The What, Why and How of Business Colleges

Cleary Business College, Ypsilanti, Michigan (Wikipedia)

by Valeria Stephens

Business colleges are usually private, career college or vocational training centres, found all around the world, and as the name suggests, offer students the opportunity to learn business workplace skills.

They often have a foundation of courses based on the modern version of secretarial or administrative assistant programs, and many institutions have a long lineage, evolving out of stenography or typist training.

Some schools can have a pedigree longer than a century, adapting their curriculum and course offering as the decades passed, to fit new workplace demands.

Why a Business College?

All reputable modern schools will make sure students learn the function and use of a computer, now an indispensable piece of office equipment, and provide an introduction to various industry standard software programs.

This training is valuable not just to students with no office work background, such as recent high school graduates, but also older workers, who started their careers before any of the new technically based business methods were standard. They may be perfectly comfortable with typing, but benefit from skill updates at business colleges, so they can stay competitive with a younger workforce.

Furthermore, recent immigrants with existing credentials from their country of origin can use a diploma from a business college to demonstrate their ability to function in their new country.

What can you study?

Programs at a business college aren't just limited to standard fare like keyboarding or word processing software, nor are they limited to taking dictation or sending emails.

Accounting clerks, in accounts payable or receivable, or in the payroll department, can also find accounting programs at business colleges, but also language programs, great for immigrants, and marketing programs and management classes for career growth.

Thus other terms to describe these institutions, like office administration colleges, can be synonymous to or indicate specialized course concentrations.

What are programs like?

Because of their career skills training focus, schools, be they general business colleges or specialized, like dedicated office administration colleges, schools will usually aim for professional environments that duplicate the workplace.

Individual colleges will have their own training systems, which may vary between computer aided course work completed on a flexible schedule or traditional classroom instruction, but one of the main advantages of these schools is the short duration of the programs, sometimes less than a year, great for students looking for directly applicable career skills and fast employment.

How do you enroll in business colleges?

High school students can get advice from their school's guidance counselling office, but for students in other circumstances, most business colleges maintain admissions advisory staff who will take the time to go over funding and employment opportunities even before enrollment, helping students choose a course of study that is right for them.

Schools that have flexible programs may even offer constant enrollment, while more rigid programs will be restricted to set start dates with application deadlines.

Visit the Academy of Learning College for more information on business courses and programs.

Valeria Stephens is a Copywriter at Higher Education Marketing, a leading Web marketing firm specializing in Google Analytics, Education Lead Generation, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Mobile SMS Alerts, Social Media Marketing and Pay Per Click Marketing, among other Web marketing services and tools.

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