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Traditional college education continues to draw fire from many quarters. Tuition rates have gone through the roof, faster than even health-care inflation. Student loans topped $1 trillion last year, more than total credit card debt. Many busy adults do not have the time to drive to a college campus.
Employers and employees alike are openly questioning the value of undergraduate and graduate degrees. Some for-profit colleges have been hauled in front of Congress to explain poor outcomes for their students in the marketplace.
So what are busy, working adults to do about closing their skills gaps so that they can stay highly competitive in the workforce and achieve their career goals?
Enter the public/private-sector partnership called Empowered UCLA Extension. This is a very different approach to solving one of the top issues in our country today – jobs.
Empowered is one year of intensive job training from one of the top universities in the world. The UCLA Extension certificates are highly respected by employers, and the program includes 24 months of personalized career counseling.
The program is delivered 100 percent online through an innovative iPad-based mobile learning platform that allows students and instructors to connect anytime, anywhere, and facilitates the highest quality online learning environment available today.
Praised by the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and Forbes as a breakthrough career program, Empowered UCLA Extension offers all the tools needed for career advancement at a fraction of the cost of a traditional degree program. Ten fields of study are offered, including Project Management, Marketing and New Media, IT Management, College Counseling, Global Sustainability, Human Resources, Health Care Management, Nonprofit Management, Financial Planning and Patient Advocacy
Empowered has launched hundreds of students from 37 states onto a new career path, and classes begin again soon for the April quarter. For more information, visit Empowered.com.
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Steve Poisner is the former California Insurance Commissioner, tech entrepreneur and gubernatorial candidate who ran unsuccessfully in the 2010 Republican primary against Meg Whitman. He has since partnered with the Sherry Lansing Foundation and Creative Artists Agency to create the for-profit Encore Career Institute, in partnership with UCLA Extension, to offer professional certificates and career counseling for adults. Poizner is CEO of Encore.
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Typical "small government" Republican, shilling for a privatizing partnership he owns that would put big bucks in his pocket. Great hype, but not a single shred of data (aren't "tech entrepreneurs" data-driven?) to prove Encore does anything but that. Everyone understands the higher education system needs seriously re-thought but proposed solutions by self-interested individuals -- with zero credentials in education -- and no data to show how many students in Encore actually went on to hold good paying jobs, and who still hold them, is pure P.T. Barnum. That Poisner lost a primary to Meg Whitman is reason enough to question his competence.