Webmasters do the technical, computer programming work to make a website. They work with artists, writers, and designers who create the things that go on the site and decide how the site will look. Educational training in Web Design Training and Certification may consist of courses in HTML, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. Joining a professional association may lead to discounts in Web design courses at different schools. The International Webmasters Association has 22,000 members in 106 countries, and would be a great place to start to get information on this promising career.

My colleague Jonathan Glater has some good news for college students and recent graduates who have taken out federal loans. Under a program that begins Wednesday, they can reduce their monthly payments, depending on their income and family size.

Moreover, after 25 years — if the borrower still owes money on student loans — the balance is forgiven. People who work in public interest jobs, including jobs in government, public schools or colleges and nonprofit organizations, can have their loans forgiven after 10 years.

In addition, as of Wednesday, the interest rate on new federal Stafford loans will drop to 5.6 percent, from 6.8 percent. Read more...

Industrial Design is the process of conceptualizing, designing and developing specifications that produce the optimum appearance and function of products. The industrial designer shapes manufactured goods, machines, systems and procedures in a way that is best for the end user as well as for the manufacturer. An industrial design degree will put you into an elite career that can continue expanding without limits. You will learn to have the eye of an artist, the mind of an engineer and the soul of a businessperson. The industrial designers work is seen in all areas of production. Consumer products such as appliances, tools, sports equipment and automobiles all started from sketches on an industrial designers desk. Machines and even manufacturing processes are also created by industrial designers.

The scramble for faculty jobs is prompting graduate students and newly minted Ph.D.s to look overseas.

While hiring freezes and budgets cuts pervade U.S. higher education, universities in Asia and the Middle East are hungry for candidates, often amid a dearth of native applicants. Although most advertise their faculty openings all over the world, the schools see U.S. doctorates as prestigious and useful in recruiting students as they build their reputations.

Last year, Frederick "Fritz" Monsma, who earned his doctorate in philosophy from Boston College in 2003, applied for one position in humanities after another -- only to learn that U.S. universities were canceling their searches. He eventually got an offer from American University in Iraq-Sulaimani, a private school in the country's Kurdistan region that opened in 2007. "I stopped looking elsewhere," says. Mr. Monsma. "I knew it was going to be an adventure, both in life and pedagogy."

The Iraqi university says it received between 400 and 500 applications, mostly from the U.S., this year alone, more than double the 150-200 it had last year.

Cuts in government funding and shrinking endowments are taking a toll on many U.S. universities. To cope, some have frozen hiring and increased teaching loads, prompting teaching candidates to look overseas for work. Read more...

If you are interested in making a difference in the lives of others, you can choose from a variety of careers in the dynamic field of human services. From child welfare to outreach social work, personal care to vocational rehabilitation, the human services industry is more meaningful to our world now than it has ever been. Find out why this career option earns high marks from new graduates and mid-career changers alike.

Students looking for college scholarships are going to have a harder time this year as providers, hammered by falling investment returns and declining philanthropic support, cut back.

The Fulfillment Fund, a nonprofit that works with Los Angeles public high school students, has reduced the number of college scholarships offered over the last three years by nearly half and has tightened requirements students must meet, said Maria T. Espinosa, director of program operations.

The Davis United World College Scholars Program, which last year began paying $20,000 per scholarship recipient at colleges that had at least five scholarship winners enrolled, has cut the amount in half, returning to pre-2008 levels.

“We’ve just been boxed in by circumstances we didn’t anticipate,” said Philip O. Geier, the program’s executive director, adding that he hoped to increase the scholarship payments in the future. Read more...

Many people who are convicted of crimes are placed on probation instead of being sent to prison. People who have served time in prison are often released on parole. During probation and parole, offenders must stay out of trouble and meet various other requirements. Probation officers, parole officers, and correctional treatment specialists work with and monitor offenders to prevent them from committing new crimes. Qualifications vary by agency, but a bachelors degree is usually required. Most employers require candidates to pass oral, written, and psychological examinations.

The competition for a job is stiff. According to data released this month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5.4 job hunters for every advertised opening in April. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey said the April ratio was up from 4.8 in March, and up dramatically from 1.7 in December 2007, when the recession began.

The labor department's separate employment report for May, which was released recently, indicated that the pace of payroll job cuts has lessened over the last three months. But its companion unemployment report showed that the national jobless rate continued to rise -- up to 9.4 percent from 8.9 percent a month earlier.

Together, the three reports show that net new jobs are being created at a very slow pace. Other data shows the hiring rate also remained low, unchanged from March at 3.1 percent with 4,099,000 new hires reported in April. That is down from 3.6 percent, or 4,955,000 new hires, in April of last year.

Source

Anesthesiologists focus on the care of surgical patients and pain relief. Like other physicians, they evaluate and treat patients and direct the efforts of their staffs. Through continual monitoring and assessment, these critical care specialists are responsible for maintenance of the patients vital life functions—heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, breathing—during surgery. They also work outside of the operating room, providing pain relief in the intensive care unit, during labor and delivery, and for those who suffer from chronic pain. Anesthesiologists confer with other physicians and surgeons about appropriate treatments and procedures before, during, and after operations. Formal education and training requirements for physicians are among the most demanding of any occupation—4 years of undergraduate school, 4 years of medical school, and 3 to 8 years of internship and residency, depending on the specialty selected.

The pressure on corporate profits has left few cost areas on companies' budgets unscathed -- including executive education, the intensive training programs typically delivered by business schools to select executives and managers.

Before budgets started tightening two years ago, companies were more willing to send star managers to one-off executive-training programs on business-school campuses. Training budgets ran into the hundreds of millions at large firms and big-name professors from top-notch schools were often part of the courses, which could last several days or even weeks. The courses typically focused on leadership development but did little to address company-specific problems.

These days, companies are looking for immediate impact and are keeping closer tabs on training, reining in unnecessary programs, and turning to faster and more specific training to educate top managers. "Companies are asking for external experts to come in and do something very specific," says Josh Brand, a former senior director of executive education at Babson College and co-founder of Freemont Learning Inc., an executive development firm in Lexington, Mass. Read more...

Economists study how society distributes resources, such as land, labor, raw materials, and machinery, to produce goods and services. They may conduct research, collect and analyze data, monitor economic trends, or develop forecasts. Economists research a wide variety of issues including energy costs, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, business cycles, taxes, and employment levels, among others. A masters or Ph.D. degree in economics is required for many private sector economist jobs and for advancement to more responsible positions. In the Federal Government, candidates for entry-level economist positions must have a bachelors degree with a minimum of 21 semester hours of economics and 3 hours of statistics, accounting, or calculus.