Daily Aid 22: Protecting your job in a recession

Student Financial Aid News

From Inside Higher Ed:

The latest generation of adults in the United States may be the first since World War II, and possibly before that, not to attain higher levels of education than the previous generations. While white and Asian American young people are outpacing previous generations, the gaps for other minority groups are large enough that the current generation is, on average, heading toward being less educated than its predecessor.

Commentary

This should be a surprise to no one. There’s a correlation between minorities and income, and obviously income dictates how much education you can afford. The only way to close this gap, from an economics perspective, is to either raise incomes or lower the cost of education.

From NASFAA:

“The credit crisis tying global financing systems into knots has left hundreds of colleges scrambling for cash to pay their bills and to cover the spiking interest on their debts,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. “While it is still unclear to what extent the federal government’s new $700-billion bailout package will help unwind the credit tangle, the crisis has exposed weaknesses in policies and management that left some institutions more vulnerable than they should have been. A few have already halted construction projects in midstream because of the higher cost of borrowing. Others are considering faculty or pay cuts.”

Commentary

Again, no surprises here. Everyone has to pare back, cut back. Don’t be at all surprised if financial aid gets messed up for the spring semester if colleges’ assets are still locked down due to bank failures. Plan accordingly, folks. Plan to have financial aid be completely messed up, plan to have 529 plans depleted in the short term, plan for things to be really ugly. Why? If they’re less than the worst case scenario, then you get to have a pleasant experience as you’ll have prepared for the worst. If they’re as bad as they appear now, you’ll be ready.

Scholarship hunting should be your full time job now.

Scholarship Update

Art Institutes Passion for Fashion Full Tuition Scholarship. The Art Institutes Passion for Fashion Competition offers high school students interested in Fashion Design or Fashion Marketing & Merchandising or Retail Management an opportunity to win a full tuition scholarship to study at one of The Art Institutes schools.

Open to high school seniors across North America, The Art Institutes Passion for Fashion Competition was created to encourage and reward young fashion design and fashion marketing, merchandising and retail management talent at the high school level.

The competition consists of two categories, Fashion Design and Fashion Marketing & Merchandising and Retail Management. The grand prize in each category includes a full tuition scholarship to The Art Institutes school location with a Fashion program at which the student entered the competition.

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

Jobcast

Very rough, very turbulent times. How do you protect yourself and your career during an economic downturn?

Know in advance what’s going on in your industry. No matter what industry you belong to, there are trade journals, blogs, news sources, and more, all of which will contain little pieces of the puzzle. Assemble them, connect the dots, and you’ll have the knowledgebase you need to foresee the future and help your company position itself to win.

If you’re interviewing for a job, the ability to give insights during an interview will place you far above any other candidate, because most candidates want to talk about themselves and not as many are equipped to deliver value to the interviewer during the interview.

Have money saved up. I can’t emphasize this enough – put aside money as much as you can for a rainy day, for basic necessities. The more you have saved up, the more judicious and deliberate you can be in a job search. If you desperately need to make rent, you’ll leap at the first opportunity – and potentially miss the real one later.