People are always willing to talk about the fact that it takes a lot of dedication to go back to school, but what they aren’t saying is that it takes a lot of money too. Since there aren’t any schools offering degrees in agriculture with a concentration in money tree growing, it’s safe to say that you’ll have to figure out a way to fund your new future. The process can be pretty overwhelming, so we’ve narrowed down the four major types of financial aid available for students.

Scholarships: All types of organizations and schools offer scholarships for pretty much anything under the sun: your interests, your hometown, your major, etc. There’s even a scholarship out there for skateboarders. The two most popular types of scholarships given are based on academic achievement (good grades) and athletics. Scholarships usually require an application process that involves proof of achievement and in many cases an essay. Applications are then evaluated, and eligible recipients are awarded money according to the terms of the scholarship. A word of warning: there are some sites that will try to scam you with fake scholarship opportunities. You should never have to pay a fee to be considered for a legitimate scholarship.

Grants: The most popular source of grant aid is the federal government. Grants are “gift” aid that you don’t have to pay back, but you don’t have to earn them in the same way you would with a scholarship (scholastic or athletic achievement). Grants are usually offered on a need basis determined by the information you submit on your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Loans: These are the most widely available type of funding, but they will need to be repaid. You are borrowing someone’s money (from either the government or a private financial institution), and in most cases you don’t have to start paying off these loans until you graduate. You’ll have to pay interest, but it’s typically lower than what you’ll find on other types of unsecured loans.

Work study: In some cases the federal government will award need-based financial aid through a work study program. These are jobs (mostly on campus) where you are guaranteed a position at a fixed wage (usually hourly). Jobs could include security, library, maintenance or cafeteria work, but this all depends on the needs of the university. Work study is awarded through completion of the FAFSA.

No one knows your situation as well as you do, so the best thing to do is explain your financial situation to someone who can help.  You’ll find a listening ear in someone in the admissions or financial aid office at the university you plan on attending.  They’ll be able to steer you in the right direction and help you find the best way to pay for your education.

Get your degree and enter a fast-growing career field

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a great job and know that you could keep it as long as you wanted to? Finding a career that offers job security is really just simple economics: supply and demand. You need to pick a job that is in high demand and that not everybody can do.

Let’s take a look at four of the fastest-growing jobs of the decade – and the education you’ll need to get started.

1. Nursing: The demand for nurses shows no sign of slowing. The two most common types of nurses are registered nurses (RN) and licensed practical nurses (LPN). What’s the difference between an RN and an LPN? LPNs typically train for a shorter amount of time, from 9-month certificate programs to 3-year degrees for certain specialties (pediatrics, surgery/anesthesia). LPNs make about $40,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Becoming an RN requires a two-year associate’s degree or a Bachelor of Science in nursing, but the pay is higher (around $62,000 per year). Want more good news? Many colleges offer an online LPN to RN degree program. So if you want to get your feet wet as an LPN and then decide you want a career upgrade, you won’t lose any time!

1. Accounting: Accountants are always in demand. If you’ve got a knack for numbers, why not put it to good use? To be a certified public accountant (CPA) you’ll need a bachelor’s degree from an accredited school. You’ll also have to pass an ethics course and the uniform CPA exam. Most accounting majors get job offers before they finish their third year of college, and they’re almost guaranteed to make $50,000 or more. If you aren’t sure if accounting is for you, a business degree will expose you to the exciting world of revenues and expenses. As an added bonus, many schools offering business degrees will even allow you to earn your degree while you work.

1. Teaching: Who wouldn’t be excited to have every summer off? No degree would be possible without teachers, making education a great choice for job security. Requirements vary widely by state, but at a minimum you’ll need a bachelor’s degree (in education or the field in which you want to teach) with additional state-approved certification and training. Perks of this job? Making a difference in the lives of your students and an average salary around $55,000 per year.

1. Healthcare support: Positions like home health aides, certified nursing assistants (CNA), and a variety of different technicians require you to be able to pass a certification exam, but not all require a college degree.   Typically HHAs are trained by RNs or LPNs and go through a certification like one offered by the National Association for Home Care once training is complete. Being a medical technician, though, does require additional education (either online or campus). Typically you’ll need an associate’s degree with a focus on your intended career path. The jobs for people with these healthcare certifications are plentiful and will grow exponentially over the next twenty years.

Regardless of what career you choose, having a degree makes your job much more secure. So, really, what are you waiting for? Find a degree that is the perfect fit for you.

Great careers you can get with an associate’s degree

It’s not a great time to be a Detroit autoworker. Or a Florida construction worker. But there is one fast-growing field in which it’s easy to find employment: healthcare.

There’s a continued demand for nurses, nursing aides and other healthcare support occupations, even in the recession. But what if you’re not really a fan of blood and bandages? You can still find a healthcare job – you just have to look for positions that put you behind a desk instead of at patients’ bedsides. These three medical careers require only an associate’s degree or certification to get started.

Medical coding careers

What do medical coders do?

When a patient goes to the hospital, every condition, drug and procedure they have must be accurately recorded using a code for each entry. This is important for two reasons: one, so the patient or their insurance company can be billed accurately, and two, so data on treatments and outcomes can be used for medical research.

Medical coders read the data on patient charts and record it in code. There’s a huge database of medical codes you’ll need to learn. You definitely don’t want to mix up T33.8, which means “superficial frostbite of ankle and foot,” with L23.7, which means “allergic contact dermatitis due to plants” (a.k.a poison ivy).  Medical coders aren’t just typists – to succeed in this job, you have to understand medical language and conditions. Medical coding is a popular field for nurses who want to switch careers. Medical coders make $28,000 per year, on average.

Do I need a medical coding degree?

Medical coders usually have an associate’s degree in health information technology or something similar. A medical coding degree program will teach you about anatomy, physiology and medical terminology as well as database management and computer science. You’ll also learn how to use medical coding software programs. To advance in the field, you may need to pass an accredited certification course to become a CPC (Certified Professional Coder).

Medical billing careers

What do medical billing professionals do?

Medical billing is similar to medical coding in that both jobs involve processing lots and lots of data from patient records. Medical billers use codes to describe the different levels and types of care a patient receives. They enter this information into software used to process bills and submit claims to insurance companies. In this job, you’ll learn the complexities of Medicare, Medicaid and insurance policies. Medical billers make around $28,000 per year, on average.

Do I need a medical billing degree?

The training for medical billing is very similar to what’s required for medical coding. Most medical billing professionals have an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in health care administration or health information technology. You can also get a diploma or certification in medical billing.

Medical transcription careers

What do medical transcriptionists do?

Medical transcriptionists listen to doctors’ recorded notes and type them out in written reports.

Just like medical billing and coding, medical transcription requires patience, determination, and attention to detail. It’s extremely important for a medical transcriptionist to record information  accurately – if he or she doesn’t, a patient may get the wrong care. Medical transcriptionists make about $33,000 a year, on average.

Do I need a medical transcription degree?

To begin working as a medical transcriptionist, you’ll need to complete certified medical transcription training, which can be a certificate, diploma or associate’s degree program. Getting your associate’s degree in medical transcription will give you the best preparation and may make it easier for you to find a job.

Get help finding the right campus or online degree program!

A degree could double your paycheck

Looking at the cost of a college degree these days, you have to ask: is it worth it? The average tuition and fees for a private four-year college in the U.S. is $25,143. That’s for one year. And room and board’s not included.

Even with financial aid, loans and scholarships, that’s a lot to handle. That’s why so many students choose online degrees, which typically cost between $300 and $500 per credit for a bachelor’s degree. Financial help is also available for online degrees.

Still, that’s a big investment. What you really want to know is this: How much more money can I make with an online degree? The answer: A lot. You might even be able to double or triple your paycheck. Take a look at these four examples.

You don’t need a degree to be a tax preparer – the person who helps individuals or small businesses organize and fill out their tax returns. Tax preparers earn about $17 per hour. If you get your online degree in accounting and become a full-fledged accountant, however, your average hourly earnings go up to $31.65, or $65,840 per year. Then you can afford to hire someone else to do your own taxes for you!

Security guards earn $12.42 per hour, on average. If you’re tired of watching parking garages and office building lobbies, getting your criminal justice degree opens up all kinds of possibilities in law enforcement. Correctional officers in prisons and jails make $19.88 per hour. Police officers earn $25.39 an hour (and many can make significantly more money working overtime at special events). Get promoted to detective or investigator and you’re looking at $30.69 an hour, or nearly $64,000 per year. Get started with an online degree in criminal justice.

Preschool and daycare teachers have a rewarding, but exhausting job – and they don’t make a ton of money. The average hourly wage for a preschool teacher is $12.80, which adds up to an annual salary of $26,610. With an education degree, you could become an elementary school teacher earning $52,240 per year – and get all summer off too! Teachers who work in special education or other specialized fields can earn even more.

A nursing aide makes $11.84 per hour, on average. A home health aide typically earns less: around $10.31. If you have a knack for dealing with patients and you enjoy working in healthcare, you can get your nursing degree and triple your earnings. A registered nurse (RN) earns $31.31 an hour – that’s more than $65,000 per year. You can become an RN with a combination of campus and online nursing degrees.

Remember, all these salaries are averages provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So you might make more or less depending on your experience and where you work. Ready to increase your paycheck?

Choose a career in a fast-growing field

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Engineering

One of the greatest benefits to majoring in engineering is the money you are likely to earn. Starting salaries for engineers vary by specialty, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average starting annual salaries range from just over $47,000 for environmental engineers to over $60,000 for petroleum engineers. Those figures are for bachelor’s degree holders, and engineers with master’s degrees and PhDs can earn even more.

To become a licensed engineer, you’ll need four years in an engineering program and then four years of work experience before you’re able to sit for the Professional Engineer, or PE, exam. Specialties vary widely in engineering, but a great benefit to this field is that many majors allow for some cross-over. Aerospace and mechanical engineers, for example, have skills that can easily translate into the other’s field.

Information technology

As technology improves so does the market for IT pros, making information technology a smart career choice for the tech-savvy. If you’re interested in working with computers, you have your choice of majors and specialties, and that variety is one thing that makes this field great.

Just as you’ll have your choice with majors and specializations, you also have a lot of options when it comes to the kind of education you pursue for an IT degree. You can start in the field with a certificate, or go after an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree. If you’re interested in teaching or research, you might even go all the way for a doctorate. The level of education you need largely depends on the kind of career you want. Like many industries, IT is flexible enough that you can start with a certificate program or associate’s degree, and then build onto your credentials as you need or want to.

Education

Summers off? No work on the weekends? Your very own chalkboard? These may be the things that drive some, but most teachers will tell you they come to work every day because the work is so rewarding. To become a teacher, you’ll need a bachelor’s degree in education. Online degrees in education make it easier than ever for anyone to pursue a teaching career.

Once you’ve completed the degree, fulfilled student teaching requirements and have your licensure in hand, you’ll find that jobs are plentiful in most urban and rural areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that need does vary by location. Many states are experiencing dire teacher shortages, especially in the Southwest, and they will do whatever it takes to get qualified teachers into their schools.

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Choose a career in a fast-growing field

What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a simple question…when you’re five years old. Answers like, “astronaut,” “hockey player” and “movie star” may have been cute back then, but when you get a little older (or a lot older), the question bears a lot more weight. It’s your future, after all—40 hours a week for the next 45 years or more. Here we look at four popular career fields and highlight a few of the benefits each has to offer.

Healthcare

Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing industries in the US right now, and healthcare jobs are plentiful in every region. The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that between 2006 and 2016, registered nursing jobs (RNs) will increase by 23%, licensed practical/vocational nursing jobs (LPNs) will grow by 14%, medical assistant positions will raise by 35% and pharmacy tech positions will be boosted by 32%.

In addition to really great job security, another benefit to jobs in the healthcare industry is the relatively short training period needed. An RN can get licensed after a two-year Associate’s Degree in Nursing (ADN) program, while an LPN only needs to complete a one-year practical nursing program to be eligible to take the licensure exam. Nursing degree programs are easy to find on campus and online. Medical assistant education includes on-the-job training, certificate programs, associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees, depending on how much you want to learn and how quickly you want to start working. Pharmacy technicians aren’t required by any law to have a formal education, but many community colleges and medical training institutes offer certification programs, which make it easier for an aspiring pharm tech to land a job.

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Increase your earnings with a higher education

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One caveat of the bachelor’s degree, however, is that it costs more than the average associate’s degree. In the 2006-07 school year, CollegeBoard.com reported the average cost of a four-year degree from a public college or university to be $23,344, and $88,872 from a private college or university (that’s just tuition – room and board and books aren’t included). The $500,000 salary difference, however, covers the expense of college with plenty left over to enjoy.

A bachelor’s degree isn’t for everyone, though. Registered nurses, HVAC repair techs, auto mechanics, cosmetologists and dozens of other jobs don’t require more than a two-year degree, and many people won’t benefit financially from pursuing a bachelor’s degree. Likewise, many bachelor’s degree holders won’t find a master’s degree to be worth it, unless you’re just looking to expand your knowledge.

An important consideration for anyone doing some lifetime financial planning is to look at the average salaries in their specific career fields and what their particular job requirements are. It wouldn’t be worth it for a welder, for example, to go for a bachelor’s degree when salaries are based on experience and skill, rather than education beyond the associate’s degree level. An engineer, however, might want to go all the way to the master’s level, as MSN Money reports an average of more than $360,000 in lifetime earnings by adding two years of study beyond the bachelor’s degree. Online degrees offer options for getting affordable bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Unless you’ve got a meaty trust fund or NFL scouts knocking on your door, chances are pretty good you’ll need a good education to earn that million bucks in your lifetime. Most students will find a bachelor’s degree offers the most financial rewards, but it’s important to find out what the education requirements are in your chosen field to determine which degree level makes the most sense for you and your financial goals.

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Increase your earnings with higher education

What would you do if you had an extra million dollars in your bank account? Travel Europe? Or maybe buy a house…on the beach…and a boat to go with it? No, we’re not selling lottery tickets, but there is another way to make your financial dreams come true: Get an education. Simply put, the more education you have, the more money you are likely to earn and the less likely you are to be standing in the unemployment line.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, increases in income and decreases in unemployment rates are proportional to education levels. Just the difference between earning a high school diploma and dropping out averages over $9,000 a year. For someone who works about 50 years in their lifetime, that difference is easily half a million dollars in lost income. The unemployment rate differences are significant, too, dropping from 7.1% to 4.4% for high school grads.

An associate’s degree can offer an even better payoff. Associate’s degrees take just two years to complete, and boost income levels over $3,000 per year from that of a high school graduate (and more than $12,000 a year for someone without the high school degree). The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) puts the median annual salary of an associate’s degree holder at $34,000 for adults ages 25-34. Over a lifetime, that’s at least $141,000 more than you’d earn with just a high school diploma. Considering that CollegeBoard.com puts the average cost of a two-year degree from a public college in 2006-07 at $4,544, your tuition expenses are totally worth it.

A bachelor’s degree is where you’ll see the biggest return. NCES calculates that annual earnings for four-year degree holders increase by an average of $9,500 over those of associate’s degree holders. A report by the U.S. Census finds that someone with a bachelor’s degree will earn an average of $2.1 million dollars in lifetime earnings, half a million more than someone with an associate’s degree, and a million more than someone who doesn’t finish high school. Are you noticing a trend here? More education means more money, so it should be a no-brainer to buckle down and study hard for a few years to get the bigger payoff.

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Help with grants, scholarships and financial aid

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Scholarships are also a great source of aid because they don’t need to be repaid either. Scholarships are offered by colleges and universities, most famously for athletics and academics. Millions of dollars in scholarship money are also available from other organizations, including your parents’ employers (or your own), national industry associations and local community groups. Most scholarships aren’t advertised as much as you might like, so it’s up to you to do some digging. The internet hosts a wealth of financial aid sources—just type “scholarship” into any search engine and you’ll be faced with millions of results. Online scholarship search services can also be very helpful. You’ll enter key information—where you live, where you’re going to school, your talents, etc.—and the results will be tailored to the information you provided. Beware of any scholarship search companies that ask for money. You shouldn’t have to pay for a scholarship.

Another source of college financial aid is a loan. Loans come in hefty packages—there are thousands and thousands of dollars available in loans, and some can be used for expenses other than tuition, like books, parking passes and even a computer. While one downside is that they have to be repaid in full plus interest, for some, like federal loans, repayment doesn’t start until six months after graduation and interest often doesn’t start accruing until then either.

You can apply for a loan at your local bank or you can check out federal loans, which are awarded using the same FAFSA application mentioned above. These include the Stafford, Perkins and two kinds of PLUS loans:

• Stafford loans are for students of all levels enrolled at least half-time (check with your school about what constitutes half-time status). Stafford loans are available regardless of financial need.
• Perkins loans are for both undergraduate and graduate students who have financial need. Funds are available to the neediest students first and the amount available depends on what your school has to offer. In 2007-08, undergrads could receive up to $4,000, while grad students could get up to $6,000 in aid in a single year.
• PLUS loans are aimed at graduate and professional students, while the Parent PLUS loan is designed for parents of dependent undergrads.

While the cost of college might seem incredibly overwhelming, there are many sources of financial aid to make your college dreams seem like more of a reality. You’ll have to put some time and effort into researching your options and filling out applications, but the investment pays off when you’re handed your diploma and have a world of career possibilities in front of you.

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Help with grants, scholarships and financial aid

As much as we all might wish for it, chances are pretty high you’re not going to have a major lottery windfall or discover a long-lost rich uncle any time soon. So when it comes to going to college, nearly every student is faced with figuring out how to pay for it. With average costs of a college degree increasing every year, it isn’t unrealistic for many students to be faced with tuition bills totaling close to $100,000 when it’s all said and done.

All students have the option of working while in school. Whether you work full-time or part-time, the money you earn can be applied directly to your costs for tuition and fees, room and board, books, and anything else you’ll need to get you through the school year. It’s a guaranteed source of financial aid, and you don’t have to prove you need the money to get a job and earn your paycheck. Your salary is guaranteed so long as you show up for work every day and get your job done. If you’re lucky enough to have tuition reimbursement offered as a workplace benefit, you might not have to worry about paying for school at all. However, for many students, the money they earn at work still isn’t enough to cover all the costs and they have to apply for financial aid.

The best source of financial aid is the kind that doesn’t have to be repaid, such as a grant. All federal grants are reserved for students with strong financial needs. They include the Pell grant, the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG) for students with “exceptional financial need,” the National SMART grant for students majoring in math or science, the Academic Competitiveness Grant for students with strong academic records and the TEACH Grant for education majors. Grants are also offered through state government programs and through individual schools. All of these kinds of grants are awarded with one application: The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

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