A colleague asked me what my plans are for the very near future asking “what’s next?” You have an MBA. So what’s next? When I was pursuing the MBA, it was more for advancing myself in business and for more intellectual reasons. After being my dad’s full time caregiver for the past two years, that degree has become irrelevant in my life. I would rather use a degree that would allow me to help people get off of addiction to alcohol.
Education
I fully intend to get another masters degree, one that will allow me to become a licensed clinical psychologist focusing on substance abuse. I have considered a number of schools that offer online degree programs, but I have eliminated all those for profit schools, and those that are not regionally accredited. I strongly recommend Liberty University for their Master of Arts in Professional Counseling program.
Criteria
1.) The program, whatever it is must be inexpensive. Thus I am paying for the entire program and all associated costs directly out of pocket.
2.) The program must allow me to defer my current student loans. This is what makes paying for the program possible.
3.) I prefer longer typical semester class lengths, 16 weeks or so for the regular semester. I can easily adapt to the shorter and more intense 8 week sub terms many universities offer in their online degree programs.
4.) The program must be regionally accredited.
5.) I would like the program to have some utility in the non-academic world; the management information systems emphasis for example would likely be very useful.
6.) I would like to be able to take a break at some point during the year and still be able to maintain at least half time student status.
7.) The school must not be a for profit institution.
So far that’s about it and LU looks promising, but there are still some things to be discovered, semester length, etc. Nova Southeastern University was another leading candidate. However, because my undergraduate degree was from a for profit institution, NSU was going to require the GMAT. LU does not require the GMAT, GRE or any other of these meaningless tests. Either way I’m looking forward to it.