I Know You'll Remember | Blog of William Roberts

What’s Wrong With Schools Having Accountability?

Michelle Rhee | Founder of StudentsFirst.org

A recent Huffingtonpost.com article by Stephanie Simon of Reuters quotes education activist Michelle Rhee,

“Schools don’t need more money, Rhee says; they need to be held accountable for how they spend it.”

Accountability, What’s Wrong With That?

Attention has been focused toward Rhee’s superPAC funded group “Students First”.  It’s rumored that wealthy investors are on their backer’s list and cash has been easy to raise.  Critics of Michelle Rhee would say that she’s a controversial figure in education.  They say she shares anti-union sentiments and contempt for poorly performing teachers.

A former teacher herself, Michelle worked to dramatically increased students’ average scores from the 13th percentile to the 90th

The politics of a completely privatized school system is naturally debatable, but I do personally enjoy the idea of teachers getting rewarded for their efforts.  Why doesn’t it make sense to keep an eye on reforming our education system at all times in the spirit of continuous improvement?  Michelle is able to easily raise large amounts of money because her cause makes sense.  Basically, Michelle Rhee is fighting for education accountability.  Wouldn’t it make better sense if schools were more responsible with their resources and teachers were paid based on how their students test?

 

 

May 17, 2012 News 3

3 Questions That Lead to Smart Work

Work Smarter, Not Harder.  This phrase usually means to use your mind more and your body less, but it also applies to resources other than your physical stamina.  How do you get more done in less time, with less money, with less trouble, with more value?  You work smarter.  Below is a simple outline of 3 questions you can ask yourself before starting any project that will instantly improve your performance versus just rolling up your sleeves and blindly getting to work.

1. Ask Why? | Define Your Ultimate Purpose  

Why are you working?  Before you expend any effort or work toward any established goal, you must clearly define what you are hoping to ultimately accomplish.  What is the meaning behind this effort, Why are doing it?  If you’re not keeping this in mind, or don’t know what the ultimate purpose is, then you’re more likely to waste time.  Every activity has an ultimate purpose.   The sharper you can bring that into a mental picture the better you will be at planning and executing the work.  If you don’t know what the ultimate purpose is right away, focus on the core value or return that you expect by competing your objective.  If there’s no value, or purpose, it’s possible that the work could be a waste of time all together.

2. Ask What? | Outline Your Goals

What are the actual activities that we’re going to do so that we achieve the ultimate objective?  After you’ve established the ultimate purpose for any project, you should chart out some goals.  Make a list of every conceivable milestone.   Prioritize the goals based on their impact to the ultimate purpose, because will be an indicator of the most important tasks to be completed.  Make sure that every goal is absolutely inline with the ultimate purpose.  Any goal on your list that isn’t inline with the ultimate purpose should be eliminated.  After you have your list, review and brainstorm some better or alternative goals.

3. Ask How? | Create an 80/20 Vision

How can I accomplish my goals the smartest way possible?  Which goal has the highest priory?  How can I accomplish two or three goals at once?  Which goals can I delegate, outsource, or put off?  How can I reduce the number of goals I have without reducing the impact?  Consider both the value and the effort that will be required for each defined goal.  Ask yourself: What are the 20% of my goals that will accomplish 80% of my ultimate purpose?  If your working on only the goals that provide real results that matter, then you’re working smarter than most.

 

May 8, 2012 Smart Work 14

A Student Loan is Not Financial Aid

Student DebtPlease don’t get duped by the banana in the tailpipe called “financial aid”,..Call it what it is,. a student loan.  As an education activist, I’m no longer liking the word “financial aid”.  Especially when it’s referring to a college which is offering it’s students financing or scholarships that are merely just discounted tuition.  It’s not really aid when you still have to pay, that’s really called a “deal” or a “loan”.

 

“Hey, but I need to go to college to get a good job?”

 

Getting a degree doesn’t mean you’ll get a “good job” that will auto-magically pay off all of that “financial aid”.  A recent New York Times article supports my opinion that an education from a university is no longer a synonym for success.  To plan an optimal career path,  you’ll want to factor in exactly what “financial aid” is when calculating your desired College ROI.  You might find an argument to abandon the idea of college altogether when you run the numbers.   College is a business that provides the service of education and it’s getting more expensive; student debt is topping $1,000,000,000,000.00  

This trend isn’t likely to stop soon because it’s only the fallout from recent years, not factoring today’s generation of students.  It’s in anyone’s best interest to avoid the huge burden of debt that recent graduates, current students, and even seniors are shouldering.  Don’t let a school do you the big favor of borrowing you money so you can pay it’s over-priced tuition.  It’s not a requirement that you spend money on school, it’s an investment, and it should be held with the same consideration.  After all, it’s really your financial future or theirs.

May 3, 2012 career advice, College ROI, College Tips, Uncategorized 14

The Higher Education Bubble is Still Popping

I remember a quote from an article last year in April, PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel, questioning the value of higher education, tells TechCrunch,

A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.

It seems that the overall value of a college education is still continuing to fall like the housing prices in 2008.  We know that the cost of getting a degree is rising, but the general value or return is not.

If you believe that simply having a degree will set you apart to excel in tomorrow’s labor market, this is simply not the case.   Over are the days of expecting a poorly planned college degree to land you a good job on it’s own merit.

The increase in students who are graduating this year with a generic 3 or 4 year degree, will further result in America having too many educated people in the workforce.

An article in theatlantic.com says that OVER HALF,. 53.% of last year’s college graduates (Under the age of 25 w/bachelors degrees) were unemployed.  

That’s not all.  Recent grads who beat the odds and find themselves employed, usually don’t find work in their preferred field of study.  It’s alarmingly common that people are not working their dream job, “doing what they love”.

These are the MBA’s, now helping people set up your new cable box or cell phone,  educated clinical psychiatrists pushing a mops, or the 26 year old Applebee’s waiters with liberal arts degrees who can’t find a job anywhere else.  Tomorrow’s student, more than ever before,  is facing a better chance of being in debt, unemployed, and unprepared for the “real world”.

Today’s workers are suffering because of poor career planning, we simply didn’t start thinking about it early enough.   It’s no longer about just getting into college, you really need to have a plan.  Looking at this problem through the lens of an education activist, I recommend students take advantage of the growing set of excellent resources available.  Future generations can prosper leveraging new trends in self directed education, pursuing alternatives to college, and considering  college ROI.  There’s always a way to move ahead so you can avert a crisis, but you must be aware of it first.

 

 

April 24, 2012 career advice, College ROI, College Tips, STEM, The College Unicorn 18

Top 3 Worst College Majors, If You’re Planning on Being Employed

Based on 2010 Census Data we can determine which college majors are trending to have poor job availability in the near future.  Choosing a major, like clinical psychology, that has a high unemployment rate and a mediocore $25K – $61K salary is not very great college ROI.   However, the three majors below are fairly popular.

Majors by Unemployment Rate (2010)

  1. CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY 19.5%
  2. MISCELLANEOUS FINE ARTS 16.2%
  3. UNITED STATES HISTORY 15.1%

In my mind, this stands alone as a great deterrent to choosing these fields of study for your career.  If you then consider the median income for those who choose STEM based majors dominates the top 20 with annual salaries ranging from $101,000/year to $175,000/year for those earning in the top 25%.  This segment also enjoys generally lower unemployment rates.

Deciding what you want to be when you grow up can get easier when you crunch the data.

April 20, 2012 career advice, College ROI, College Tips, STEM 18

5 Worst Colleges in America by ROI

Disclaimer: This isn’t another post saying that investing in education is a bad idea, it’s an investment, so the decision should be approached with the same vigilance as any other investment.  It’s naturally assumed that you wouldn’t buy a stock or a fund that was providing proven losses year after year,… 

A problem that America is facing is that most of us are brought up to believe that if you can just finish college, you’ll be ahead of the career game.  That has been holding true because we tend to put the responsibility of success on the shoulders of the student, and not on the institution they are paying into.  Of course we know that there are other factors which ultimately determine our career success, other than the school we graduated from, but how much exactly does the school you went to play?

If we look at United States colleges based on ROI alone, you will find that almost 23% of schools offer a NEGATIVE return on investment over a 30 year period.  Most of the schools offering a negative return on your investment are smaller state-run or religiously orientated schools.  The schools that performed well tended to be in the STEM related fields, businessinsider.com as listed The 15 colleges that offer the Most Value for Your Money.

PayScale.com has released data after surveying the income information of many thousands of  U.S. workers who all have at least a bachelor’s degree.  The company then compared the future income to the cost of the college’s tuition, to determine the overall ROI.

These are the 5 worst based on 30 Year Net ROI:

RANK
SCHOOL NAME
TYPE
CATEGORY
2011 COST
30 YEAR NET ROI(?)
% AID
AVG AID AMOUNT
30 YEAR ROI WITH AID (?)
1248
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
Private
Arts, Music & Design
$176,900
$-189,000
67%
$10,409
$-160,000
1247
Seton Hill University
Private
Private
$160,200
$-186,000
99%
$16,984
$-143,000
1246
Judson University
Private
Private
$151,100
$-186,000
99%
$10,279
$-161,000
1245
Medaille College
Private
Private
$130,100
$-184,000
100%
$11,024
$-158,000
1244
Meredith College
Private
Liberal Arts
$142,100
$-179,000
100%
$11,374
$-151,000
April 13, 2012 career advice, College ROI, College Tips, The College Unicorn, Uncategorized 20

How to Get Started Using Social Media in your Job Search

I’m sure you’ve heard by now someone praising the power of Social Media for fun, business, and even job hunting.  The problem is, that beyond setting up an account on Facebook or Twitter most people don’t know what to do next to leverage those platforms.

Before you read on about ways to polish and tweak your social media accounts, you’ll want to know exactly why you’d even bother in the first place.

Take a look at this info-graphic from http://holykaw.alltop.com

Social Recruiting Info-graphic

 

As you can see above, that nearly all professional recruiters are both using social media to post positions, and to source potential candidates.  This graphic also outlines a few different sites that you can both expand and utilize your social media accounts during your search.  So where do you start if you don’t even have one social media account?

Currently, the single most important account to have if you’re looking for work is a LinkedIn account.   This is the best place to start.  Go there, sign up, and COMPLETE your profile.

The more complete your Linkedin.com profile is, the better the chances are that prospective employers will reach out to contact you.  Think of LinkedIn as today’s resume, and treat it with the same reverence.  After you’ve done this, you can add your unique Linkedin.com URL to your paper resume and include it when responding to web-based position postings.

Next, sync your Linkedin account with your new twitter account.  That way, you only need to post once on both platforms.   It’s important that you keep communication within professional constraints, you don’t want to mis-represent who you are to prospective employers.

Here are some additional articles that you can browse to help you learn more about each social platform individually:

LinkedIn.com

Twitter.com

Facebook.com

After you’ve followed the advice that’s out there, it’s important to continuously maintain your social/web presence so it will grow in it’s effectiveness throughout your career.  Schedule times to make periodic updates, review your profiles, and keep the world up-to-date on what’s going on with your career.  It’s like anything, the more work you put in,…

April 6, 2012 career advice, College Tips, Job Hunting, Marketing Tactics, Online Marketing, Personal Improvement 21

7 Ways To Career Fail

Two career experts will always agree that the third expert is entirely wrong about their advice.  As I’ve been interviewing career experts for my book, I’ve  noticed that they usually are focusing on what to do to succeed.  You’re not required to listen to me for career advice, but you are reading my blog.  I know that you decide who’s advice you want to follow and no one else.  All I can give you is stuff I’ve “kind of borrowed” from other bloggers, professionals, friends and family, and whatever else I create out of thin air.

The primary point I’m trying to make here is that it doesn’t matter who came up with a piece of particular advice, it matters if it works or not.  It’s about either doing the right thing, or messing up your life.

Here are 7 ways to Career Fail:

1. Keep Your Mind off of Money.  Rolling down the street,. .sipping on,..with my mind on my (sorry had a Snoop roll there for a sec) If you don’t focus on money, you probably wont end up having much.  What get’s measured get’s managed.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do what you love in life.  Everyone has a dream job, but if it’s not paying the bills and financing your desired lifestyle then your job isn’t doing it’s job.  The amount of earning power your career choice has can determine your ability to maintain independence.  This choice can effect not only your career satisfaction level, but poor career earnings can effect future generations.

2. Don’t Take the Wheel.  It’s your life and you have the choice to do what ever you want to do, but people find it great to do nothing. They don’t aggressively manage their careers. That’s fine, as long as you don’t mind waking up 10 years later in the same job. If you want to get ahead, you need to network, smooze, and open yourself up to opportunities.  Drive!

3. Trust the Man.  Don’t trust your career to anyone but yourself. Your employer most likely sees you as an expendable, replaceable, at-will worker. You know, trust is built on two things in corporate America: a pattern of behavior and legal agreements.  And I wouldn’t trust the former without the latter.

4. The World Owes You. If you expect more than you work for and deserve, you’ll get nowhere and end up blaming everyone but the one person who could have done something about it: you. That’s just how it is, like it or not.

5. Don’t Risk it. No risk, no reward. The only real risk is not taking any. The poet Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” Pick your phrase and own it. You need to take risks. And if you take more when you’re younger, you won’t have to take so many when you’re older.

6. Keep it About You. Business is about business; it’s not about you. It’s not about what you want, what you like, what you think of your boss or your coworkers, or even your principles. If you don’t like where you are and what you’re doing, quit and go somewhere else. It’s a free country. Or start your own business. Then you can do whatever you want.

7. Stay on a Sinking Ship. Companies are like ocean vessels; you’re not the pilot and you didn’t design or build the boat. You just go where it goes. All too often, that’s nowhere. You get complacent and, next thing you know, your career has flatlined and your time has run out. You need to think of employers as business opportunities and you want as many as possible to be winners.



March 6, 2012 career advice, Uncategorized 74

Reduce College Costs by Saving on Textbooks

With the cost of the average college tuition raising at an unsustainable rate, there are teams of parents and students looking for ways to cut costs.  One of the many large hidden costs of your adult education is getting your college text books.  Although books can cost only a few hundred dollars, to most students, that’s “Hundreds and Hundreds of Dollars”.

You’ve probably been aware of many of the ways to get discount books.  Heard of students who reuse old books, and are now even renting them.

Renting books is very popular, there’s a fantastic site call “Chegg” that is a network to exchange any needed books for short periods of time.  Students will often rent for finals to save up to 80% off of list price.  Some students are also downloading “e-versions” of their books on sites like www.coursemart.com for a 50-60% savings and keeping the material.

A new trend, that I personally am a fan of, is starting with the idea of offering the books for free from the school directly.

OpenStax College, is a non-profit publisher of course materials and will soon be providing more low cost or free college textbooks to participants of their program.  OpenStax College is a leading innovator in providing the highest quality online learning materials.  They have a calculator to predict how much you’d save using their textbooks vs traditional prices.

This is a fantastic approach to help solve this unnecessary education expense.   I also find it warming that OpenStax is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 20 Million Minds Foundation, Maxfeild Foundation, and Rice University.  This leads me to believe that the future is bright.

 

 

February 21, 2012 College Tips 61

Trip to Door County, Wisconsin | Trip Advisor Review

Photos of Cornerstone Suites, Egg Harbor

Wisconsin Sunset

My wife and I try to get out of the house as much as possible.  This last weekend we ventured out to the NE tip of Wisconsin, a region called “The Door Peninsula”.

Over and above “tasting” more wines and cheeses than I can remember, we relaxed to enjoy some “kid free” time at the Cornerstone Suites.

My wife did a great job reviewing the property and I thought I’d plug it here: Click Here to Read Erin’s Review

If you find yourself in Door County,. near Egg Harbor, this is a great place to stay.

This photo of Cornerstone Suites is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

February 21, 2012 Personal 52