Back to College: August 15, 2005

Ask the Experts: Should I Get a Second Undergraduate Degree?
Featured Expert: E. Faith Ivery, Ed.D.

Question: I have a BA in History and one year of law school. I have been home rasing my kids for 11 years (I'm 41). My problem is I want to go back to school in a totally different field...environmental chemistry! Would it be realistic at all to go back and take the undergraduate science classes I need and try to get into a master's program? If I could succeed at this, would anyone hire someone at my age just starting out? I did take some science and chemistry in undergrad and excelled. - Linda

Answer: Linda, I'd strongly suggest talking with several schools for which you would want to enroll for your graduate program. Generally, it would be advantageous for you to just take those courses for which you are deficient to enroll as a graduate student, rather than completing another undergraduate degree. Most graduate schools will advise which courses to take to make you eligible for admissions.

As for your age and career change, that is an unknown. Hiring practices are different for each company or organization. I read that as baby-boomers retire (15%-22%) of our workforce will be reduced and companies will be seeking "older" workers and part-time workers to fill the void. However, age is often a discriminatory factor to employment. Contacting companies and asking them about their "age" factors does not result in honest answers as they want to avoid lawsuits. Do the best you can to talk to managers at companies, or ask for data on their hiring practices and review for age-of-hiring figures. You should be in fair status for hiring in your new field if you complete your graduate degree in the next few years, but again - that is anyone's guess! - Faith

More Ask the Experts.

Feature Article: 5 Steps to Attaining Maximum Benefit from Your Degree
by Todd Rhoad

Pursuing a college education, at any point in your life, requires a substantial commitment in time. As a young student, time is a considerably more abundant resource; however, as a seasoned learner with numerous responsibilities, such as those ccompanying a job, family, or both, one must focus on an efficient utilization of many resources to achieve the maximum effectiveness in their professional and academic development. Too often we become so involved in just completing the tasks necessary to obtain the degree that we fail to truly prepare ourselves for life with the degree.

Just imagine we go through all of the hard work, toil, blood, sweat and tears for four years to get the degree only to find ourselves holding the diploma in our hand thinking “Now what?”So, then we are forced to develop some strategy to improve our employment position but don’t quite have all the resources we had when we were in school. We put our resume on the Web and hope that the addition of the degree will bring in numerous phone calls of those wanting to hire us. Maybe we aren’t looking for another job but an improvement in position within our current company. We hope that once we graduate, our managers will come around to our desk and tell us that we have a new position now that we have a degree. While these situations sound exciting, they are highly unlikely. Getting the degree is great but is no guarantee for success or improvement unless you have put some real thinking and strategy behind it. The following steps will help you do just that.

Writing your goals down triggers a response in the brain called “reticular activating system” that can create a sense of awareness of opportunities that can help you get closer to your goals. The unconscious mind will continue to focus on the direction you set in your written goals even when you aren’t consciously thinking about it. Your brain will keep you in tune with events that may help you achieve your goals and will keep pushing you until the image that you have in your head of what your real success looks like is equivalent to what is physically present in your surroundings. The career map you generate will help you use time and resources more effectively and efficiently. Is it worth the small amount of effort required to generate the map? A study of Harvard graduates over 10 years found that 3% earned 10 times more than the other 97% combined. What was the one factor that was different between the 3% and the 97% in both studies?

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