College Education

Are you looking to go to college but are unable to go to a school and take classes? With the advances in technology you are now able to take your college level classes online. Here is some basic info on getting your online college education.

Here are some reasons why you should consider getting your online college education:

1. Do you have a busy schedule? If you have a full-time job or children that you must worry about going to school is not really an option. Most colleges provide you with the course material so that you can download it and learn the material on your own time. This is perfect for those of you who do not want to work their schedule around college but rather work college around their schedule.

2. Are you interested in getting your college degree but do not live near a traditional college? Getting your college education online is the best choice for you. Going to college online eliminates the need for you to have to travel to an actual college but rather just forces you to walk to a computer.

3. Many people that are out of their 20′s feel embarrassed going to college with students that are younger than 24. It is a common reaction for many people to not want to have to spend time learning with younger people around and online classes are the perfect thing for you.

So, if any of the above three things fit you or if you just want to get your college education online here is some basic information you must know.

1. Online courses are not easier than a traditional college. Online courses, for certain people, can actually be harder because you do not have a professor you gives you hints for the tests and helps you learn when you are having trouble. You are able to email a professor but you do not get to develop a relationship with them which can hurt your learning in a way.

2. For you to take tests you have two options, either go to a testing center or get a proctor. A proctor is someone, none family, who watches over you while you take the test. The testing centers may not be close to you so you may have trouble getting to one so a proctor is probably your best option.

3. Although you are able to get an undergraduate degree, you will have some trouble finding a program for you online. If you are looking to get an advanced degree you should have no trouble at all.

Many high school students today are either dropping out of high school or are just not attending college because they do not know the benefits. The benefits of a college education will be discussed in this article and hopefully after reading it you will walk away wanting to go to college.

The biggest reason you should get a college education is because of the money. Those with a college degree earn much more than those who are without the degree. A survey was taken in 2003 and it showed that workers who had a bachelor’s degree were getting paid an average of $900 a week and those who graduated high school had an average $554 a week. That means that those with a bachelor’s degree are making $346 more a week than those with only a high school degree, or roughly a 60% jump in the average earning.

For those who are thinking about getting a job that does not require a college education you will soon find that you could be paid more if you have a college degree. Even if you are paid more in jobs that do not require a college degree, you will probably find out later that you were short-changed of many benefits such as health insurance, career advancements and pension benefits.

The next benefit of a college education is the bigger availability and selection of job choices in the market. Unlike previous generations, the jobs being offered to those without a college education or even a high school diploma are dwindling. Jobs such as industrial jobs, trades, and skilled labor which used to be prevalent before computerization are now no longer available in a big scale as these are now replaced by the faster and more efficient computers and robots.

The assembly line used to be a major part of why there were so many jobs in the different businesses but these people are not required as much now. In contrast, the demand for professional people in engineering, business administration, and management are in the increase. Incidentally, all these jobs usually require the professionals to complete their college education at the least.

The other benefit of a college education is that it allows you the opportunity to progress in your career by becoming a specialist or an authority in a particular area of expertize. For example, those with degrees in science, manufacturing, and engineering fields can advance themselves further to become specialists in the field of environmental sciences or DNA analytics. Hence, not only will you be able to do almost any job if you get a college degree but you will also get the opportunity to explore new job opportunities. This is perfect for those who do not know what they want to do for a career.

The costs of attending college today continue to skyrocket. Many students are finding it nearly impossible to finance their own education. With costs exceeding $15,000 a year, getting a part-time job often isn’t the answer. Balancing an education with the demands of a full-time job is becoming increasing impossible.

Individuals who want to pursue higher education and need monetary help to attend college have a couple of options. Self-help federal aid allows you to get loans and work-study programs. The second option, gifts don’t require repayment.

In addition to the US Federal government, other organizations offer aid as well. This aid comes in the form of a college education grant. The great thing about a college education grant, like the majority of grants and unlike student loans, is that you don’t have to repay the money.

College education grants are based on need and are highly competitive. These grants won’t necessarily cover all costs of an education, but provide the bridge that can make educational pursuits possible. These grants are donated by federal or state governments, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, research institutions, funding institutions, corporations, and private individuals.

The key is to start your research early when looking for college education grant opportunities. Starting during your junior year of high school is not too early. Anyone who wishes to pursuit a post-secondary education should complete a Free Application for Student Aid form and forward it to the department of education as early as possible. This should be submitted to the state assistance agency in the state where you hope to attend college or university. You may find eligibility for more than one grant or scholarship. Many grants are donated on a first-come first-served basis, so it’s best to get applications in early.

The Federal Pell Grant and the Federal Educational Supplemental Opportunity grant are two of the most popular and well-known need-based grants.

The Federal Pell Grant provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain post-baccalaureate students. Students may use their grants at any one of approximately 5,400 participating postsecondary institutions.

The Federal Educational Supplemental Opportunity Grant Program provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate students for post-secondary education. Students can receive these grants at any one of approximately 4,000 participating postsecondary institutions. Institutional financial aid administrators at participating institutions have substantial flexibility in determining the amount of FSEOG awards to provide students who are enrolled or accepted for enrollment.
Start with your local library or high school counselor’s office for information about all the financial aid available to you. On the web, an internet search with the words college and grants should prove very useful. Some of the more popular sites such as finaid.org, collegeanswer.com, and the Michigan State Library website are excellent sources for college education grant information.

With the average cost of college education rising approximately 6% every year, what is the best way to have the money for college education when you need it? We can easily help you with different ways to invest for college education.

In fact, only 40% of students graduate in four (4) years. That means that 60% of students are taking five (5) years to complete their college education.

It’s very important to plan for this major expense well in advance. On average, it costs over $6,000 per year to attend a state college. And if you attend an out-of-state college full time, there is a sur-charge of over $10,000. Private colleges can run well over $22,000 per year.

There are actually several ways to pay for your or your child’s college education:

• You can invest your money in the stock market or savings account. However, this can result in hefty tax payments.
• You can hope your child has the ability to obtain a full scholarship.
• You can take a second job when the time comes…or have the student take a part time job to help with expenses. But consider the longer time frame to graduate…and also the fact that there is a higher drop-out rate with students who have to work.
• Or you could have your child finance his/her education with student loans. But, this leaves them with a huge debt load when they are trying to start their new adult life.

Let’s consider a a couple of different ways to invest for college education!Let me explain how to have the money for college at your fingertips when you need it. Just purchase a rental property with a 15-year mortgage? I’ll use a $125,000 property for our example:

Equity will build! Even if there is no appreciation in value, you will still have this $125,000 property paid for in 15 years. Plenty for a college education.

But let’s run some figures on a modest 5% increase per year in property values. In this case, your property will more than double in 15 years. Your $125,000 investment could be worth over $250,000 when you’re ready to pay for college.

And you don’t even have to sell it! Here’s a way to take your money out of this property without paying tax on it. Simply re-finance it. A re-finance is not taxable income!!

What a great way to plan for college! You will have had renters to pay the mortgage payment…and if you re-finance for college expenses, you will still have renters to pay for the new mortgage payment.

Even with refinancing for a higher amount – consider that because the property has increased in value – so has the potential rental income!

All students and their parents know that going to a university or college is not cheap. And as if that wasn’t enough, the costs increase each year as well. Due to the increased costs of getting a higher education either at a college or a university, people have started to question the actual value of university or college education.

Which costs are we talking about? First and foremost the tuition cost but also the time full-time employment students lose when going to college. In addition most students have thousands of dollars of debt when they come out of school. Is it really worth it? Is college education an investment that pays off? These are questions any student and their parents should consider. In this article I will briefly discuss an approach for answering these questions. If we use a strictly economic model, it’s pretty easy: You must simply review the investment of the education and estimate the return from it. This can be done both from a personal view and from the view of society.

From a financial point of view, reliable data to suggest that on average and over time a college graduate will earn a great deal more than a high school graduate. The United States Census bureau estimates that over a lifetime a university or college graduate will earn on average around $2.1 million dollars compared to an median lifetime income of $1.2 million dollars for a high school graduate.

In comparison with the cost of attending a four year public university or college at an average of cost of about $10,000 per year and even adding the cost of lost working time, it is very clear that attending university or collage has financial value.

But there are more benefits than the strict financial. In a report published by the Institute for Higher Education Policy in 1998, there are evidence that people who completed a college or university program experienced a number of ancillary benefits. Some of the major benefits was:

• improved quality of life for their children
• more hobbies and leisure activities
• higher levels of saving
• increased mobility; personal as well as professional
• better consumer decision making

Another report from the Carnegie Foundation mentioned some other benefits of higher education like a clear tendency for post-secondary students to become

• more cultured,
• more consistent
• less authoritarian
• more open-minded,
• more rational

What it also showed was that these advantages are also passed along to their children and even their children’s children.

We known for a long time that university or college education can even improve your health and numerous studies have shown positive correlation between completion of higher education and good health, not only for graduates but for their children as well.

There is also advantage and value to the society from higher education. According to the Institute for Higher Education these advantages include

• higher tax revenues,
• more productivity at the workplace
• expanded consumption
• more workforce flexibility
• less reliance on government financial support.

The conclusion is that even when a strictly scientific method is applied, it seems to be valuable to take a college education.

As the cost of receiving a college education continues to rise every year you have to ask yourself whether a college education is necessary and what are the benefits of actually getting it. Here are some of the facts about people who get a college degree.

1. You want to view your college education as an investment. With any investment you want to see a return. It is a fact that a person who does not get a college degree of any kind will earn on average $1.2 million dollars in their lifetime. Getting an associates degree increases that to an average of $1.6 million, an increase of over $400,000 for 2 years of college.

A person who receives a bachelors degree will earn $2.1 million or almost $900,000 more for going to college for 4 years. That is the return you get on investing your time and money in a college education.

2. Getting a college education offers a variety of degrees which determine the amount of time and money you will spend. A technical degree can be obtained in as little as 6 months and for as low as a few thousand dollars. Going to a 4 year state university is going to cost an average of $40,000 or more in total expenses including tuition, books, living expenses, food, etc.

You can certainly control those costs by living at home. In Colorado, for example, living at home and attending Metro State University will save a college student close to $10,000 in total expenses versus attending the University Of Northern Colorado.

No matter how you do it you are going to spend time to get a degree. Many students enroll in college and change their major 1, 2, 3 times or more. This can add additional years in getting the degree for the major you do settle on. Another problem with attending colleges is that they require general education courses for things such as history, or math, for a music major as example. This adds to your cost while offering virtually no relevance to what you will do for a living.

Statistics have proven that the more education you receive the more you will earn. Getting a college education in a field that interests you has shown that people are healthier and happier as well. This leads to a longer career and an improved lifestyle with friends and family. You have to personally weigh the costs associated with a college education, with your own career goals and plans.

At this point in life I am a self-sufficient and independent person ready to take the next step in life. As I am finishing high school I clearly see my future goals that I can potentially derive from college education. The high school experience helped me understand that education is not all about reading textbooks and writing research papers. Even though those components are also extremely important and without them education would not live up to its definition, I understand education as a gradual process of learning that has a far greater scope than simply attending lectures and doing homework assignments. There are much more things I have yet to learn.

I view college education as a global learning process that would encompass learning new things that will have some positive influence on my personality in the future. Studying the various disciplines offered by a university is important but college experience should not be confined to that academic experience only. I consider college education a much more valuable experience than high school because living on campus far away from my family will have very significant impact on my personality. Living on my own will help me assess my personal skills, and ascertain the areas of strength and weakness. I consider on-campus residence opportunity a crucial part of college education because I will get a chance to discover things about myself that I never though I had. There will definitely be pleasant moments as well as hardships but it is the only way to test a person. It is much better to know your weaknesses and strengths rather than staying ignorant of their presence. Even if a person has many weaknesses it is a much better option to discover them and then fight each particular weakness rather than overlooking the drawbacks and shortcomings of one’s personality.

I consider college education to be of extreme importance because it contributes to the overall process of transformation of a teenager into an adult. Some teenagers never overgrow that stage because they have never been exposed to independent, self-sufficient lifestyle. Always living with parents who care about a person and solve all problems that arise along the way is not always good it terms of their contribution to personal development of a child. Life is difficult and the best way to learn effective strategies and techniques of dealing with future problems and difficulties is to face them with an open mind and open eyes. I am not advocating lack of parental care and support. By no means should you get that impression. On the contrary, a child must be assured that parents are always there to help in case he or she encounters a problem that is too difficult to solve on one’s own. College experience provides that environment where young people can face the realities of life and see if they can deal with their personal problems themselves. I am sure that college education will give me a chance to become an independent and self-sufficient person capable of dealing with everyday life situations. I consider that to be a very important component of college education. Also, I believe that college education will give me an ample opportunity to improve most of my skills and shape my inner world in the sense that I will be able to critically comprehend what goes on in the present-day society and have my personal opinion about various issues. I hope to meet new people from various cultural and social backgrounds who surely have valuable experience to share and different ideas to communicate. I believe that it is through communication with other human-beings that people are able to learn new things and generate original ideas. Those are the things that I expect to get out of college education besides the information that I will learn from the textbooks and informative lectures delivered by experienced professors.

Year after year, the expenses for college rise and some parents find it difficult to raise money for their child’s college education. Some parents have opted to save money for their child’s college via trust fund. But still, there isn’t just enough money to pay for other college expenses and miscellaneous. One way to make sure that there is money by the time a child reaches college is through education IRA.

It is an account specifically created to cater the financial needs of parents with children who will be going to college. It was created almost 10 years ago, January 1, 1998 to be exact. It takes money and years to build up a strong foundation for your child’s college expenses. But just like any investment, it is best started while the child is still young and the over-all expenses are still minimal.

If you want to invest on education IRA for your child who is under 18 year old, you can deposit up to $ 500 per year. Other immediate family members can chip in and contribute to your child’s education IRA, but make sure that your over-all contributions do not exceed the limit of $ 500 per one tax year.

The money you will put up for your child’s account will be taxed, but the earnings are non-taxable so long as the funds are paid for eligible college expenses. These expenses include the college tuition fee, laboratory and supplies, room and board, and books. You may want to check with the IRS for the detailed information about the eligible fees to be paid. If you prefer a financial planner, you may want to do the same step before paying for anything, because the last thing you would want to do is pay for extra fees.

A rule of thumb when considering an education IRA is: as your income increases, the less you can contribute. This rule applies for parents who have a limited or maximum allowable contribution for their child’s account. For instance, a single parent, unmarried, whose gross income is $ 96,500 in one taxable year, can make a maximum contribution of $ 450 per child for that specific year. For married couples who are filing joint taxes, with an income of $ 160,000, cannot contribute to an education IRA.

The bottom line here is this, if a single parent or both parents have more than $ 110,000 gross annual income per taxable year, they are prohibited to contribute to an education IRA. The IRS prohibits any parent to do so if that is the case.The contributions you will make for your child are non-taxable. However, when your child withdraws the funds, appropriate taxes will be deducted. Provided that your child complies with the rules governing the education IRA, taxes will not be charged. Only eligible college expenses are allowed in order to enjoy the tax free withdrawals.

If your child doesn’t want to go to college, you can turnover the education IRA account to one of your children. The turnover account will not be taxed as long as the rules are followed. However, if you let your child- the beneficiary of the education IRA account, withdraw the funds- he/she will be required to pay for an additional 10% tax. Check the IRS for details for this option.

One good tip before deciding to open an education IRA account for your child is to seek advice from the IRS. The process is quite easy and simple, but the complexity regarding tax rules needs more attention than anything else. Consult an IRS agent regarding this matter to ensure that your education IRA will be beneficial to you and your child.

Community College education has many advantages; however, there are a few disadvantages of community college education that need to be mentioned. We prefer to look at the positive side of things, but choose to ignore the negative aspects. However, in case of community college education, the positive aspects far outweigh the negatives. In case you decide to take up community college education and plan to go on for further studies at the university level, you should be aware of the larger picture. Some of the disadvantages associated with community college education are discussed below:

1. Students, who plan to transfer to university after completing the two-year community college course, should ensure that the courses they are taking are compatible to those available at the university level. Most often, these are compatible, but there may be some exceptions that you should know about. In case you are planning to attend a University situated near your present community college, you can verify if they have some agreement that will allow the transfer of associate degree graduates to the university, easily.

2. Another disadvantage of a community college is that it does not provide residential accommodation to students. They are mostly commuter campuses, as they prefer to spend on academic development rather than on student housing. Residential campuses are convenient for students to participate in sports and other extra curricular activities that may be held at the college. Community colleges in the rural areas usually provide hostel facilities to their students.

3. Community colleges offer a limited choice for specific classes as compared to the classes offered by a university. You may also require an extra semester or an extra year to complete your associate degree. Universities, on the other hand offer a greater amount of flexibility and choice of classes, especially for the lower level graduate courses.

4. The libraries at the community colleges are much smaller as compared to universities. This therefore limits the students’ ability to do research. The simple reason for this is the fact that universities have a larger fund to spend on the libraries and research facilities compared to the community colleges. Universities can thus afford to have large libraries for the benefit of their students.

Many state governments are passing laws to make it mandatory for the colleges within the state to accept the transfer of community college credits, in a bid to retain qualified workers in the state. Some universities offer distance education programs to benefit those students who live far away from the campus. This enables a larger number of people to access the educational opportunities that may not have been possible earlier.

If you wish to discontinue your education at the community college level, you will be limiting your earning capability to a great extent. Community colleges serve as a springboard to university level education. Therefore, you should consider the benefits of transferring to a university, even though community colleges may offer a better learning environment.

Once you compete your college education online, you’ll get the same benefits standard colleges offer. The only difference is that learning from online colleges depends a lot on internet connection. Technology has definitely helped many students across the globe obtain their bachelor’s, associate’s, master’s and doctoral degrees over the internet.

One of the main concerns that many do have with online education is quality. However, one must understand that there really isn’t much difference between online college education and standard college education in terms of quality. Many online colleges are accredited, which means they are up to the standards. When a college is accredited, that college provides levels of quality that are satisfactory or more. In this case, don’t forget to request for proof of accreditation when looking for the best online college for you. To learn more about accreditation, research on Distance Education and Training Council over the internet.

There are definitely lots of benefits in getting a college education online. First of all, you can attend classes anytime and anywhere. This allows for better time management especially for working students, parents or those who travel a lot. All you really need is internet access.

Another advantage in getting your college education online is the improved interaction among teachers and students. Teachers are able to guide you almost on a personal level and you learn so much more from other students as well. For instance, you’re able to voice out your comments or questions more during online class discussions and also speak with your tutor alone. You’re also able to go back to previous lectures and comments in your own time without getting bored or losing focus.

It’s not difficult to join discussions online. In fact, it is so much easier compared to joining discussions in a real classroom. Within online discussions, you’re freer to voice out your opinions, and because other fellow students also have the same advantage, you get to have a wide range of opinions. In a real classroom, people who tend to talk more may be the only ones who can voice out their opinions. Another advantage with online learning is you no longer have to depend on office hours to speak with your teachers. You only have to use E-mail or chat rooms to relay your concerns to them.

Third, obtaining college education online will definitely improve your research skills. In the 21st century, knowledge in information technology is essential in most business settings. Once you’ve completed your online degree, you would have learned extensive knowledge in this area. One of the best things about online learning is that you’re able to access course material 24 hours a day 7 times a week. Researching has never being this convenient.

Well, no one’s going to forget about the costs. Online learning could be more expensive or just the opposite. So do a bit of homework and compare tuition fees. Remember, all online colleges do offer zero costs for travel and accommodation.

Once you start learning online, you’ll get used to it in no time. Perhaps the only thing you might need is self-motivation to find success at the end of your college education online. In any case, keep visiting online class discussions so you don’t procrastinate, contact your tutor if you’re dying to ask questions, and of course, take pleasure in learning your course!