By now you are no doubt familiar with the story of Trina Thompson and her lawsuit against her alma mater, Monroe College. The blogosphere has been abuzz since Kathianne Boniello of the New York Post broke the story.

The Digital Student over at GoCollege offered some support for her plight. They noted that tiny Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, actually makes a promise to its grads, one that Monroe does not: a job or else.

But most were merciless in their criticism of the 27-year-old. Robbie Cooper at UrbanGrounds gave her “The Idiot of the Day Award” while Ryan at RightJuris dissed her even as he stood up for the legal profession noting that Thompson had to file the suit herself, the insinuation being that the case was so frivolous that no one in the legal field would touch it.

Given some of the absurd suits that have been filed we tend to believe her when she simply says she filed it herself because she could not afford a lawyer. Whatever the case, therein lies the rub.

Everyone in the blogosphere has an opinion of the information-technology graduate. Trina Thompson is now a household name on the web.

Today, if one uses any search engine of note and types in the name Trina Thompson, pages and pages emerge. Many with unflattering titles, many more mentioning the anger she feels as a result of her plight and all highlighting the fact that she has chosen to blame her school for her failure to acquire a job.

Future Employment?

Irrespective of the merits of her lawsuit, Thompson now faces more difficulty than she could have ever imagined.

Anyone involved in the process of hiring someone for a professional position will thoroughly check a candidate’s references. Not only will phone calls made and questions asked of all listed references, many employers will try to determine the inside scoop by contacting someone else that may have knowledge of a candidate but is not listed as a reference.

However, the Internet has brought new meaning to the term reference check. The time has come when virtually all potential employers add one other simple process: Googling a candidate’s name.

The availability to readily access information on the web about a candidate has created a whole new phenomena called personal branding. It is a concept every high school and college student needs to become aware of and breaks down simply: it is extremely important that when your name is Googled, positive information comes up.

The last thing you want to have happen is for that search to yield information that would cause an employer to think twice about offering you a job.

If Ms. Thompson was truly searching hard for work before but was coming up empty, her decision to file the lawsuit has likely become her kiss of death. By virtue of her actions, she has created the ultimate red flag for human resource offices. No employer wants to hire someone that appears willing to sue others in a fit of anger.

Unfortunately, the filing of this lawsuit led Trina Thompson down a path in which she lost control of her personal brand.

And given the nature of the Internet that will follow her the rest of her life.

Moving forward, post-9/11 military veterans may want to give careful consideration to pursuing their college education at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The school recently committed $2 million to support qualifying veterans as they pursue their studies at the school.

The program combines two separate elements, the use of the new GI Bill and a complementary prong called the Yellow Ribbon Program. The first element dictates very specific funding levels for veterans and is available to all veterans at all universities– the second represents additional optional contributions from universities above and beyond the funds committed by the federal government.

Drexel has taken the step to fund the entire difference between the federal reimbursement rate and the cost of a Drexel education. The key aspect is that the funds are committed without restriction and admitted veterans will be eligible for a free education.

The program is available whether the student wants to pursue their degree part-time or full or to study on-campus or online. The program is also available at all possible degree levels: undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional. The depth and breadth of options available is significant as Drexel offers several schools and colleges including the Drexel University College of Medicine, Earle Mack School of Law, Drexel at Burlington County College and the Sacramento Center for Graduate Studies.

Lastly, Drexel is placing no limit on the number of veterans who may enroll.

New GI Bill

Under the reauthorized GI Bill, the federal government has made several changes. First, the government will pay each student’s costs directly to the school. Under the prior GI Bill, veterans had to upfront costs and then request reimbursement from the feds.

The new bill also will fund costs at the highest in-state school tuition rates. Those rates of course vary state by state so the benefit amount can vary significantly depending on the veteran’s choice of school.

Finally, the new bill features additional benefits including monthly housing and textbook stipends.

Yellow Ribbon Campaign

Set to get underway August 1st, the Yellow Ribbon program sets up a partnership between a school and the federal government. Under the campaign, colleges may match the government’s contribution of the cost of an education.

At some schools that translates to more dollars but still some out-of-pocket expenses for veterans. At Drexel, it will mean 100% free tuition along with full coverage of all university fees.

To be eligible, a student must meet the school’s admission’s criteria. But every qualifying veteran able to meet that criteria will be eligible for the Yellow Ribbon irrespective of choice of program or campus.

Excellent Online Option

Qualifying veterans who do not live in the Philadelphia area will still want to give Drexel careful consideration. That is because Drexel Online is a nationally-recognized program offering innovative, Internet-based distance education programs.

Winner of the 21st Century Best Practice Award for Distance Learning from the United States Distance Learning Association, Drexel Online features degree programs in engineering, teacher education, nursing, library science and business administration.

Editor’s Note: Drexel is not the only school involved with the Yellow Ribbon campaign. For a state-by-state listing of universities and their level of support for the program, visit the Yellow Ribbon map and click on your state of interest.

At least once a week, in my GMail inbox, I receive an email that goes something like this:

Buy a College Diploma, Get a 100% legal,
verifiable Degree in 10 days.
No coursework or exams.

No Examination!
No Study!
No Class!

These diploma mills insist that you can earn that coveted diploma provided you have significant life experience.

Earn a recognized University Degree
based on work or life experience within 7 days!
Get your desired degree on the basis
of your Prior Knowledge and Life Experience.

Then, to really drive home the illegitimacy of these proposals (as if the improper use of capital letters throughout the email were not enough of a signal), you get this closer:

No Experience? No Problem!

We will get back to you real soon

Giving Online Education a Bad Name

These diplomas mills give online education a bad name. The idea that a degree based simply on life experience is clearly a bogus concept.

You fork over a decent sum of money (a few hundred dollars) and some college named St. Regis sends you a piece of paper that does tend to look official. Occasionally, a human resource office may be temporarily fooled, the important aspect being temporarily fooled.

These degrees are of course worthless and can never be equated with the work associated with earning a real college degree. After purchasing one of these bogus diplomas, not only will you be out the money you spent, you put your entire future in jeopardy if you try to pawn these off as the real thing.

While most purchasers try to plead innocence to any misrepresentation, employers will see anyone trying to pass these off as the real thing a major player in the sham.

Valid Online Programs

A school with online degree programs would never offer any such promise as “No Class, No Exams, and No Studying.” In fact, most students are surprised to learn that legitimate online programs can be very demanding.

Of course, college requires rigorous learning and online programs will mirror that expectation. You will be expected to complete all required coursework, work that can include online lectures and podcasts, written assignments and even exams in certain cases.

However, two aspects that diploma mills will use to entice potential buyers are two elements that online programs may feature. One feature of online programs is greater flexibility than one generally sees with traditional programming.

The notion that work can be done “at your own pace, on your own schedule and at your own convenience” is in fact one of the key aspects that makes online programming so enticing. Students work from remote locations and at a time of day or on those days of the week that fit their personal work schedule. Many online institutions also offer rolling admissions meaning flexible start and completion dates.

In addition, it is possible to earn credit for prior work experience or coursework. But to receive this credit, the school will expect applicants to demonstrate knowledge of the material through exams or a portfolio presentation. Then, applicants will receive credit for only specific elements, subsets of certain courses or perhaps a specific class.

All remaining courses will need to be taken – the idea that an entire degree or even a large portion of a degree program can be waived based on life experience is simply not true.

Online Education Here to Stay

The conveniences offered by online programs are extensive and those conveniences guarantee that online education is here to stay. Once the bastion of a few national online, for-profit schools, the demand for such courses and degree programs now has many larger universities offering online educational options as well.

These programs may be perfect for the person who needs to work while pursuing their degree. And once earned, these diplomas can be the real catalyst to a better job or a position of greater responsibility.

But if you are considering such a program, be sure to do your homework. Find accredited schools and be sure the accreditations are in the field you will be pursuing. Many schools have only certain programs that are credentialed so it is imperative to do your homework.

And as part of that homework, be sure to dismiss any thought of forking over a large sum of money to purchase a worthless piece of paper from one of these sham diploma mills.

Let’s face it, some folks don’t give a whole lot of thought to how their web site bloated with advertising appears to the average reader. However, some sites are so littered with selling that you find yourself turning away from the site before really examining specific content.

Then again, perhaps you are someone who really doesn’t care much for the idea of ads in the first place.

If so, you will likely want to download a copy of AdBlockPlus to get rid of as many of those intrusions as you can. And today, if your heart desires, you can go one step further, and make a personal statement with yet another application that replaces those advertising eyesores with art work from a variety of creative folks.

AdBlockPlus

Downloading a copy of AdBlockPlus will block 80-90% of those ads cluttering your favorite reading material. The software features a pre-determined list of ad materials to block depending on your home country.

AdBlockPlus simply whites out the majority of the ads, creating blank space. The feature not only eliminates the advertising that serves as a distraction, it reduces the overall visual clutter that is often pervasive on web sites today.

While AdBlockPlus fails to white out all, it is constantly being updated, a step that allows it to perform better with each passing upload of a site. A typical page features more than a 100 ads – more often than not, with AdBlockPlus that number will be reduced to single digits.

Add-Art

Those who have pursued a download of AdBlockPlus or now think they may want to pursue a download and are also using Mozilla as a web browser may also want to go one step further by pulling in a copy of Add-Art. Developed in the Eyebeam OpenLab, Add-Art is free and in the public domain just as AdBlockPlus.

The program takes the white out feature one step further, replacing the advertising clutter with art. Featuring material from art shows that are hand selected by curators of contemporary artists, the idea is to bring this work to a wider audience in a way that also provides a positive service.

The Add-Art folks insist they will bring new art shows to readers every 2 weeks. As for that art, users must understand that the software platform and the art represent separate entities. It is of course possible that you may like the concept, replacing the ads with art work, but not like the art work that is being chosen to replace the ads.

Techies May Want to Pursue Next Generation Concepts

For most of us, the chance to eliminate the ads and replace them with white space is more than enough. However, those with a creative flair will likely be enamored with the chance to import new art in a random manner as they surf their various internet sites.

But the real future could lie in giving the user more choices as to what they might replace the ads with. A program that allows the user to select from a bank of image clusters (let your imagination run here) would take the experience one step further.

Adding multiple options to get to a variety of styles that users could select depending on their whim is more in line with the current move towards giving the user complete control over their web experience.

Of course, the reverse is also true. Given the importance of advertising for sites, there will likely be yet another generation of programmers who seek to find other ways to ensure those ads appear in some manner.

The recent economic downturn has Americans thinking very differently about the process of borrowing. In what just might be the silver lining of the current crisis, the idea of creating extensive future debt obligations has both students and college trustees rethinking recently-accepted borrowing practices.

Borrowing for College

The first concern centers upon the amount of debt students have been taking on as they pursue a college degree. While most students have always needed some financial assistance to be able to attend college, the level of debt many students have recently been willing to rack up while in school has truly gotten out of hand.

Today, the median debt load for a student earning a bachelor’s degree is about $20,000 while the average now exceeds $21,000. Most alarmingly, roughly one-fourth of all undergrads borrow more than $25,000 and a tenth borrow more than $35,000.

If the choice is made to attend graduate school, then students generally add tens of thousands of dollars to the accrued debt. Depending on the graduate degree program students pursue, the current average debt for graduate degree students ranges from $42,000 to more than $125,000.

However, a student loan for school is often referred to as “good” debt because it is an investment in one’s future The reason is simple, upon earning a college degree, you will have the chance for a better job and far greater earnings than a person without a degree.

But many students are starting to realize that those greater earnings still may not be enough to pay off the debt incurred while securing that degree. All too often, students are finding their debt obligations from school eating up such a large portion of their pay check that purchasing a home or starting a family is beyond their financial means.

Colleges Borrowing

On the flip side of student’s borrowing, it seems that colleges themselves have also been incurring significant debt in recent years. Now, amidst the current economic downturn, some colleges face financial perils.

According to the folks at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “June 30 could be a day of reckoning” for many colleges. What makes the issue so compelling is this day of reckoning is one that most never saw coming.

Effectively, the competitive rush for top shelf facilities led many schools to borrow tens of billions of dollars over the past ten years. With their borrowing, many schools created extensive debt obligations against the potential for future earnings.

However, the financial downturn has made it tougher for students to attend school and thereby has greatly reduced projected future returns. At the same time, in the process of borrowing funds, colleges used the existing value of their facilities and endowments as asset collateral. Here again, the recent downturn has greatly reduced the value of these assets.

With large liabilities accompanied by shrinking assets, some schools are now finding themselves in violation of specific bond or loan requirements. At the same time, with banks and lenders under pressure, cash-strapped colleges are not as likely to be given forbearance should it be requested.

According to the Chronicle, the result could create a situation where bondholders subsequently “demand immediate repayment on part or all of an institution’s bonds.” In addition, in the cases of a school facing variable-rate debt obligations, those institutions holding a loan could legally hike the interest rate exacerbating the debt repayment challenge.

To repay these loans on the quick, schools must then turn to their endowments for cash, a factor that then further reduces their assets and thus increases their debt to asset ratio.

Beyond the debt obligations themselves, strapped schools could ultimately violate the eligibility standards set by the U.S. Department of Education for federal student aid. Any college so indebted as to lose eligibility to receive federal student aid would soon find its enrollment falling through the floor. That drop in enrollment would further exacerbate the debt repayment issue to the point that the school would have to cease its operations.

Carefully Consider Any Debt Contract

Any incurred debt carries with it an expectation of repayment, plus some additional cost (interest). Debt also generally requires some type of collateral in case the borrower defaults on the repayment expectations.

It is extremely important that students understand that debt is ultimately a claim against future labor and earnings. The borrower essentially gains something immediately but in turn makes a pledge to pay for that something down the road.

The recent economic downturn has hopefully taught many people a great lesson. First, as many have recently found, there is no guarantee that those future earnings will in fact be enough to meet the debt commitment. Second, if you default on that commitment, you will lose your collateral as well as your credit rating.

The number of home foreclosures and businesses filing for Chapter 11 combined with the current issues facing institutions of higher learning serve as a great reminder to us all: entering into debt is not to be taken lightly.

Some questionable sources look for the easy way around getting a degree. Some questionable sources fill that market demand with degrees from online degree mills. Who knew that was a billion dollar industry or that terrorists have got fake degrees? Worse yet, some high level members of the government also bought into these schemes, which undermine the value of a real education AND the safety of our country.

According to an article in the Journal Gazette, the newspaper featured on Fort Wayne Indiana’s Internet home page, distance learning is booming. As more and more students are signing up for not only Internet classes but full-fledge degree programs, more and more colleges and universities are getting on the distance learning bandwagon and offering dozens of majors online.

The article notes that in Indiana alone, there were 104,000 students enrolled in distance learning classes during the 2003-2004 academic year with nearly 90,000 of those enrollments for online classes.

Higher Education via the Super Highway

Distance learning is nothing new. Many colleges and universities have been offering distance learning classes via cable television since the 90s. However, even though that method of distance learning is still alive, online classes are definitely the majority when it comes to off-campus enrollment.

It can be and often is more expensive per credit hour to attend school online but in almost every instance, the money saved in gas, clothing, lunches out and other incidentals is going to offset the increase in tuition. This is especially true whether you’re serving in the military halfway across the world or an hour or two away from campus.

Scholarships

What about scholarships though? You’re sure not going to save any money if you turn down a scholarship just to sit home in your pajamas. Well, the good news is with some scholarships it just doesn’t matter. If you’re accepted at the University of College, they don’t care whether you’re in class or in front of your computer at home. You’ll find private as well as institutional scholarships that will be awarded to the student enrolled in distance learning as well as both kinds that will not award scholarships to the students enrolled in the distance learning program. It all depends on who is awarding the scholarship and the criteria they have established.

The William S. Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University offers scholarships for distance learning. Check with the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid.

Southwestern Oklahoma State University has a comprehensive distance learning program offering undergraduate and graduate programs. Their website states they do offer scholarships for distance learning but don’t state which ones. They do offer contact information though. You can read all about it here.

Non-Resident Savings

The per credit hour costs for distance learning can double if you’re an out of state resident, depending on the institution however many of them offer the same exact per credit hour cost for online attendance. This could end up saving you big bucks if you’re an out-of-state student.

After getting so many calls and questions from distance learners, Oklahoma University’s College of Liberal Studies created online tutorials to help students navigate through the website. Soon they realized that the tutorials were not just for distance learners, but for everyone.

OU’s College of Liberal Studies has provided a 100 percent online degree program since 1996. Other distance learning courses offered by OU are provided through:

• Oklahoma College of Continuing Education
• Center for Independent and Distance Learning
• Navy PACE Program

There is a growing demand to accommodate distance learners, and this is just one example.
To access the tutorials, go to libraries.ou.edu and click on the Help section and find ‘Tutorials’.

Search through our distance learning section if you are or plan on taking online classes.

From OUDaily.com

The Statesman (requires registration to view) reports about Central Texas Community College located in Killeen, TX and its role of educating memebers of the armed forces. It’s the second largest college to contract with the military, along with being the nation’s fifth largest offering online degree granting programs.

74% of enrolled students are members of the military. Notably, the Army offers $4500 per year to pay for tuition.

College degrees are increasingly becoming a prerequisite for promotion. The Chronicle reported that the Navy in August adopted a rule effective in 2011 requiring all sailors to hold at least an associate degree to qualify for promotion to senior enlisted ranks.

If you are currently serving or thinking of signing up, check out Central Texas College’s website for enrollment, tuition, and benefit information.

For other military options for active duty, reserve, and veteran servicemen and women take a look at our military grant section.

There’s an article on distance learning in the NY Press entitiled, “The Dawn of Distance Learning“.

I found some cool information and statistics. Let’s examine, shall we?

The Good: On average, a college degree nearly doubles annual earnings

The Bad: According to a Washington Post article, it’s harder than ever to be accepted to college

The Distance Learning: Provides higher education to those students not accepted or others who enjoy the other multiple benefits.

In 1999, the National Center for Education Statistics found that, in 1997-98, almost 44 percent of all higher education institutions offered courses via distance learning. Today, many prestigious universities are counted among that figure but most don’t actually offer a degree. Harvard and MIT are such institutions.

MIT’s Open Courseware resource is an amazing collection of knowledge. It’s completely free and available to anyone. MIT does not offer distance learning diplomas, and believes the internet should not be used to monetize education and replace traditional physical campus education.

I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. Some people can learn more efficiently via a computer than actual classrooms. Others may need the personal attention that professors, tutors, and other classmates provide. In my opinion, knowledge is knowledge no matter how it is acquired.

There are plenty of exceptions where distance learning cannot provide proper experiences since you can’t be ‘hands-on’ if you are only in front of your computer.

Certainly anyone wanting to broaden their knowledge should check out MIT’s Open Courseware. It won’t get you a degree, but who cares, it’s free!