary school teacher knows that these evaluations don’t just end in a few harmless recommendations of what to do to improve things. If it's an underperforming school and the evaluator finds that the teacher is doing something wrong, she could actually stand to lose her job.

And they do. States like Washington have actually fired hundreds of teachers already based on the findings of teacher evaluators. It's all part of a hated new system called Impact that the teachers’ unions (understandably) oppose. The Race to the Top competition that President Obama has announced $5 billion for, has many states in the country taking up teacher evaluations like these to try to tighten their system up and improve their chances of making the grade.

As much as primary and secondary school teachers consider the system to be deeply unfair for placing all the burden of responsibility on them, the system does have its supporters. They feel that school districts across the country that have always lacked focus, that have never had any real teaching aims, that have always done without teaching standards, are suddenly greatly enabled by the establishment of these clear-cut standards and targets. The fact that teachers know that falling short will result in dismissal, they feel, is a great way to motivate them to do better.

Those who are appalled by the harshness of the new standards and the punishments dealt out feel that it is unbecoming of any established system that it should be more eager to throw people out of jobs than to help them attain the standards expected. If the system doesn't have a solution for a problem it picks up, how can it expect teachers to have one, they contend. Of course, the fact that the evaluation system just doesn't seem to sympathize with teachers who have to work against enormous odds in poor districts with poor budgets, and in crowded classrooms, does make sense. After all, teaching evaluators usually come away with excellent results for teachers in wealthy school districts and with poor grades for teachers in poor districts. The results do show that budget has a great deal to contribute to the success of a class; why fire the teachers for the failings of the budget, they wonder.

The Impact system is fairer  at times more than others though. It doesn't always depend on student test scores to grade primary and secondary school teachers. At times, it relies on classroom observations, where teachers are graded on how clearly they explain content and check for how well their students understand. It's only teachers who are completely and totally ineffective who are dismissed summarily. Even minimally effective teachers get a year to change.

However, as anyone who's been in a job knows, an evaluating boss can often be critical in a way that makes no sense. Teachers who get evaluated complain of arbitrary and petty evaluating techniques. That certainly is some truth to that.

After Film School, What?

The large, well-established film schools in Southern California and New York always attract droves of new prospective students every year. They walk in all starry eyed hoping for an exciting and rewarding career in the dramatic arts. But if they do get in, they should look at film school graduates who’ve finished their learning and are stepping out into the world for the first time trying to see how far their chops in acting, directing and a number of other film related skills, can take them in the job market.

Film school graduates today are surely better equipped to take on the challenges of their chosen field. And yet, the challenges may be becoming more challenging. Script writing graduates could always count on entry-level positions with film producers before. These days, with the large studios cutting down the amount they’re willing to invest in new scripts from untested writers, these entry-level positions are pretty much out of the question. Fresh graduates still try hard for the few jobs there are. Most come away disappointed. And these are people with Masters degrees in screenwriting.

Those who do get a foot in, need to be willing to spend five years as assistants. The others meanwhile go about trying hard to get just such a position or try to help themselves by writing screenplays in the  hope that they will wow some executive somewhere someday. It can be a pretty discouraging state of affairs if you are involved in it.

Not that it's keeping any film school hopefuls out. In cities like New York and Los Angeles, there are usually 1000 applications for every 100 slots that these schools. And it's rising every year. It isn't just film school either – there are more students trying to get into institutions that teach the production of video games, web series and so on, too. Colleges around the country have tried to cash in on the demand there is for learning to do with film and stage. Which might have been a bad idea. There are all these people skills in film production who are often jobless today.

There are so many graduate film people around today that the AMPAS Academy that hands out the Oscars, has a separate student Academy Awards program these days. Those who aren't established in their professions already submit their entries by the hundred.

Fresh graduates who look in vain for a little support from the establishment often find that they have to produce their own movie before anyone will pay them any attention. The NYU has a competition that awards film school graduates nearly a quarter million dollars to make their own film on.

Expert educators believe that film schools have their curricula all wrong. Film isn't an area where they can ever expect to get a normal regular job. You need the skills necessary to work the market so that you can land a gig. Since no film school teaches these skills, film school graduates most often end up working for regular jobs that have nothing to do with film making.

A New Method in Mathematics Education Rocks Canadian Schools

No one would ever be proud ever to announce in public that they didn't know how to figure out the stock market; they wouldn't be proud to declare that they didn't understand cars; yet, it's completely acceptable for a person to mention in a joking, self-deprecating aside, that he could just never understand math. There is usually even a touch of pride there - kind of the way George Bush always seemed to hold his failings as proof that he was one of the common people. Part of the reason this is so is that math education in this country has never really tried to help children understand what math is all about. When in a math class, there are kids who just get everything on their own, kids who get things after trying hard and kids who just never get anything no matter how hard they try, our math teachers never try to educate us in why this should be so. They just let us carry on with our superstition that math just comes more easily if you are born that way.

This much, psychologists and mathematicians are completely sure of - there hasn't been a normal child born so far who could have been bad at math. Every single normal human child is capable of performing at very high levels in math, if they aren't given the wrong kind of mathematics education.

Considering how terrible American children seem to be in general, at performing in math, the above statement might seem hard to believe. But a new kind of mathematics education called Jump Math, in use in Britain and in Canada, has proven that the only thing we lack is that we don't seem to believe in the abilities of our children and our teachers as much as we should.

One particular problem that's been identified with the American way of teaching math is that teachers ask children to try to analyze and formulate their own concepts as they go along. Our education system seems to not really understand how children need explicit guidance for the first few years. We’re trying to get our children to run before we teach them how to walk.

Jump Math involves breaking every single thing in a math problem down to its smallest possible components. For instance, if you try to teach a child negative numbers and then ask the class what -10 and +3 together make, the children in any class are usually flummoxed. Ask them instead what they would feel their position would be if they were at a game and they lost 10 sets but won 3, and they understand right away.

Jump Math is been used in places in England and Canada for years now. And they have had spectacular levels of success. There you have it. You need to teach math as guided discovery. Every single step needs to be broken down into the simplest sub-steps possible. To do this for a couple of years, the child becomes confident enough that he'll get with all the mathematical analysis that anyone could ever want.

In Your College Search, Should You Go to College Referral Service?

Have you ever seen that ad for Education Connection on TV where that waitress makes her way up from what looks like a fast food job to something far better? She says that she found that Education Connection helped her with her college search so that she could zero in on the right college for her needs. It's a fun commercial. Is going to a college referral service really fun though?

Do they really help you in your college search? The thing is, no referral service has every college out there on its database. They only have a select few - ones that pay them a listing fee. In the education matching industry, such listing fees are common. They even charge additional fees for each new referral - about $20 for each new student they sent to the colleges. Each time a student signs up to a referral service for their college search, a representative sits down with the student, tries to learn what they really need (hopefully), and sends information about that student to all the colleges that he can think of.

Mostly, any referral service these days counts the for-profit universities among its best clients. For-profit colleges are pretty much booming these days. And referral services are making so much money off matching students with these for-profit universities that one of the most successful examples, QuinStreet, has even gone public.

The problem is, there is so much money in this that some referral services will break the law to make an extra buck. There was a case recently where whistleblowers alleged that the University of Phoenix was paying incentives to get recruiters to recommend their college to potential students. That's against the law. And then, there is the matter of how the representatives from these referral services can really be aggressive in the way they interview candidates. They tend to recommend universities that promise far more than they can actually accomplish.

And then of course, since the recruiters get paid commissions for every successful referral that they make, there is the possibility that they will try to use any means possible to get a student to accept a college they have in mind. College is something that involves a lot of money. Getting students to make the wrong choice can cost them a great deal. Students just don't need a high-pressure sales pitch at this point in their lives. And often, going to a college referral service means exactly that.

Baylor College of Medicine Enrolment

Like other medical schools that have gained recognition due to their performance, Baylor College of Medicine attracts thousands of applications from hopeful students each year. The Houston, Texas based institutions turns down most of the applications because it can only admit a small number of students due to its limited resources. In 2008 for example, the college made 172 admissions, and 129 of these were from Texas.

Some of the requirements that one needs to meet in order to gain admission includes an approximate score of 3.85 in GPA, and 34.5 MCAT score. Based on these scores, it is easy to tell that gaining admission to the college is extremely competitive, and only the best can succeed. Being the only medical college with private ownership in the Southwest United States, the school recognizes that many more people would like to attain their medical-related accreditation therein. As such, the college introduced an accelerated pre-clinical curriculum that students complete in just one and half years. Normally, the pre-clinical curriculum is fully covered in two to three years.

While applying for admission in Baylor College of Medicine, one has to include an application fee, which differs from one year to the other. The application fee for the 2010 vacancies was $90. This fee is usually non-refundable regardless of whether one’s application goes through or not. When applying for enrolment vacancies, the hopeful students need to know that the college (just like others) charges tuition fees to all students. Though the tuition fee may change between admission years, students can check the applicable fee from the BCM website. It is worth noting that the students will have to incur other non-stated costs in addition to the tuition fee. Such include accommodation fees, food-related costs, and transport costs.

On gaining admission to the Baylor College of Medicine, a student can expect to benefit from some of the best-rated resources in Texas. The college’s faculty-student ratio was at 1:2.8 in 2010, which is impressive especially considering that the faculty is such an important resource in any college. Even more admirable is the fact that the college has a dedicated team of 1,854 full time faculty members. Additionally, the college emerged 22nd among the best research institutions throughout the United States. In another survey gauging the quality of service provision among primary care providers, the college emerged in 28th position countrywide.

Both male and female student hopefuls have an equal enrolment opportunity. Baylor college of Medicine’s 2010 admissions statistics show that gender distribution was at 50.1 percent male admissions, and 49.9 percent female admission. This means that of the 725 students enrolled, 362 were female, while 363 were male. 

Baylor College of Medicine would make a good school choice for students interested in urology, general surgery, diagnostic radiology, psychiatry, pediatrics, ophthalmology, neurology, internal medicine, emergency medicine, and anesthesiology.

Getting An Environmental Education

There are two main schools of thought on the environment. Some believe in global warming and some say that it is a myth. Oddly enough, this seems to be by political party and not by common sense. Some believe measures to change how we live are useless and a waste of time, and some believe they are essential. Instead of just believing what a politician tells you to believe, get your own environmental education so that you can make up your own mind. Global warming may be debated for a long time, but the size of that landfill nearby is not getting smaller. Learn what you need to know and then make changes in your own life.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, you can not really believe that what we are doing as humans in not having a negative effect on the world. We are pumping pollution into the air around the clock all over the world, and we have toxic waste that is so deadly that we don't know what to do with it. These things are problematic and they are human problems. Global warming may just be a natural trend of the earth, but it could also be our problem. Your environmental education should help you figure that out with out bias and without listening to the opinion of someone else.

Your environmental education should start with scientific results and studies. These are unbiased and done in a controlled manner which means the results can not be skewed. These studies are often hard to read, so you may have to find recaps of these somewhere so you can understand what is going on. Environment education should not totally be done online, because you can find bad information or heavily biased information. Look at both sides and make up your own mind using your own brain. Don't let someone else do the thinking for you.

Once you have made up your own mind through environmental education, you can then decide what you want to do. Perhaps doing just small things to save energy in your own home are all you feel need to be done. This is good because these things do make a difference not only in your bills, but also for everyone else. Perhaps you want to start recycling, which is also a good thing. You can also start buying more items made from recycled materials as your gift to the environment. Every little thing does make a difference, even if it does not feel like it.

It will be up to you to give your children an environmental education as well. They are going to learn things at school, but you don't know what their teacher is going to be telling them. That can be said for any subject or idea presented at school. Keep a close eye on what your kids are bringing home and ask them about what they are doing. Not only does this help you make sure they are getting the environmental education you want for them, it also makes sure the rest of their education is all that you want it to be.

Have Early Childhood Special Education Programs Finally gone too Far?

Do you remember that old Jodie Foster movie Little Man Tate in which her little seven-year-old genius son goes to college? Well, seven is kind of old by today's standards. No, really! These days, there are four-year-olds being sent to early childhood special education programs at colleges to get a head start on their academic lives. Why, you ask? It's because colleges happen to be really strapped for funds and they want to do whatever they can to sell their services to as many paying customers (they aren’t called students anymore) as possible. And programs of this kind are different from the college summer programs that high school students have been able to take advantage of for years.

Parents with kindergarten-aged children who feel that their tots are destined for big careers in medicine, the sciences or anything these days, sign their children up for these early childhood special education programs that charge anything from $250 a week up to something that's ten times as much.

So do these courses actually help provide children with the stimulating environment as parents hope or are little genius children the only ones who are able to take any advantage of them? Education counselors are pretty sure that early childhood special education programs don't actually harm anyone. But they aren't so sure about the benefits to your average child of being placed in this kind of environment.

But no matter because these summer programs have become spectacularly popular among ambitious parents. Summer engineering programs for elementary school children happen to be the best-received. Places like Georgia Institute of technology and the University of Virginia have to process twice as many applications as they have places for.

These courses though, happen to be of the limited usefulness. A college-bound kid can hardly put this down on his college application. They don't ask for anything you do before ninth grade. People who are critical of these special children's programs claim that colleges are merely trying to make a quick buck and ensure that they can win a soft spot in a child's heart and that this will work in their favor when the child is actually out looking for a college 14 years hence.

But parents, while they may be a bit wary of the college course for four-year-olds, are pretty certain of the advantages there are in a summer course for 15-year-olds. College, then, isn't far away. And children can really hope to gain something that they can carry with them for use when it is really time for college.

Learning With A Language Program

There is always room in our lives to learn something new. In fact, using your brain and learning each and every day is what helps you feel young and helps keep your brain active. You can learn many things in many places, and you can do what you think would be fun for you. One thing that you can learn at any age that will always have a benefit to your life is learning a new language. You no longer have to rely on high school classes or knowing someone who speaks a particular language to learn. There are now great options to use a language program right in your own home.

In most high schools, you probably had a few options for learning a new language. Some of the most common are French and Spanish, and some schools offered things like German or even Latin. While these are all good and very useful, you don't have to limit yourself to those choices when you learn with a language program. You can learn any modern language, and you can also learn some of the old languages that are no longer used, but can be of use still today with the right language program.

Even better, you can learn with a new language program at any age. Children are often most receptive to learning a second tongue long before high school. If you think about it, they learn your native language before the age of five, and there are children that learn two during this time, simply because they have parents that have different native tongues. You can use a language program in the same way whether you want to start them very young, or you want to wait until they have started elementary school.

Home schooled children often benefit from using a language program. They can have this as part of their curriculum at home, and they can do very well with it. This is because the program will guide and teach the child and the parent does not have to speak the language. The software does it all. Mom or Dad can also learn right along with the child if they wish, can be a lot of fun. Learning a new language is much like fine arts, which help stimulate the mind and helps a child do better in the basic classes like math and science. The benefits are many and it fits in with any educational program you wish to use.

Using a language program is not just for kids. Any one of any age can use one to learn something new. Learning a new tongue is great for any career and can make you more marketable if you want to try a new job or a new career. It can also just be something that you have always wanted to do. If you have a favorite international travel spot, you can learn the language for a whole new experience the next time you travel. Almost everyone can benefit from learning something new from a language program. It can truly open up the world.

Adult Continuing Education is a Useful Tool

When I first learned about adult continuing education at a local junior college, I was interested in what they had to offer. After all, they were cheaper than regular classes, I would be around people my own age, and I could hone my craft a little more than I was able to do at work. I soon discovered that continuing education for adults is a useful tool.

My particular area of interest was counseling, and the professor of the class was actually a psychologist with years of experience. I had never taken an adult continuing education course, so I did not really know what to expect. I soon found myself learning insights into counseling and addressing patient needs that I had never even thought about before.

In our class, we would regularly hear lectures from people in the field about new techniques and the latest trends, but we were also provided with the opportunity to gather into large groups and brainstorm ideas, discussing with one other different things we had learned in the field. What was so great about the adult continuing education class was that it was several like-minded people discussing a topic that really interested them.

My interest in adult continuing education classes soon spilled over into an area I really did not know much about, which is automotive repair. I was a bit more nervous about this class, because I really had no idea what I was doing and knew that there was the great potential for embarrassment. To my great relief, the professor informed us that the class would be beneficial to people that were just starting out as well as to people that already knew a lot about cars.

Through that particular adult continuing education class, I learned a lot of the basics about cars, such as how to do a tune-up, oil change, brake pads replacement and so forth. I was not the quickest learner in this area, but at least now my wife thinks I'm a real handy man and I can save a lot of money by not having to go to a repair shop every time my car needs something done.

I took another course on literature, which further explored the themes and literary devices from some of my favorite books in ways I had never done in high school or college. It was great to listen to the perspectives of different people and to see how so many of us looked at the meanings in the same books in different ways.

Adult continuing education classes can be a very useful tool, regardless of what you are trying to learn. I would guess that I have taken about a dozen such courses by now, and I plan to take many, many more.

Adult Learning Disabilities Can Be Overcome

I remember the look of despair in one man's eyes when he was asked to read the label on tub of cream cheese. I did not want to ask him what the problem was, because I could immediately tell what was wrong. That fact of the matter was that he could not read, and while he and others with adult learning disabilities can feel really embarrassed about their situations, it is important to remember that they can be overcome.

I decided to volunteer my services at an adult literacy group meeting at our local library as a result of my encounter with the man at the supermarket, and I talked to a counselor about adult learning disabilities and the affects they can have on a person. He informed me that the biggest problem is that many adults see such disabilities as a source of shame and will not seek out help for them because they are afraid they will be seen as stupid.

The counselor told me that such things as dyslexia, ADHD, and other adult learning disabilities are correctable and that people who have such problems usually find that addressing them opens up a whole new world. I was still not convinced, so I started to talking to some of the members of the group to get their perspectives.

The first man I spoke to told me that he did, in fact, suffer from dyslexia. He said that he had pretty much given up on reading, because the words would get scrambled in his mind. A few years ago, he was in an accident and became permanently disabled, and told me that he got tired of spending all of his time watching television. He said he envied his friends who could read and said he felt he had missed out on so much. After finally seeking help, he told me that within a few months, his dyslexia was almost a non-issue for him.

I was absolutely amazed. Here was a man suffering from one of the most proliferate adult learning disabilities, and yet he essentially corrected it within a few months with some simple techniques he had learned to unscramble words.

Another woman who had a host of adult learning disabilities and had never graduated high school was waiting for her GED to be mailed to her. She had just passed her equivalence exam and was getting set to start college. I asked her what she had done to turn things around, and she said she finally got up the courage to ask the local librarian about such services.

Adult learning disabilities can be overcome. It just takes a little bit of courage, patience and perseverance, but they can definitely be conquered.

Accredited Online Universities Are Becoming More and More Respected

When I was preparing for college, accredited online universities were few and far between, and I certainly would never consider going to one. There was a sort of stigma attached to them that gave the impression one really was not going to school at all.

With the world of technology today, however, that stigma has all but gone away, and accredited online universities are becoming more and more respected.

One of the accredited online universities that is picking up momentum is the University of Phoenix. I have two friends that opted to use it for graduate school, and both have really enjoyed it and found it to be challenging. I think it is a matter of discipline that makes these types of schools challenging, because one has to keep to task in order to keep up with school work.

My friend Ursula said of all the accredited online universities she encountered, the University of Phoenix appealed to her the most because it was the one she found to be the most established. She was working towards a degree in criminal justice and said that her employer was perfectly willing to accept a degree from the online university and actually had good things to say about it from his own personal experience.

I had another friend, Lowisa, who decided to major in psychology through the University of Phoenix. She looked at other accredited online universities, but chose Phoenix because it was the easiest for her to enroll in and begin her course of study. She said that she found the work to be challenging and said she felt that she was learning a lot.

Kapella University is another great example of the number of accredited online universities that provide a good distance education. I had a friend named Justin who decided to enroll at Kapella University and found it to be very convenient. He said that between work and taking care of his family, he did not have a lot of free time. He said that Kapella worked around his schedule.

I was always wondering about these accredited online universities and how much accountability was actually in place for them. In speaking to may friends, I discovered that they are involved in virtual classroom discussions on an almost daily basis, have weekly papers that they have to write and tests that they must complete in order to move on.

It made me realize why accredited online universities are becoming increasingly popular and respected. People like the convenience of being able to study from home, they receive a good education and they have the satisfaction and advantages of obtaining a college degree.

Bottom-Up Learning in 7th Grade Science Hopes to Turn every Child into a Genius

To a parent looking at her child's 7th grade science homework, it can seem quite workaday, quite pedestrian. To any parent who dreams of a wonderful future in the sciences for their child, the top-down instruction system that regular schooling involves has to be disappointing. They teach a child all the rules and the theories first, and at the end of each chapter, they try to challenge the child’s understanding with a bunch of problems. This kind of “lay a strong foundation” method certainly does make competent scientifically-literate children. What it doesn't do is to build good scientific imagination that is capable of envisioning the great and powerful new things in science.

People read about how the real experts in any field have a gut instinct for their area of expertise. A great basketball player or chess player can look at the field before them, envision all kinds of possibilities and go for the one that they just believe will work. They don't sit and work anything out. They just see the solution. There's a saying that geniuses are not common because that means of becoming one haven’t been made widely available yet. Educators today want to see if genius can be taught. They wish to see if they can teach 7th grade science students a reliable gut instinct about their physics and math.

The way they wish to go about it happens to be pretty daring for a school lesson plan. There is no more top-down. It's all bottom-up from now on. What that means is, that students are supposed to just learn to perceive patterns in things before them instead of learning the rules and hoping that a kind of instinct can fall into place one day. The brain, they believe, is a surmising machine. It can develop ideas about things without certain knowledge of the details. Most people have an eye for something or the other. Some people are good at learning tunes quickly; some are good with wordplay. Whatever kind of gut-instinct pattern recognition or surmising a child is naturally good at, educators hope it can transfer to useful 7th grade science.

Education has usually gone with the belief that people need to fully understand something before a gut instinct can reliably form. But scientific experiments show otherwise. In one study, people who were shown paintings of different kinds of artists were quickly able to point out similarities among paintings by the same artist. Once the brain has an actual goal in mind, it can quickly find ways to pick out patterns and clues.

One way that schools are teaching 7th  grade science students about fractions, that follows this method, has been to allow them to use a computer program that graphically shows them how to make fractions by cutting up blocks enjoining them. Students always dramatically improve in their ability to handle fractions after putting themselves through a course such as this. Using video games such as this one can build up mental images in children's minds of how scientific concepts actually fall together. It's an exciting new time for middle school education.