Educating Your Employees about Education
Making the Most of an Academic Advising Center

Michael B. from a high-tech company in Silicon Valley wanted to use his company’s tuition reimbursement and pursue a graduate degree.  He spent 3 months making the decision about which university to attend.  He talked to reps from several schools, interviewed his manager and the Learning and Development team at his company for opinions, and aligned his choice to his career path.  He finally made a detailed chart of the advantages and disadvantages of each program.  Michael felt he selected the best college, based on his goals, background and skills and recently graduated with a technical graduate degree and is poised to move into a new job.

Some of your employees make very good choices about their education decisions, focusing on their goals, background, skills and career path.  But this is not always the case.  Many employees start programs because their friend attended School X or because they see School X advertised often or the school came up on an Internet Search.  Because the company reimburses tuition, employees may make only a cursory attempt at researching the best school.  They might make a “fast food” decision to pick the school that is the most convenient and this decision could mean they get discouraged with their program and drop out.

A little “education about education” might go a long way to help employees find and complete a degree plan.  EduPlan offers the Academic Advising Center (AAC) to help employees understand more this important step of going back to school.  The AAC is customized to your company’s tuition reimbursement policy and provides articles, listing of new programs, teleseminars and advice from trained, experienced academic counselors.

Features of the Academic Advising Center are:

• Customized website that can be linked from your Corporate Education Webpage

• Articles such as: 

  • “To MBA or Not”

  • “A Guide to College Success”

  • “Graduate Study for Employees Educated Outside the US”

  • “Gaining College Credits for Life and Work Experience”

• Listing of new degree program from regionally accredited universities

• Four teleseminars per year (one per quarter)

• “Ask an Advisor”—Q & A from trained, experienced academic counselors

·       For more information visit http://www.eduplan.org/ or call Sandy at 928-773-1760.