http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20080711.html.
REPORT RELEASE: The Board on Higher Education and Workforce announces the release of “Science Professionals: Master’s Education for a Competitive World.”
=====================
Well, when the National Academies talk, you've gotta listen, I guess. But I'm a little suspicious of this. Higher academia has been getting it wrong for years about what skills and credentials are actually associated with the whole picture of technology happening, and they like having second-class citizens to be lab assistants, working in the machine shop, etc. when people with the same credentials could be valued first-class citizens in industry, developing new materials, computers, ships, aircraft, etc. or in technology policy or regulation.
There are a lot of disincentives to go for a long-term graduate degree in the natural sciences - in terms of financial and lifestyle choices. This looks like the academic departments are, in a more kind interpretation, trying to become relevant, or in a less kind one, trying to start a new racket in the booming part-time master's degree market - all those physics and chemistry majors getting master's degrees in engineering and all that mid-career business going to engineering departments, maybe.
This looks like a new kind of bogus second-class-citizen credential to keep more of the academics employed. Some of this academic wampum may be interesting but a lot of it may be difficult for potential employers to decode.
I think it's better to be a first-class citizen in business or industry than a second-class citizen in academia. One should watch this carefully to see how the credential community evolves before investing any tuition in it. If you're a science major, check out engineering, law, or business before going with one of these.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Selling Your Career Change
Interesting article, partially excerpted below. As always, one size doesn't fit all. Curious about the Salmon book. It doesn't seem to be all that focused on pathways to graduate credentials but I'll have to actually read it before commenting.
http://www.experience.com/alumnus/article?channel_id=advanced_degree_development&source_page=home&article_id=article_1150381503888
Selling Your Career Change: How To Strengthen Your Grad Application
By Experience
In this era of corporate layoffs, evolving economic concerns, so-called downsizing, and the technology boom-and-bust aftermath, it's no surprise that people switch jobs regularly.
More than ever before, people are also completely switching careers--and that offers requires a new education. The reasons for this change are varied: there's more acceptance of "multi-tasking" careers (an actress or musician can also be an author, restaurateur, and clothing designer), more tolerance for career switches, more job skills becoming obsolete (due to new technology and/or a completely new skillset and education), and people are marrying and starting families later than previous generations, which in turns fosters more career experimentation.
Sell the Switch in Your Application
You need to make your unique experience shine on your graduate application, as well as be convincing about your desire and ability to switch the course of your professional track. Here are some tips for creating a successful grad application and forging past experience into a new career path.
Talk the talk. In their book The Mid-Career Tune-Up, Bill and Rosemary Salmon stress how important it is to research, know, and use the jargon of your new pursuit in your application. If you've researched trends, industry experts, future predictions, and the history of the field, you can include this knowledge in your application. For example, if you're a lawyer applying to UCLA's film school, you can mention the ways in which technology has changed filmmaking and mention night courses or seminars in this new technology that you've taken (or even books you've read on the subject). A medical doctor applying to law school could mention current legal issues in medicine that fascinate him, using the legal terminology and issues of current interest.
. . .
http://www.experience.com/alumnus/article?channel_id=advanced_degree_development&source_page=home&article_id=article_1150381503888
Selling Your Career Change: How To Strengthen Your Grad Application
By Experience
In this era of corporate layoffs, evolving economic concerns, so-called downsizing, and the technology boom-and-bust aftermath, it's no surprise that people switch jobs regularly.
More than ever before, people are also completely switching careers--and that offers requires a new education. The reasons for this change are varied: there's more acceptance of "multi-tasking" careers (an actress or musician can also be an author, restaurateur, and clothing designer), more tolerance for career switches, more job skills becoming obsolete (due to new technology and/or a completely new skillset and education), and people are marrying and starting families later than previous generations, which in turns fosters more career experimentation.
Sell the Switch in Your Application
You need to make your unique experience shine on your graduate application, as well as be convincing about your desire and ability to switch the course of your professional track. Here are some tips for creating a successful grad application and forging past experience into a new career path.
Talk the talk. In their book The Mid-Career Tune-Up, Bill and Rosemary Salmon stress how important it is to research, know, and use the jargon of your new pursuit in your application. If you've researched trends, industry experts, future predictions, and the history of the field, you can include this knowledge in your application. For example, if you're a lawyer applying to UCLA's film school, you can mention the ways in which technology has changed filmmaking and mention night courses or seminars in this new technology that you've taken (or even books you've read on the subject). A medical doctor applying to law school could mention current legal issues in medicine that fascinate him, using the legal terminology and issues of current interest.
. . .
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Futures Studies (a community college program!)
Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland has an Institute for the Future: http://www.aacc.edu/future/ .
They are partnered with the World Future Society.
I don't know what they could do for a mid-career professional looking for a graduate credential, but this is still interesting. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School identified community colleges as being a "disruptive technology" for higher education. He defines "disruptive technologies" (more or less) as new technologies which encroach on the markets of more established technologies and usually do not outperform them but are able to find footholds in new and underserved markets, after which they grow, improve, and ultimately displace the established technologies. This will be interesting to watch.
Some info on AACC's Institute for the Future, from http://www.aacc.edu/future/ :
What does IF @ AACC do?
The Institute for the Future (IF) at Anne Arundel Community College seeks to be the local information and training source for information on the future. Learning programs, projects, research, and consulting will be in place to serve the needs of internal and external clients within the region served by Anne Arundel Community College. IF will be a conduit for connections with national and international groups that provide information on the future. IF would be positioned locally, nationally and internationally as a leader in working at the local level to enhance the understanding of the future and promote the use of this understanding in productive applications. Business, government, health-care, education and nonprofit organizations are some of the organizations able to use this information.
* Get a start with "The Art of Foresight" PDF
(Posted here with permission of our Partner the World Future Society)
* Find futures fast with our Practical Guide to the Future!
* Want to start a local futures institute? Here's a blueprint!
They are partnered with the World Future Society.
I don't know what they could do for a mid-career professional looking for a graduate credential, but this is still interesting. Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School identified community colleges as being a "disruptive technology" for higher education. He defines "disruptive technologies" (more or less) as new technologies which encroach on the markets of more established technologies and usually do not outperform them but are able to find footholds in new and underserved markets, after which they grow, improve, and ultimately displace the established technologies. This will be interesting to watch.
Some info on AACC's Institute for the Future, from http://www.aacc.edu/future/ :
What does IF @ AACC do?
The Institute for the Future (IF) at Anne Arundel Community College seeks to be the local information and training source for information on the future. Learning programs, projects, research, and consulting will be in place to serve the needs of internal and external clients within the region served by Anne Arundel Community College. IF will be a conduit for connections with national and international groups that provide information on the future. IF would be positioned locally, nationally and internationally as a leader in working at the local level to enhance the understanding of the future and promote the use of this understanding in productive applications. Business, government, health-care, education and nonprofit organizations are some of the organizations able to use this information.
* Get a start with "The Art of Foresight" PDF
(Posted here with permission of our Partner the World Future Society)
* Find futures fast with our Practical Guide to the Future!
* Want to start a local futures institute? Here's a blueprint!
A Doctorate Degree Program in Information Systems of a Kind
This was an article from 2005 on doctoral program design and attrition.
http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2005/I15f26Kohu.pdf
The InSITE2005 program also has other interesting papers: http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2005/
This paper doesn't really address the midcareer part-time situation, but it's still interesting. Robert Morris University is a university in the Pittsburgh PA area: http://www.robert-morris.edu
RMU's IS program appears to be innovative, though their programs are mainly aimed at the Pittsburgh area and full-time, not for part-time distance students. I had not heard of RMU. Who was Robert Morris? Turns out he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the Founding Fathers of the US.
One confuser: there are at least two Robert Morris Universities. The other is in Illinois (http://www.robertmorris.edu).
A Doctorate Degree Program in Information
Systems of a Kind
Frederick Kohun
Robert Morris University,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Azad Ali
Butler County Community
College, Butler, PA, USA
kohun@rmu.edu azad.ali@bc3.edu
Abstract
This paper discusses the design characteristics of a doctoral program in information systems at a university located in Western Pennsylvania. The program design includes unique characteristics that are intended to minimize the attrition rate among the students enrolled. The paper begins by discussing baseline statistics and reasons for attrition rates in doctoral programs. The focus thereafter is an overview of computer related doctoral programs that offer doctoral degrees in information systems. It concludes with a detailed description of the specific design attributes of the Doctor
of Science program in Information Systems and Communications at Robert Morris University (RMU).
Keywords: Doctorate of Science, Information System Doctorates, IS Programs, Pennsylvania IS Doctorate Programs, Computer Information Systems
http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2005/I15f26Kohu.pdf
The InSITE2005 program also has other interesting papers: http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2005/
This paper doesn't really address the midcareer part-time situation, but it's still interesting. Robert Morris University is a university in the Pittsburgh PA area: http://www.robert-morris.edu
RMU's IS program appears to be innovative, though their programs are mainly aimed at the Pittsburgh area and full-time, not for part-time distance students. I had not heard of RMU. Who was Robert Morris? Turns out he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the Founding Fathers of the US.
One confuser: there are at least two Robert Morris Universities. The other is in Illinois (http://www.robertmorris.edu).
A Doctorate Degree Program in Information
Systems of a Kind
Frederick Kohun
Robert Morris University,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Azad Ali
Butler County Community
College, Butler, PA, USA
kohun@rmu.edu azad.ali@bc3.edu
Abstract
This paper discusses the design characteristics of a doctoral program in information systems at a university located in Western Pennsylvania. The program design includes unique characteristics that are intended to minimize the attrition rate among the students enrolled. The paper begins by discussing baseline statistics and reasons for attrition rates in doctoral programs. The focus thereafter is an overview of computer related doctoral programs that offer doctoral degrees in information systems. It concludes with a detailed description of the specific design attributes of the Doctor
of Science program in Information Systems and Communications at Robert Morris University (RMU).
Keywords: Doctorate of Science, Information System Doctorates, IS Programs, Pennsylvania IS Doctorate Programs, Computer Information Systems
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Peter Drucker, self-knowledge, and career switching
The late Peter Drucker (d. 2005) is a resource who will get mentioned more than once in this blog. He's not just for MBA or management-science students; he's for anyone trying to stack Wednesday on top of Tuesday, or trying to develop one's career, whether by adding graduate credentials or other means. Lots of profound yet practical wisdom.
Two of many links:
http://www.epiphanyresources.com/9to5/articles/DruckerByPearson.pdf
No great surprise that a Drucker link is "epiphany resources." An important point that Drucker makes over and over again is that a manager must know her/his strengths -- and he claimed that most people don't know their own strengths.
I think this is a profound truth with practical implications. I've seen this demonstrated over and over again - people who are hung up about being something they have little or no aptitude for, while ignoring a talent that they could really do something with.
I wonder if this isn't even a worse problem with vicarious parental expectations. If we have trouble knowing what we ourselves are good at, it could be even worse with parental agendas.
More on this is at http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=26
Abundance of Choices
. . .
Knowledge gives choice. It also explains why we suddenly have women in the same jobs as men. Historically, men and women have always had equal participation in the labor force -- the idea of the idle housewife is a 19th-century delusion. Men and women simply did different jobs. There's no civilization in which the two genders did the same work. However, knowledge work knows no gender; men and women do the same jobs. This, too, is a major change in the human condition.
To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, Do you know what you're good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths? Few have even asked themselves these questions.
. . .
Two of many links:
http://www.epiphanyresources.com/9to5/articles/DruckerByPearson.pdf
No great surprise that a Drucker link is "epiphany resources." An important point that Drucker makes over and over again is that a manager must know her/his strengths -- and he claimed that most people don't know their own strengths.
I think this is a profound truth with practical implications. I've seen this demonstrated over and over again - people who are hung up about being something they have little or no aptitude for, while ignoring a talent that they could really do something with.
I wonder if this isn't even a worse problem with vicarious parental expectations. If we have trouble knowing what we ourselves are good at, it could be even worse with parental agendas.
More on this is at http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=26
Abundance of Choices
. . .
Knowledge gives choice. It also explains why we suddenly have women in the same jobs as men. Historically, men and women have always had equal participation in the labor force -- the idea of the idle housewife is a 19th-century delusion. Men and women simply did different jobs. There's no civilization in which the two genders did the same work. However, knowledge work knows no gender; men and women do the same jobs. This, too, is a major change in the human condition.
To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, Do you know what you're good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths? Few have even asked themselves these questions.
. . .
Saturday, June 6, 2009
How To Have A Bad Career As A Stanford Graduate Student
Not aimed at mid-career part-time graduate students - really at not-yet-started-career full-time graduate students - but still very good insights. Also gives an idea of how graduate schools are really structured.
http://csl.stanford.edu/~christos/publications/BadCareer.pdf
http://csl.stanford.edu/~christos/publications/BadCareer.pdf
Urban Planning
Speaking of urban planning, here's a guide to urban planning schools from some "new urbanists":
http://www.planetizen.com/topschools .
This should get bigger as the world gets closer to a peak oil situation. Communities will need to be planned and zoned in ways that encourage mixed use and don't force everyone to drive every time they need something from outside of their house.
A master's degree in city planning ("MCP" - degree names vary) seems to be one of these interesting degrees that one can pursue no matter what the undergrad major was, like an MBA or law degree.
http://www.planetizen.com/topschools .
This should get bigger as the world gets closer to a peak oil situation. Communities will need to be planned and zoned in ways that encourage mixed use and don't force everyone to drive every time they need something from outside of their house.
A master's degree in city planning ("MCP" - degree names vary) seems to be one of these interesting degrees that one can pursue no matter what the undergrad major was, like an MBA or law degree.
Career Switcher programs in community colleges
Some community colleges offer "career switcher" programs, another search engine mantra.
I had heard in the past that these offered accelerated paths for people with BA/BS degrees to gain credentials in things like nursing or urban planning.
Interesting concept for different pathways, since CC's are cheap, accessible, and sometimes offer online options.
So the only thing I've found so far under "career switcher" programs in CC's have been programs to become a teacher.
Great, if that's what you want. The world needs more good teachers. But teaching isn't for everyone.
I had heard in the past that these offered accelerated paths for people with BA/BS degrees to gain credentials in things like nursing or urban planning.
Interesting concept for different pathways, since CC's are cheap, accessible, and sometimes offer online options.
So the only thing I've found so far under "career switcher" programs in CC's have been programs to become a teacher.
Great, if that's what you want. The world needs more good teachers. But teaching isn't for everyone.
Terminology
Or jargon, or coachspeak if you prefer. Midlife career changes are now apparently called "encore careers." These are the magic words for your search engine.
One link of many:
http://www.encore.org/ .
One link of many:
http://www.encore.org/ .
Life Coaching
What's up with life coaching?
Who does it?
How much money do they make?
How can they help you?
What should you expect from a life coach?
What credentials do they usually have?
Is this a US-only phenomenon, or are there life coaches in other countries?
I'll be researching this in the next month or so. Several things observed right away:
1. In the US: Not regulated or licensed by states, at least not yet.
2. There are suppliers of specific life-coach training. It's expensive, like going to a good law school. For the money you usually get some kind of a non-degree "credential." More on "credentials" in a subsequent post.
One source of information, by no means the only one - picked at random from googling "life coach":
http://www.acoach4u.com/how_to_choose_a_life_coach.htm
Who does it?
How much money do they make?
How can they help you?
What should you expect from a life coach?
What credentials do they usually have?
Is this a US-only phenomenon, or are there life coaches in other countries?
I'll be researching this in the next month or so. Several things observed right away:
1. In the US: Not regulated or licensed by states, at least not yet.
2. There are suppliers of specific life-coach training. It's expensive, like going to a good law school. For the money you usually get some kind of a non-degree "credential." More on "credentials" in a subsequent post.
One source of information, by no means the only one - picked at random from googling "life coach":
http://www.acoach4u.com/how_to_choose_a_life_coach.htm
Another on-line graduate program
I will be collecting distance and on-line options here, particularly for career change pathways. Reinventing oneself has become increasingly popular. There seems to be a growing number of them.
Lots of master's degrees; that must be a low-risk option for a university. Maybe the logistics of setting one up are simple or it's easier to get them accredited or somesuch.
This is one in Museum Studies from the University of Oklahoma:
http://www.ou.edu/cls/mals/malsglmus.shtml .
Lots of master's degrees; that must be a low-risk option for a university. Maybe the logistics of setting one up are simple or it's easier to get them accredited or somesuch.
This is one in Museum Studies from the University of Oklahoma:
http://www.ou.edu/cls/mals/malsglmus.shtml .
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