Take a moment to put yourself in a student's shoes. You are at a crossroads in life and desire something more. You know you'll have to work hard for your future and stretch yourself to accomplish your dreams and so you do what it takes. The economy and the pressures of your social image, family expectations and the promise of a career path point you to continuing education. The words from admissions departments, former graduates, publications, marketing, etc. all draw you to accept huge loans that you can't imagine ever paying off in your current life. But your current life is about to change, isn't it?

When we allow (yes, it is up to those of us who elect these politicians) the government to run businesses, including schools, they seem to lack appropriate problem-solving capabilities.

What is blatantly apparent to me in reading this article is that while Career Colleges may also increase tuition, they continue to improve the quality of education and focus on programmatic offerings that are based on where the jobs are in our economy. Students of these traditional universities don't seem to feel that way about "their" education providers.

Media has gotten social. I don’t think that was its intent, but Media has gotten social anyway.

(Since this blog is primarily read by career college executives, I’ll clarify my terminology from the outset: Media in this blog post does not refer to television, radio or print advertising placement. Rather, for our purposes here, we’ll be discussing media as collected communication mediums.)

Even during a golden era career colleges still manage to attract negative publicity. "For-profit schools," as the traditional media has dubbed them, are boasting their highest enrollment numbers ever and setting new revenue records. University of Phoenix, for example, set its first billion dollar quarter according to numbers released last month.

While traditional colleges, universities and community colleges are in the news for the challenges they are facing, you'd think some positive press might be directed toward the career college sector. More media attention has been focused on career training-oriented and online schools, but the majority of the attention has been negative.

In the virtual world, it’s hard to see where the boundary lines have been drawn between various industries and competitors fighting for the same customers within those realms. Those boundaries are even easier to miss when you’re a well-meaning presidential administration hoping to make yet another big impact on the American people.

This might be an amateurish way to demonstrate how career schools and traditional colleges are going opposite directions, but for a quick blog post, I don’t think we have to be all scientific: in the last month, our staff has received an abundance of notices about career college real estate purchases and campus expansions while getting nada from traditional colleges.

In any situation, when we engage with others, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it and present it. This shapes how we are perceived and inherently builds our reputation both personally and professionally. In the career search, how you say it and present it verbally or in print makes the difference between success and failure.

As a recruiter and career coach, I interview at least 20 candidates a day. Many are academic leaders and at the Chief Information Officer level in the career college and higher education markets. I have noticed a few unfortunate common patterns with the “saying it and presenting it.”  This includes the following: