May 10, 2012: Should you spend two (or more) years getting an MBA or go the more “quick and dirty” route of an executive MBA or “EMBA?” The exact point you’re at in your career should make the choice pretty simple.

Traditional, full MBA degrees are most popular with:

• Young grads who’ve just finished college and want to push right on into grad school to get the best and highest paying “first job” in their business career.
• People who have been in the job market just a few years and feel they will be held back if they don’t get the MBA.
• Those who want to make a career change from a non business path into a more financial or management track.
• The type of person with some business experience who is very focused on getting true top-level expertise in a particular area like marketing, international business, accounting or finance.

To get an MBA, you’ll typically need to apply to schools, where your admission will be based on your college academic record and how well you score on a GMAT test.

EMBAs, on the other hand, were designed mid- to upper-level managers with five to ten years of experience who want to improve their careers – but usually without leaving their current field or the company they’re with at present. In fact, one of the reasons EMBAs are so popular is that so many companies have been willing to pay for their executives to get them.

They’re seen more as an enhancement than a career-change type degree. They also happen to be pretty widely available as online degrees. That’s partly because a lot of quality business schools that are resistant to offering their MBA programs in a 100% online format seem comfortable doing EMBAs through pure distance learning. Admission requirements tend to be far more lax than with full MBA programs, with many schools not even asking to see your academic record for admission.

Structure
MBAs are among the most popular of all online degrees, and they now come in all sorts of full-time, part-time and accelerated formats, in a mind-boggling array of concentrations (Southern New Hampshire University, for example, has 11 international MBAs and 30 standard MBA programs in areas including Non Profit Leadership, Forensic Accounting and Six Sigma Quality). Over the typical two years of an MBA program, the student usually has lots of changes to choose electives and personalize the program according to his or her needs.

EMBAs, on the other hand, are a lot shorts and a lot more template. You are likely to start this online degree as part of a group, and move through each progressive course in the program all on the same page. Deadlines are usually a bit tight, and requirements for participating in class forums are very clear and standardized.

Speaking of forums, one of the best things in an EMBA program can be the opportunity to exchange ideas online with other students who have considerable experience in many different businesses. A math problem about calculating ROI of a project can suddenly get more interesting when you read your fellow student’s explanation of how they apply the basic math to problems in the construction business, online publishing, personal finance issues and other categories that may be foreign to you.

EMBAs tend to provide a general management curriculum, unlike traditional MBAs or business certificate courses, which can be highly specialized.

What’s the value of a more abbreviated EMBA versus a full MBA? Well, employers have proved to be very willing to pay for their managers to get online EMBAs (and business certificate programs too). That’s about the best indication imaginable that they feel that this kind of degree can make you a desirable employee.

May 9, 2012: Today’s announcement that Washington University, a well-regarded school in St. Louis, would begin offering a master’s degree in American Law in a 100% online format is a small step that’s likely to make it only very slightly easier for a few online students to become attorneys.

Washington U’s creation of the new program, which is designed primarily for lawyers practicing outside the United States, probably says more about the sagging fortunes of American law schools than anything else. With the economic downturn causing a brutal falloff in business across the legal profession and law school applications dropping, Washington is testing the waters on bringing in new students from abroad. Other American schools have tested this concept – Northwestern, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and others have set up affiliated campuses in Qatar, for example. But few older, established universities have focused in on using online education specifically to draw in foreign students. Washington University says it’s program is designed to enroll just 20 students in it’s first group, and expand to 100 students per year.

Law remains a very online-averse area of education, with the American Bar Association still prohibiting schools from counting more than 12 online credits toward a JD or Juris Doctor degree, the graduate credential most practicing lawyers in the U.S. have (an odd requirement, given that law schools tend to require a certain amount if time in school, rather than a specific number of credits). The Washington U master’s program may, however, qualify graduates to take bar exams in a few states, including California and about 10 other states. Although numerous individual courses in law are being offered online in a non-credit context by U.S. law schools, no school has seemed inclined to push for a fully online J.D. program. But falling enrollments may open a door to more such programs.

May 6, 2012 This week’s revelation that Yahoo’s CEO has had false information on his resume for years goes under the heading of “You have GOT to be kidding.” Scott Thompson has risen through the ranks of the corporate world with a resume stating that he graduated from Stonehill College in 1979 with a degree in computer science. Problem is, Stonehill College didn’t even have a computer science degree program until 1983. Thompson apparently earned a degree in accounting, but felt that the computer credential would look better in the tech industry.

It all might have gone unnoticed. But Yahoo, where Thompson joined as CEO just this past January, has some activist investors including one Dan Loeb, who decided to take a close look into his credentials. Both Thompson and Yahoo appear to be in hot water now because the falsehood was actually included in documents filed with the SEC this year. Now investors across the board, journalists and bloggers are calling for Thompson’s resignation, in spite of his spectacularly successful record at PayPal and other cutting edge companies.

It’s unlikely that most of us will ever reach a level in business where so many people will be double checking our credentials. But the story highlights a basic fact: the higher you go in business and the more pay and responsibility you get, the more likely that a fabrication on your resume will be caught. Other well-known examples of this include Vice President Joe Bidden, who got heat some years back for exaggerating his academic record (though it clearly did not end his political career), Bausch & Lomb CEO Ron Zarrella, who claimed he had an MBA from NYU when he really never finished the program (did not lose his job but had to forfeit a $1.1 million bonus), Veritas Software CFO Kenneth Lonchar, who pretended he had a Stamford MBA when he had really graduated from Idaho State (he resigned) and, our favorite, Lotus Corp CEO Jeff Papows, who in 1999 was found to have lied about his military record, claimed he had a Ph.D. which he didn’t, and said he was an orphan when his parents were actually in perfect health. He resigned as a result of being exposed.

Even if you’re an average Joe, if you put false information on your resume, your chances of getting caught are pretty good – particularly if you are applying for a job at a larger company with a well financed HR department. That’s because nowadays, such companies use sophisticated software programs to run background checks. In some cases they actually make phone calls to check job and educational credentials. Additionally, if you’re in a more middle-management or senior position where you may seek employment through a recruiter, you can become effectively blacklisted in a business if one recruiter catches you in a lie and then mentions it to lots of colleagues.

Bottom line: you’re taking a big change if you fake information on your resume. Hiring managers look, in particular, for people lying about:

• Degrees
• Previous Salary
• Dates On A Job
• TechnicalSkills
• Grade Point Averages In School
• Language Fluency

Students who hold college loans that are subsidized by the federal government have been sweating lately. That’s because unless a change is made, their interest rates will baloon from 3.4% to 6.8% on July 1st of this year – a change that could hike charges by more than $1,000. a month for many who are not in a great position to afford it.

On the surface at least, it seems that both Democrats and Republicans see low-rate student loans as a type of candy that they don’t want to take away from their constituents. Both President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have said they don’t want students to suffer from big rate increases. And that’s where the talk ends and the political games start.

In the austerity-focused world of today, the estimated $6. billion that it will cost the government to keep rates down has to come from somewhere specific. Democrats would like to get the money by boosting taxes, indirectly at least, by making it harder for some business owners to shelter income from Medicare and Social Security taxes. Republicans would prefer to cover the cost by cutting the funding for some specific parts of the Obama health care law.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? No matter what issue you look at on Capitol Hill, it’s all an argument about cutting key services or taxing the well-off, and it seldom goes anywhere. Students who hold government loans have reason to continue sweating, unfortunately. If no action is taken, which seems possible, the rate hikes will go into effect automatically on July 1st.

A handful of colleges remain in the U.S. that do not charge students a penny in tuition. Just about all of them happen to be super-selective private schools with big financial endowments and lots of wealthy alumni. Cooper Union, arguably New York’s top art and design school, has an endowment of over $600 million, which helps it cover the $37,000. per year tuition rate.

Unfortunately, Cooper Union has felt the effects of a down economy like all other schools. For the present, it plans to start charging only graduate students a tuition fee, while continuing to allow undergrads to study free. The plan was pitched by CU president Jamshed Bharucha as a way to allow the school to move forward with the creation of new programs that combing art and engineering. But a number of alumni have agitated against the new fees, calling them a betrayal of the school’s identity and warning that new charges for undergraduates will probably soon follow.

Presidents of state universities around the country can only look with jealousy on Cooper Union’s move to force a small percentage of its students to pay for classes. As state legislatures slash budgets again and again, public university systems are having not only to raise their tuition rates faster than ever, but also to cut academic programs including some of those in the most career-focused areas students need most.

Undergrads who would like to get a shot at a free education at Cooper Union should be aware that it’s one of the toughest schools on earth to get accepted to.

A nurse may pick his or her specialty largely based on professional and personal interest. But before you jump into a degree program it doesn’t hurt to take a good look at pay scales to expect based on what type of degree you earn and what specialty you work in. From a basic hospital RN, who can expect a median wage of about $64,000, to a nurse anesthetist who might earn as much as $140,000. per year (more than some doctors make!), there are a lot of career choices to be made. Here’s an overview of how to match your nursing degree with a particular specialty, and how much starting salary you can look to earn when you finish your nursing degree program.

Here’s also a good illustration of nursing salaries on a state by state basis across the U.S.:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

I’m not sure the members of the “Occupy” movement realize it, but indirectly at least, it seems that they hooked a very big fish yesterday. At least that’s what common sense and my Tuesday night hockey group says.

55 per cent of Citigroup’s shareholders voted Tuesday against a $15 million pay package for the bank’s embattled CEO, Vikram S. Pandit. It was the very first time shareholders have “united in opposition to outsize compensation at a financial giant,” according to the New York Times.

It wasn’t the individual shareholder on the street opposing Pandit’s big payoff. It was a group of professional institutional investors including the Florida State Board of Administration and Calpers, the massive California state pension fund, protesting that even though Pandit took just a single dollar per year in compensation during the dark days of 2009 and 2010, the recent performance of Citibank’s stock, the worst among major banks, did not justify opening the floodgates on the CEO’s salary yet. The vote could spell and end to the almost mind-boggling acquiescence of investors to oversized executive compensation in the companies they own that’s existed for decades. How odd it was to hear, for the first time in recent memory, a key investor say that Citibank’s compensation plan represented a “disconnect between pay and performance.”

So what does this have to do with Occupy? The movement has, in my opinion, failed to see its most direct path to reigning in America’s undeserving fat cats: shareholder activism. People who own stock in a company can, obviously, directly control its pay practices (at least, in companies who don’t have increasingly popular non-voting classes of stock). I’ve long argued that mutual funds have tended to mute this control. They’re one of the most evil derivative products on earth, because so many of the individuals who hold them don’t even know which companies they have in their fund, and are very unlikely to show up at a shareholder meeting to challenge even the most outrageous offenses by management.

But institutional investors are a more aware bunch, and I think Occupy has, in a subtle way, co-opted them. I make that judgment based on highly unscientific observations of a bunch of 40-plus guys I play ice hockey with each Tuesday night. Donning helmets and pads in the locker room is a time of ranting about this (women), that (the NHL) and occasionally, the other: events in the news. The Occupy movement has come up in this context several times, and the reaction has been curious. Generally the cops, store owners and other normal folk see the Occupiers as the worst kind of spoiled brats. But there are always some financiers there lacing up skates and, they, to a man, show a surprising sympathy for Occupy’s argument – or at least their own interpretation of it.

The money guys accept quite readily the idea that some people in this country are paid far more than they deserve, based on what they produce. Occupy may take more of the view that nobody should be fabulously rich no matter what they do, which our financial hockey players would clearly disagree with. No matter though, the concept that executive pay has somehow become unhinged from reality has seeped into some very places where it has been absent for decades, and that’s a cultural change that Occupy inserted into the national conversation. Now, it’s having ripple effects.

The Citibank shareholder vote is not binding, but a bank spokesperson said the board of directors would take it “very seriously.” Meanwhile, financial journalists from one end of the web to another warned that Bank of America and others could soon be under attack over executive compensation from their leading shareholders.

RN to BSN degrees delivered through online learning have gained wide acceptance for a couple of reasons. Employers are comfortable with them because they are effectively a “step up” degree for qualified nurses who already have a good amount of job experience. In addition, it’s a type of degree program that is more based on book-learning than hands on clinical work. The clinical work that is required can generally be done under the supervision of a “preceptor” in the geographic area of the nursing student who has been approved by the online school. Finally, employers are generally willing to look at holders of online BSN degrees because there is simply a shortage of qualified nursing candidates, at least in many parts of the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be a need for 22% more registered nurses than there will be availabe in the U.S. by 2018.

We’ve reviewed a number of online nursing programs – alot of the schools don’t openly advertise their tuition rates so it can be hard for a student to compare. But we were able to identify a number of accredited lower cost RN to BSN programs to help you shop a bit smarter.

Competition among colleges looks like it’s producing some benefits for students these days, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A mix of schools in the private, public and even for-profit sectors have made a point of offering lower cost master’s degree programs online, though they tend to be concentrated in a few key career sectors.

If you want a grad degree in business, you’ll find a very wide range of options at pretty reasonable rates from some online schools with familiar names, and a few newer players in this area like The University of Southern New Hampshire, which has drawn high praise from sources including Fast Company for being a rare private school that’s on the cutting edge of learning technology. The school offers over 40 graduate business programs and another 19 degrees in various specialties of international business.

Some more key areas where schools are offering lower priced masters degrees are nursing, health care management, criminal justice, psychology and education. See our review of less expensive online master’s degrees.

Behind the news we’re hearing of a general rise in hiring, here are some predictions the key job areas we cover. Overall, the picture is gradually but steadily improving.

MBA Hiring 2012:
The MBA Career Services Council has reported a surge in hiring of business schools grads, with schools reporting up to 75% of all students having a job lined up on graduation day. “We’re seeing an increase in almost all industries and in most company types,” said Nicole Hall, Executive Director of Alumni and Career Services at Graziadio Business School of Pepperdine University in the report.

Industries where MBA hiring looks strongest are:
Consulting
Pharam/Biotech
Technology
Energy
Consumer Products

Hiring of MBAs looks weak, however, in the financial services sector, government and real estate.

Hiring Trends In Nursing 2012:
Through specific hiring numbers for RNs are hard to get, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a big rise in the healtcare sector overall, with over 100,000 new jobs being created in the first quarter of 2012 than in the first three months of 2011.

Meanwhile, job tracking company Wanted Analytics reports that in February of this year alone, employers put up postings for 130,000 jobs in healthcare, a whopping 33% increase over the same month in 2011. Not just the number of jobs grew, but the number of different employers offering them grew as well. At the same time, a number of schools reported surging numbers of students signing up for nursing degree programs.

Technology Hiring in 2012:
Without giving a specific number, Monster.com reported in it’s “Tech Hiring Outlook 2012″ that tech jobs would consider to rise gradually. The picture varies from one industry to the next, with telecom, life sciences, energy, transportation, and infrastructure companies looking strong. Reports from other job posting companies indicate that the best known tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook are likely to continue hiring in 2012, with a particularly strong focus on developers of mobile and social media technologies.

Monster.com listing these key skills as being in demand:
Virtualization
Business Intelligence
Mobile App Development
All App Development
.Net
PHP
Silverlight
Sharepoint
Java

Healthcare and financial services also look to be diong lots of hiring, as they struggle to analyze huge volumes of data and deal with growing compliance issues. More on computer science degrees

Criminal Justice & Law Enforcement Hiring Trends 2012:

Criminal justice is such a broad category that it’s hard to pin down precise statistics for town, county, state and federal police hiring. One clear trend should bode well for criminal justice job applicants, however. State budgets, for the first time in several years, appear to be improving modestly. All 50 states reported that their tax revenues were up in 2011 over the previous year, compared with just 11 states reporting that last year. This should help to spell an end for police hiring freezes and allow states to gradually being hiring new state troopers over the next 12 months. The picture is likely to be similar at the county and town level, though there are clearly big variations from one region to another.

The Department of Homeland Security does report specific hiring goals. It’s one of few agencies in the government that expects to continue hiring at a strong rate this year. Hiring is expected in these categories, by Sept of 2012:
Border Patrol Agents: 9,800
Adjudication Officers: 2,250
Immigration Enforcemen: 1,150
Criminal Investigation: 1,410
General Inspection, Investigation and Compliance: 3,000
Customs and Border Protection: 4,950

More on Criminal Justice Degrees & Careers