Notes From The Edge - Military Times Edge

Last week, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki announced $3,000 advance payments available starting Oct. 2 to students who have applied for GI Bill benefits but have not received them.

Many groups, including the influential Student Veterans of America, have praised the action. And while the unprecedented move is an impressive attempt to alleviate the financial hardships placed on student veterans who have yet to receive payments under the new GI Bill, others have met the announcement with skepticism. The veteran-run Army of Dude blog, for example, recounts some legitimate concerns with the plans for disbursement of the emergency funds. Among those concerns:

1. Students must take a photo ID and a course schedule to one of VA’s 57 regional benefit offices in order to request the emergency advance payment of their education benefits. However, many students live hundreds of miles from the nearest such center and thus would have to incur travel expenses and possibly have to miss valuable class or work time in order to make the trip.

2. Recognizing that not all regional benefit offices are located near students, VA said it expects to send representatives to schools with large student veteran populations and to work with veteran service organizations to help students with transportation needs. The problem with the first part of this plan?

3. There are students who qualify for the emergency payment who neither live near a regional office nor attend a school with a large student veteran population. What are they to do? As for the second part of the plan, another blogger quoted on Army of Dude laments, “The same VA who couldn’t get your benefit to you on time will send representatives to your school to arrange transportation to the regional office. How dependable will that be?”

If there is perhaps something to be learned from the long delays in payments for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, it is that delays or difficulties of some sort likely can be expected. While some student veterans already have been forced to drop out of school because of financial hardship, this unfortunate action always should be an absolute last resort. As I urged in an earlier blog entry, if you are experiencing financial hardship, talk to someone at your school. Many institutions are willing to, and have, risen to the occasion with emergency funding options of their own to help students weather the payment-delay storm.

One aforementioned article offered similar advice:

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Derek Blumke, executive director of Student Veterans of America, and Patrick Campbell, chief legislative counsel of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, have practical advice for students who are short of money while waiting on their GI Bill living stipends:

1. Many colleges and universities offer interest-free loans to needy students or have created special loans or grants for veterans, Blumke said. If an institution doesn’t have a loan program for veterans, it might be willing to create one, he added.

2. Veterans often are eligible for other financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants. “In my experience, you can get money within about two weeks,” Campbell said. An online application form is at www.fafsa.ed.gov. The financial aid offices at most schools also can help with a Pell Grant application.

Soaring unemployment rates and dismal economic forecasts continue to strike fear in the hearts of many a job-seeker. For soon-to-be and recent college graduates, the prospect of that first job hunt may be all the more daunting. And with reason.

According to a new report published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers expect to hire 7 percent fewer graduates from the college Class of 2010 than they hired from the Class of 2009.

Whether you hope to use your college degree to advance your military career or step out into the civilian work force, good grammar, in your speech and on paper, is one sure way to give yourself an edge.

If you think misplaced apostrophes and incorrect verb tenses don’t matter, think again. According to one recent survey from temporary staffing firm Accountemps, 75 percent of executives interviewed said just one or two typos in a resume would remove applicants from consideration for a job. Forty percent said it takes only one typo to rule candidates out.

Just as you would not wear dirty, rumpled clothes to an interview or spout profanities to your interviewer, nor should you assume that employers are going to be so blown away by your experiences and charm that poor communication skills and a less-than-impressive command of the English language aren’t going to matter.

Often, mistakes on resumes and in cover letters are the result of poor proofreading. Spell-check programs are not going to catch every mistake. Consider these bloopers posted on the Hall of Fame section of Resumania (www.resumania.com):
1. “I’m attacking my resume for your review.”
2. “Hope to hear from you, shorty.”
3. “Chapter president, 1887-1992″
4. “I prefer a fast-paste work environment.”

Sure, they’re humorous. But I’m willing to bet none of these resumes and cover letters made it past the first cut.

Other times, grammar mistakes are the result of ignorance. Maybe you’ve forgotten what you’ve learned in high school English class, or you were so busy goofing off that you never learned it in the first place. Examples of some common, everyday no-no’s made in speech:
1. “Between you and I.”
2. “Me and my former colleague created an award-winning presentation.”
3. “I did not take it laying down.”

Avoiding mistakes in writing and speech is simple. First, ensure you have a command of what is right and wrong. Most schools offer writing refresher courses, many of them free, or have writing resource centers. On-base education centers or school career offices also have people on hand who can red-line your work.

Finally, always read over your resume and cover letter before submitting it for employment. When in doubt, ask a friend or trusted adviser to proof your work. And practice before interviews. Record yourself and critique your performance, or have someone else critique it for you.

Ever have a college course where you just didn’t get it? If the grades coming back from your coursework are not the grades you’d hoped to see, take action now to prevent your stumbles from turning into full-fledged failure.

In the September issue of EDGE, I wrote a story about surviving college pitfalls. Part of that story detailed how to turn around a failing grade. Some of the advice I learned from military education experts:

1. Talk to your instructor, and do it NOW. By admitting early on that there is a problem, you increase your options for dealing with it, said Bruce Solheim, volunteer veterans coordinator at Citrus College in Glendora, Calif.

2. Get a tutor. Former Navy Corpsman Christy Jacks was struggling with calculus at her school, Colorado State University, until she got help from a tutor at the school. She ended up with a B in the class.

3. Consider the source of your problems. Maybe it’s as simple as needing to devote more time to studying. But it could be something bigger as well. An undiagnosed learning disability or a wartime injury such as traumatic brain injury could be the stumbling block to your academic success. Talk to your professor, academic adviser or “if your school has one ” veteran services office about testing for a disability, said Ann Ingala, military veteran coordinator at Colorado State University.

4. Withdraw. If you are far enough along in the semester that all hope is gone, withdrawing from a class is most times a better option than getting a failing grade, Ingala said. Then, consider taking the class at your local community college. If you do have to retake it at your school, get help from a tutor from the start.

5. If you do fail the class, and failure does happen, do damage control, Ingala said. Ask about options such as retesting.

Maybe you just started college, and your major is undeclared. Maybe you are in your second or third year of school, and your chosen major just isn’t working out for you. Or perhaps, given the current economic climate, your intended field of study isn’t looking like the most promising path to post-graduation employment.

While choosing a major based solely on future employability during the ongoing recession isn’t advisable, it is smart to at least consider the employment outlook for your career field when deciding what to study in school.

Enter the book, “Best College Majors for a Secure Future” (JIST Publishing, 2009), a new book from education expert Laurence Shatkin. Using research from a variety of reliable sources, including the Labor Department and the Census Bureau, Shatkin and the editors at JIST have compiled a comprehensive list of majors that promise to weather the current recession quite well.

Some of the majors, such as those in health care and education, are ones you would expect on the list of “high-security majors.” Others, like public relations and religious/religious studies, are a bit of a surprise and offer hope that, even in these uncertain times, you still can study something a bit “outside the box” and hope to find yourself gainfully employed come graduation.

“50 Best College Majors for a Secure Future” is available in bookstores and at various outlets on the Web. Save yourself some money by asking for it at your base/school/local library or education center.

Back in June, I wrote a piece about how to get a good professor. Unfortunately, all the research and planning in the world likely won’t prevent you from dealing with at least one difficult professor during your college career.

With fall semester classes under way at most colleges and universities, you may already be struggling with an instructor from hell. While you may be tempted to drop your class and gamble on a different professor next semester, such drastic action generally isn’t necessary.

The Web site eHow has two good articles for dealing with difficult professors, one for those encountered in a traditional college environment and one for those teaching in an online classroom.

The advice runs along the lines of what I hear time and again from military education experts I have interviewed for various college stories: The key to solving most education dilemmas is communicating early and often. As Bruce Solheim, a history professor and volunteer veterans coordinator at Citrus College in Glendora, Calif., points out, most professors really do want to help you.

‘Tis the season for college rankings lists.

As many college students have headed to the classroom in recent weeks, well-known ranking lists like those from Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report also recently debuted 2010 editions for the next wave of college hopefuls.

While the rigorous criteria used by these respected authorities certainly make the lists worthy of examination, school counselors caution prospective students to utilize them only as a starting point.

A recent article from The (Cleveland, Ohio) Plain Dealer provides a well-balanced point of view on the subject.

These well-intentioned rankings lists, as well as things like advice from friends and family, and personal scrutiny of a school’s Web site will only get you so far. One of the best ways to get a true “feel” for a school is by actually going there for a visit, or, barring that possibility, calling up someone from the school’s admissions office and chatting them up about the place.

NPR also has an article from 2007 on its Web site that still is very relevant to the college selection process today.

As reported in this paper, veterans and schools could see substantial delays in getting paid as the Veterans Affairs Departments processes benefits for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill that took effect Aug. 1. The Web site Inside Higher Ed has a thorough article presenting the realities, rumors and fears surrounding the enactment of the landmark legislation.

Processing delays aside, many vets fear a cash crunch after being caught unawares by rules such as that for the monthly housing allowance, which is paid at the end of the month rather than the beginning. It all makes for a great deal of stress during what already is a highly stressful time the start of the school year.

The good news is, many schools are willing to take the hit for their student veterans, promising to do all they can to ease financial burdens caused by any GI Bill payment problems. Two big things you can do to help:

1. Get your certificate of eligibility. Having that piece of paper in hand assures you and your school that you are eligible for the benefits for which you applied. Any delays in payment are just that delays. You can be confident that the money is coming. Without that piece of paper, most schools likely will act on good faith and let you enroll anyway, but you’ll be the one left holding the bill if you ultimately are found ineligible.

2. Talk to someone at your school the VA certifying official, military veteran coordinator, or even someone in financial aid. Perhaps your school has a plan in place to waive late fees, or has emergency resources to help short-term with financial assistance, said Ann Ingala, military veteran coordinator at Colorado State University.

Remember: Others rarely know you need help unless you ask for it.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill took effect Aug. 1, and in preparation for the long-awaited start date, many colleges and universities have been pursuing ways to make their campuses more military-friendly.

Now, a new report by the American Council on Education, in collaboration with the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges and two other education associations, takes a look at the accomplishments and shortcomings of 723 higher education institutions. The report, “From Soldier to Student: Easing the Transition of Service Members on Campus,” is an interesting read on what schools are doing right in the way of providing services and assistance to veterans. But it is perhaps more useful to service members and veterans for the details it provides on what schools are doing wrong.

While institutions are not identified by name, the targeted areas of shortcomings most often identified in the report offer up a good checklist by which would-be students can gauge for themselves an individual school’s level of military friendliness.

Some highlights:

Public four-year (74 percent) and public two-year (66 percent) institutions are more likely to have programs specifically designed for military veterans than private not-for-profit colleges and universities (36 percent).

Only 23 percent of colleges and universities that serve military students and veterans have staff who are trained to assist veterans with brain injuries, and 33 percent have staff trained to assist veterans with other physical disabilities.

Only 22 percent of institutions with programs and services for military personnel have developed an expedited re-enrollment process to help students restart their academic efforts.

Just two out of five schools that serve military students and veterans provide training opportunities for faculty and staff to be better able to assist military students and veterans with easing the transition from military to college.

If colleges and universities started offering three-year bachelor’s degrees, would you be interested in pursuing one? With work, family and life commitments, could you even pursue one, especially if it meant increased course loads and constant summer school?

While three years is the norm for bachelor’s degrees in Europe, the idea of a three-year bachelor’s has never caught on in the United States. That may be changing, in large part because of the economy.

Back in February, Sen. Lamar Alexander, a former U.S. education secretary, championed the three-year bachelor’s at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting. Since then, the idea is generating growing interest in education circles. A handful of U.S. colleges, including Ohio’s Ursuline College, New York’s Hartwick College, and the University of Houston-Victoria in Texas, offer three-year bachelor’s degrees. Others, such as Arizona State University, are considering the option.

Proponents of a three-year bachelor’s say it would save students money and work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Opponents contend it would lower academic standards, and that previous attempts at three-year bachelor’s programs have met with little student interest.

Still, three-year bachelor’s programs may hold unique interest to students with military experience. Often older than the traditional college student, service members tend to know what they want out of college and might benefit from the option of finishing in a reduced period of time.

To learn more about the three-year bachelor’s debate, check out these stories from USA Today and InsideHigherEd.com.

If you’re pondering the number of courses to take when you start school this fall, consider this: The number of credits you carry could mean the difference between success and failure at college.

College credits can be a tricky thing. Take too many, and you’re easily overwhelmed. Take too few, and you could be in school forever.

Most classes offered at institutions of higher learning are worth three academic credits. The minimum number of college credits for full-time student status at most schools is usually 12, the equivalent of four classes. The maximum number of credits most institutions will let a student take per semester without special permission generally is 18, or six classes.

The average number of credits per semester most full-time students take is 15, or, you guessed it, five classes.

When deciding the magic number that will, for you, equate to college success, consider factors such as these:

Is this your first semester at college? If so, you might want to take it easy on yourself and start with a lower number of credits. College is a big adjustment.

Will you have competing commitments such as work and family? How much time will you reasonably have to dedicate to your studies?

What is your intended program of study, and how intense in the coursework for that program?

Is summer school an option for you? Attending summer school can be a great way to keep your education timeline on track without overburdening yourself with courses every semester.

Is there a minimum number of credits you must take per semester to qualify for any benefits, scholarships or financial aid you are receiving?