With the Rising Cost of Advanced Education

There are a lot of things people of my generation took for granted, and I took for granted, prior to this recession. One of them was the wide availability of a college education. As my 20-year class reunion steadily approaches, I look at my former classmates and most either went to college or specifically chose another route. In the early 1990s, a four-year degree was affordable at a state college. Today, that’s no longer the case.


Cut-backs have forced many schools to raise tuition fees at the same time that grants and loans are harder to obtain. What does this mean for high school seniors who are graduating in 2009?
And what does that mean for job seekers in the next few years who may not be able to get the grants and loans they need? For some of the most talented there are trade schools. Others will seek opportunities for training, advancement, and educational benefits through the Armed Services. For many, training will consist of certifications and a collection of college courses taken on an availability basis (when job seekers have the time and the money to take them.)


AOL Careers interviewed me yesterday about high-paying jobs that require little to no education, and which were projected to grow in the next five years. And so began my search. One of my favorite Web sites for this type of information is actually produced by the US Government in a partnership between the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. http://www.careervoyages.gov/


Over the next week, I’m going to pull out some of the positions that strike me as worth mentioning. The truth is that while there are good-paying jobs that do not require a college degree, the competition for all jobs these days is steep. Five years from now, when the economy has long recovered and the Baby-boomers (my parents generation) are finally feeling financially confident enough to retire, there will be more jobs than people to fill them. But of course, that is still four to five years away.


To find the job that is ideal for you today, the Green Light Scoring Model is a step-by-step approach to discovering your path to creating job security. It’s available exclusively in Creating Job Security, The 2009 All-In-One Workbook at GraduateGroup.com for US$30, including tax, shipping and handling. Best of all, you can reuse the scoring model every few years to determine your ideal job at that time. This one-time investment will be your career partner for years to come.

Happy Memorial Day, to those who celebrate the men and women in the Armed Services who have made the ultimate sacrifice (both with their lives and their time away from their families) to keep us safe. We honor your sacrifice and we salute you!