I have a degree in special education and was a teacher for 10 years. I left 12 years ago, and while I do not want to go back to teaching, I’m considering pursuing a Master’s in…something. That’s what I need advice for. 
I’d actually rather go to a local Ivy Tech and get an LPN, but there isn’t financial aid available to me for a second undergrad degree. I think I could get aid to further my current degree, though, and go into social work or pyschology or something similar.
If I were to pick the next-best career, I’d probably want to do some sort of therapeutic counseling/therapy.
Any input? I’m in the dark here and have not had a lot of luck reasearching so far.
I don’t know about their availability for the areas you mentioned, but if you can get into a PhD program you can often drop out early with a master’s without having paid a dime. In fact, they might pay you. More money is available as you look at more scientific fields and at better schools.
FWIW I started graduate school and I’m going into Speech Therapy (technically it’s now called Speech-Language Pathology.) I’m really loving the program and the market looks promising, at least around here. It’s versitile; you can work in rehabs, schools, and hospitals with the same degree so if you get tired of one setting you don’t need to go back to school to switch to another. I don’t have an educational background but enjoyed my past experiences tutoring and realized I wanted a job to help others, but not in a large classroom. There are actually a lot of teachers in the program, old and young alike, who are either switching careers because they are tired of them or because they never got their foot in the door to begin with (such as recent education graduates.)
I am absolutely in love with my program, what I’m learning, and the professors who teach it.
Some universities require an undergrad in it before starting the master program (a masters is necessary to become a licensed pathologist.) I lucked out in that a nearby university accepted people whose majors weren’t SLP and accepted them. Instead of taking two years, it will take me three years to graduate since I need to take the basic undergrad courses.
I thought I would just pop by and say something. When you said you were a teacher in the past and you were looking for something related to therapy, it caught my attention. It could be your while to check it out!
I’m interested in this as well as I’d like to become a therapist and one of the ways I’ve heard to do that is to get a Master’s in Social Work. I am not sure how much additional training is required after that before one can be certified and begin practicing. I’m still in the early stages of research.
I’m a grad student. I wouldn’t get a Masters unless you know exactly what job you want- ideally to the point where you can pinpoint a handful of organizations you want to work for- and exactly how your degree fits in to that. I would want to have close contact with people in the field who can advise you about what classes to take and what skills you will need to come out with to be employable.
A Masters in “something” seems like a bad road to go down. It’s a huge investment of time and money, and you will want to have a very clear idea of what kinds of returns you can expect.
I suggest doing a round of informational interviews with people who hold jobs that you would like to one day work. There are countless books out there on how to do a good informational interview. It’s an invaluable tool. Don’t worry about seeming awkward or strange- if there is one thing that people love, it’s talking about themselves. Ask them what the field is looking like, what qualifications you’ll need, what schools are worth going to, what kinds of focuses are trending right now, etc.
At the very least, go on Linked In and look at people in jobs you would one day like to have, and look at their career progression.
I pretty much agree with even sven (I’m a grad student as well). As far as I’m concerned, there are two really good reasons to go to grad school:[ol][li]You have an unrelenting passion for a particular field and can’t imagine doing anything else for a living, orYou have a specific career goal that requires a graduate degree.[/ol]It’s hard to overstate the time and money that grad school will cost. Even if you’re fully funded, you’ll probably be living on about half (or less) what you’d make at a run-of-the-mill job, and there’s a tremendous opportunity cost attached to it. Without knowing what you want to do when you finish, you’re sinking a lot of time and money into preparing for … what?[/li]
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t go - just that you need a more concrete idea of why you’re doing it and what you want to get out of it. Sven’s advice is good here. If you think you’re interested in being a therapist, find out what kind of education you need for that job and look into those specific programs. Pick the next career first, and then get the training you need for it.
I don’t know what you’re working as at the moment, but is doing your Masters part-time (over a longer period, of course) a possibility? That’s how I did my MA; my job at the time let me compress my working week into 4 days to accommodate my classes and I did all the reading and coursework around that. I don’t know if US university courses have a similar option (I’m not in the US), but if so it might be worth looking at.
If you want to go into nursing, you can take your existing four year degree and add 2 years to it (and probably some prep coursework in Science) and get an RN.
It depends. The rest of this post is general advice on part-time graduate study, not neccessarily suitable for the OP.
Some degree programs are set up to accommodate students who are only available evenings and weekends. Others are intended for students who dedicate their entire lives to their graduate study. Some of it depends on your field of study, but a lot depends on the exact program you are interested in.
Also, choosing to get a degree little by little has consequences, especially for those for whom the degree is somewhat relevant–no one cares when you get the degree, you won’t get a big bump of a raise, many people find this route unsatisfactory in the long run.
Others, however, get their degree, and start looking for a new and better job and are happy.
But I’d be leery of grad school without being sure what you will do with your degree.
Of course, I’m overeducated, underemployed, and arguably doomed to stay there even if the economy improves.
I wasn’t as specific as I should’ve been in my initial post, actually, but it took some questions from other posters to remind me.
I’m considering a part-time program…no way I can afford otherwise. I could get my RN, as noted upthread, if I enroll in a 2 yr program (or my LPN in…9 months, I think), but it’s a full-time program and I couldn’t manage full-time school for even 1 year, much less 2. I haven’t looked at the available programs here at IU, but the grad classes I’ve taken in the past were on a part-time bases as well.
I work right now as an eldercare provider, doing basic companionship care. I enjoy the work a lot, and am going to talk to my boss to see if she has input on what degree area might be worth getting so that I can continue to work with the elderly.
Beyond that…I think I would like speech therapy, as suggested. That’s a field that has a more open market than just special ed, which tends to be more classroom oriented. That certainly bears investigation.
What I do know is that I don’t want to teach or work in a school system; or go into any type of business/admin/that type of thing.
Someone once called me a pathological nurturer. Perhaps I can put that on my resume. 