College Courses.com Education & Career Blog

While Alabama houses its fair share of larger universities like Auburn, the University of Alabama (at Birmingham and Huntsville), the University of South Alabama, and Troy University, it also offers some of the Southeastern United States’ best career-oriented schools. These smaller schools cater to the non-traditional student who is interested in getting a rewarding career off the ground in as little time as possible. Typical features of these schools include small class sizes, personalized career planning services, and instruction by industry-experienced professionals.

Foremost among these training centers is Birmingham’s Herzing College. Not surprisingly, Herzing’s certificate and degree programs are focused on business and technology. These sorts of career training programs should be paid particularly close attention to by Alabama residents, as a recent article in Forbes magazine lists Alabama among the top 10 places in the United States for high-paying tech jobs. Herzing’s programs in Computer Networking and IT not only offer the basic training required by students looking to take advantage of this hot job market but also offer internship opportunities that take education outside the classroom and into the real world. Students benefit from these internships by building industry-relevant contacts and by adding genuine work experience to their resumes.

In a recent post, a study was cited that gave people with post-high school training good reason to be optimistic about the Illinois job market. Through collegecourses.com, you have access to more than 20 career-oriented education institutions in Illinois that will provide you with the training you need to take full advantage of the impending employment boom in specialized areas like finance, insurance, management, and information/technical services.

Highlights of this list of valuable programs include the MBA degrees offered by Ellis College, which provide specializations in areas like accounting, finance, e-Commerce, global management, technological management, and health care administation. These specializations will help set you apart from the rest of the job applicant pool because they provide employers with evidence of the particular types of knowledge that their industry requires. In other words, sometimes being trained just in “business management” is not enough. Be sure to click on the link above for a full list of the specializations offered by Ellis College.

Also included among Illinois career colleges is TechSkills, a school that focuses on training for industry certification exams given by Microsoft, Java, CompTIA, Oracle,Cisco, and other companies. These certifications are absolutely imperative for anyone who is considering working in any technical services field, and especially in IT. Techskills has Illinois campus locations in Chicago, in the Chicago Loop, and in Fairview Heights.

Westwood College is another employment-directed Illinois college that offers training in both computers and business, but offers this training in cross-over, interdisciplinary programs. Westwood’s unique e-Business Management, Information Systems Security, and Computer Network Management programs are highly valuable because they teach not only generally demanded skills but also skills that are required by today’s specialized economy. This allows graduates to meet the demands of many different employers. Westwood has Illinois campuses in Calumet City, in Chicago, in Shiller Park, and in Woodridge.

Lastly, Argosy University in Chicago not only offers Business Adminstration programs at both the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels, but also offers similar programs in Education and Psychology. Students at Argosy can either start a degree from scratch or complete one that was previously unfinished. Argosy has campuses in Chicago and in Schaumberg.

For full access to Illinois career colleges, many of which also offer programs in medical assisting, medical billing/coding, and design, click here.

Reports from Illinois analysts predict an upswing in “high-wage” jobs, which pay more than $56,000 a year. The overall job growth rate is expected to be a high 9.7%. A whopping 37% of these new jobs are expected to be high wage, while only 20% are expected to be in the low wage category. According to the study, which was conducted by Northern Illnois University, using data from the Illnois Department of Employment Security, the industries covered by this upswing will be information, finance,insurance, science, management, and technical services.

These better-paying jobs, of course, will require college degrees. Over 70% of them will require an associate’s degree, while the next growth category down will require at least a bachelor’s degree. Click here for information regarding exciting career-oriented programs based in Illinois.

Read the full article here.

A recent government report ranks health care, education, and business and administrative services as among the top industries in Washington State for job growth over the last year (view the full report here). All of these industries experienced an employment growth rate of over 7.5% from June of 2005 to June of 2006. Career training in Washington State is, not surprisingly, focused on these areas.

While containing many larger schools like Eastern Washington State University and Gonzaga University that offer just about any program you could imagine, Washington also has several nationally respected career-oriented schools that offer the dual-advantage of hands-on, job-directed training and smaller, intimate settings that are more conducive to employable learning.

Ashmead College, which has locations in Everett, Tacoma, Seattle, and Vancouver, offers health care programs in each of the three hottest sectors of the industry: general medicine, dental care, and pharmaceuticals. Personal training and massage therapy are also offered at certain campus locations. Bryman College, which has locations in Everett, Lynnwood, Port Orchard, Renton, and Tacoma, has similar programs, with Medical Billing and Coding also being offered at some locations.

Argosy University in Seattle offers degree programs in education and business, which can either be started from scratch or used to complete a previously unfinished degree. Western Business College in nearby Vancouver is perhaps the most diverse career school in the Washington area, as it offers a broad range of health care, business, and paralegal programs, while the International Academy of Design and Technology in Seattle is perhaps the most specific, as it offers interesting degree programs in fashion and visual communication that will assuredly help further along the dreams of the next generation of designers.

The entrepreneurial spirit is often praised as one of the mainstays of American culture and infrastructure. But, what, exactly, is entrepreneurialism? The basic dictionary definition of an entrepreneur is “one who initates, organizes, manages, and assumes the risk of a business or enterprise,” but this is hardly a how-to guide for someone looking for a way into a new career or career advancement. How do you know if you have an entrepreneurial spark, and how can you make use of it?

Are you an entrepreneur?

David Jones, a leader in the British retail industry, identifies three types of entrepreneurs. Think about whether or not you fit into one of the following categories:

- Type A: Those who create new concepts.
- Type B: Those who create new concepts, and can develop them through successful management.
- Type C: Those who create new concepts, and can develop them further on their own.

If you have the ability to generate new ideas or develop concepts that you obtain, you’re on the right path! But the difference between someone with an entrepreneurial tendency and entrepreneurial success is yet more complicated.

What makes an entrepreneur successful?

The chief crux of our earlier dictionary definition is the ‘assuming the risk’ portion of it, because an entrepreneur who is truly doing his or her job will be assuming the profits, rather than assuming the losses! The main thing that an entrepreneur must have is knowledge—knowledge of the existing market, supply and demand and its application in the current environment.

A true entrepreneur is not just one who has an idea, but one who knows how to market it, how to sell it, and how to best manage the company resources to turn out the maximum profit. Entrepreneurs need a working knowledge of how to analyze the price points that investment objects will sell for, to offer their commodities at the highest profit.

And where can you get this knowledge? The answer is simple: any education focusing on Business, Finance, Management, or any other degree relating to the functions of the marketplace.

The Importance of Business Education

Inspiration alone will not build your success. Entrepreneurs do business in value and value exchange. You need specific training in order to know great ideas from good ones, what the market needs, what the market can give, and how to manage your company at the utmost efficiency and productivity. Business and Finance degrees can teach you to analyze the market if you don’t know how.

After marketing savvy, says Robert Heller of ‘Thinking Managers’, the second most important thing for entrepreneurs to remember “is to keep skills up-to-date. …Training improves performance every time: and another common bleat (’I haven’t got time to [take] courses’) can prove very expensive.”

And now you don’t need to take time off from your busy schedule or current job to update your skills and increase your competitiveness. Online business courses allow you to study whenever you have time, and wherever you are. If you’re unsure about where to start, take a look at the business courses offered by AIU Online, Kennedy-Western University, and the University of Phoenix.

In keeping with the trend of at least the last two years, Nevada’s unemployment rate is still almost a full percentage point less than the national average (see the data here). As the most recent analysis of Nevada’s economy shows, investors are still heavily interested in locations like Las Vegas, Carson City, and Reno, which has led to the creation of thousands of new jobs. While many of these jobs are tied to the construction that is currently underway, this wave of investment will also bode well for the job market overall. A burgeoning group of diverse career-education institutions has thus developed in Nevada in order to meet the growing demands of local employers looking for motivated, career-minded people.

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Nevada is, of course, the leisure and hospitality industries. Enormous casino construction projects in Vegas (like MGM’s Project CityCenter)will assuredly create jobs for service professionals, especially for trained chefs. As a result, Las Vegas’ own Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts is expecting to be even more successful than it already is in placing graduates in top Vegas locations.

Also unsurprising is the growth of the trucking industry that has accompanied this overall economic growth. Nevada provides no exception to the nationwide labor shortage that currently plagues American trucking companies. The American Institute of Technology in Las Vegas offers a nationally recognized truck driver training program that prepares its students for a career in one of the countries most in-demand jobs.

In addition to these more obvious trends, Nevada is also expected to continue experiencing heavy growth in the financial, health-care, and computing fields. Click here for the 2000-2012 projected growth-rate for several jobs and click here for a more general two-year report of the growth-rate for employment in several Nevada industries, broadly considered.

Nevada schools like Las Vegas College (with locations in Henderson and in Vegas), Morrison University (in Reno), and the Nevada Career Academy (in Sparks) offer a broad range of programs in business, health care, and technology, while schools like Techskills and the Hi Tech Institute (both in Vegas) are more particularly focused on computer training, with an eye to heavily valued Microsoft, Oracle, Java, and CompTIA certifications. The same sort of specialized focus is also present at Las Vegas’ Nevada School of Massage Therapy, Professional Fitness Institute, and International Academy of Design Technology.

According to the New Mexico Department of Labor, the state has plenty of reason to be optimistic about the job market. Among the list of industries and career specializations that should expect a continually high growth rate are engineering (projected to grow more than from 2002 to 2012 6%), management (more than 20%), business and finance (also more than 20%), health care support and assistance (more than 38%), and computing (more than 35%). Great training in these fields is, of course, available in-state. Of all the career-oriented schools in New Mexico, National American University (NAU) is perhaps, in this respect, the wisest choice for students looking to take advantage of career opportunities in these growing industries.

Between its campuses in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, NAU offers programs that are specifically designed to meet these state-wide needs. Many of these programs involve cross-disciplinary training, which means that graduating students will possess valuable skills needed by several fields. The Health Care Management and Management Information Systems (with IT emphasis) programs, for example, provide students not only with the training required to take advantage of the nation- and state-wide boom in the health care and IT fields (respectively), but also with the managerial skills that will prepare them for future upper-level employment in these, and perhaps even other, particular areas.

In addition to these unique cross-disciplinary programs, NAU also offers traditional training in IT, Medical Assisting, Applied Management, Organizational Leadership, Accounting, and Business Administration. Not coincidentally, these are precisely the employment areas listed above that analysts are expecting to be among the fastest growing for years to come. Be sure to check the New Mexico Department of Labor website for more detailed statistics.

Job growth, as measured by payroll numbers, slowed in July 2006. 113,000 new jobs were added, slightly less than the 124,000 in Junes, and less than the 145,000 that analysts had predicted. Still, 133,000 isn’t all that bad and the slower than expected growth might convince the Feds not to increase the interest rate further.

The job-growth recorded in the July payroll numbers was fairly evenly spread. The downer was in manufacturing, as it often is, where 15,000 jobs were lost, while the mining industries one again padded their payrolls, this time with 8,000 new workers. Employment in wholesale and retail trades was essentially unchanged last month.

The health care sector once again saw robust growth, with 23,000 new jobs.

Temporary help services has added almost no new net jobs this year, a trend that held true last month. Business and professional services grew at a decent pace, on the other hand, in the management and consulting, architectural and engineering services, and in the computer systems design areas.

Businesses in the leisure and hospitality part of the economy also scored significant gains.

A different measurement of employment is the household employment data, which reported a decrease in the number of people employed by 36,000.

Looking at the July payroll numbers, what are some things you can do to strengthen your position in the job market? While manufacturing in general is unlikely to provide stable long-term emplyment, there are pockets of growth, especially in states where foreign auto makers are setting up shop, as they are in Indiana, Ohio, and other states. Jobs outside of manufacturing that require technical, electrical,mechanical or other trade skills could well be the best way to secure well-paid jobs in the near-future, as jobs as electrician, auto mechanic, many forms of specialist mechanics and smiliar positions can not be outsourced. You can look up a school in your area that offers training in such skills.

Online schools like University of Phoenix and Kennedy-Western University offer broad ranges of degrees in business, technology, health care, and more that allow you to enter or advance the career you wish to pursue.

Recent statistics show that Kentucky’s unemployment rate is dropping, which means it is high time to get the training necessary to take advantage of this hot job market. Fortunately, people in and around Kentucky don’t need to travel very far to get the career education required to succeed in fields like business, IT, health care, criminal justice, and law. Workforce Kentucky reports that careers in Medical Assisting, IT, Massage Therapy, Dental Assisting, and Graphic Design are among those that are expected to experience the most growth over the next six years. Be sure to check Workforce Kentucky’s long list of growing occupations. Click here for links to schools located all over Kentucky that offer degree, diploma, and certification programs in these and other exciting areas.

This list of highly respected institutions includes the National College of Business and Technology (NCBT), which has conveniently located campuses in Dainville, Florence, Lexington, Louisville, Pikeville, and Richmond. In addition to programs in Medical Assisting and IT, NCBT offers a wide variety of programs in health care, computers, and business, that are tailor made for you particular career needs. Daymar College (with campuses in Louisville and in Owensboro) offers similar programs for future computer technicians, as does Draughons Junior College in Bowling Green, which also offers programs in pharmaceuticals and other fields. In addition to offering standard career-training courses, ATA Career Education in Louisville offers valuable Microsoft Certification classes. RETS Institute of Technology is also located in Louisville and offers a variety of programs ranging from Computer Assisted Design and Draft (CADD) to electronics. A degree or certificate in one of these more specialized fields (RETS offers several different CADD specializations, for example) sets a job applicant apart from the rest of his or her peers.

The educational pride of the state, however, is the University of Louisville, which is one of the most highly respected universities in the nation. The sky is the limit for students at the University of Louisville, as it offers every career-boosting and academic program under the sun, many of which can be adjusted to involve schedule accommodating online courses.

In the wake of several high-profile financial scandals centering on international corporations like Enron and WorldCom, there has been an increased demand for internal auditors in particular, and for accounting professionals in general.

Click here for the full story on internal auditing. Click here to browse through a list of nationally recognized schools offering programs in accounting that are available entirely online.

Many of these programs also incorporate valuable internship experience, which can often lead to immediate post-graduation employment. Click here for the full story on the relationship between internships and professional employment, especially in the accounting field.