We all wear many hats in life. One of our most important ones is our vocational hat. In an effort to inspire the Rugged Elegant Living community to find your current calling in life, if you haven't already, here is a list of online education and career industry resources for 2005.

Monster at Monster.com

1,593,000 (unique audience)
1.48% (active reach)

For job seekers, Monster allows you to search over 800,000 jobs, build and post your resume and access thousands of pages of career information and advice.

Career Builder at CareerBuilder.com

1,496,000 (unique audience)
1.39% (active reach)

Career Builder is one the Internet's largest job search and employment sites with 900,000 career options available.

On October 2, 2002 Gannett Co., Inc. joined forces with Knight Ridder and Tribune Company as equal partners of CareerBuilder.com.

More than 90 Gannett newspapers are now CareerBuilder.com affiliates and CareerBuilder.com power the career channel on USATODAY.com. CareerBuilder.com claims they have the recruitment industry covered nationwide with a presence in over 200 local markets.

Yahoo! HotJobs at HotJobs.Yahoo.com

1,220,000 (unique audience)
1.14% (active reach)

HotJobs provides employers, recruiters, and staffing agencies with progressive recruiting solutions and hiring management software.

Job seekers voted Yahoo! HotJobs the (2002, 2003) "Best General Purpose Job Board for Job Seekers," and recruiters voted Yahoo! HotJobs the (2003) "Most Recruiter-Friendly General Purpose Site" in a survey conducted by WEDDLE's.

AOL Research & Learn

839,000 (unique audience)
0.78% (active reach)

AOL Research & Learn uniquely provides enriching educational experiences to children and adults alike.

"Each month over 3.5 million AOL members explore our multimedia programming, our interactive features and industry leading educational resources. Innovative tools such as Homework Help and a robust education search engine have made Research & Learn the #1 online education destination," said Chris Johnson, Executive Director, Research & Learn.

This month, America Online and degree portal ClassesUSA.com partnered to provide AOL members with a directory of accredited online degree and certificate programs.

As part of AOL's Research & Learn site, members could access ClassesUSA.com's list of more than 100 of the nation's top colleges and universities that offer online degrees.

Merriam-Webster at M-W.com

636,000 (unique audience)
0.59% (active reach)

Since the free site's debut in 1996, their online presence has been expanded with Merriam-Webster's Word Central -- their site for younger students -- Merriam-Webster Unabridged.com, featuring the complete text of their flagship Unabridged Dictionary, and, most recently, Merriam-Webster Collegiate.com, offering exclusive online access to the new Eleventh Edition of the best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

The most popular feature of Merriam-Webster Online -- Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day -- provides more than 550,000 subscribers with a daily dose of word information.

The 2004 word of the year?

About Homework Help

575,000 (unique audience)
0.54% (active reach)

Yahoo! Education at Education.Yahoo.com

572,000 (unique audience)
0.53% (active reach)

Yahoo! Education offers a set of resources which include: a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a thesaurus, a world factbook, a Spanish dictionary, quotations, Shakespeare's works, anatomy and a conversion calculator.

Sample SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT and PSAT tests are offered here.

You can find a college or grad school provided by Petersons.com. Search courses and degrees, as well as K-12 schools.

Cliffs Notes' plot summaries offer a quick overview of a book you or your child has read. The little yellow and black books are also available to buy online. For the complete analysis just download Cliffs Notes for your upcoming book report.

Of course, you can always purchase the hard copy too. Even The Old Testament and The New Testament of The Bible are available via Cliffs Notes.

SparkNotes, Inc. at SparkNotes.com

570,000 (unique audience)
0.53% (active reach)

After launching the site on March 29, 1999, the founders of TheSpark.com, Inc. began to create an academic resource that would entice students to return to the site frequently. As a result, an online version of literature study guides called SparkNotes took form.

Today, SparkNotes has more than 1.75 million books in print. SparkNotes.com gets over eight hundred million hits per year. After only five years of existence, SparkNotes is the same age as the average kindergartener—yet we're helping make education more fun and enriching for people everywhere, and schooling every other study guide shop on the block.

The U.S. Department of Education at ED.gov

563,000 (unique audience)
0.52% (active reach)

The U.S. Department of Education promotes educational excellence for all Americans. The site is created for students, parents, teachers and administrators.

Information about grants, contracts, financial aid, research & statistics, policy and programs and other White House initiatives are available here.

To learn about No Child Left Behind, go to Answers.Ed.gov.

The University of Michigan Online at UMich.edu

392,000 (unique audience)
0.37% (active reach)

Earlier this month, the University of Michigan and Google announced a joint agreement that will add the 7 million volumes in the Michigan library to the Google search engine and open the way to universal access to information.

Virtually the entire collection of the Michigan library will be digitally scanned and made searchable by Google.

"We are exhilarated to join a partnership with Google that perfectly advances our mission as a great public university to share knowledge within the academic community and far beyond it," said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. "This project signals an era when the printed record of civilization is accessible to every person in the world with Internet access. It is an initiative with tremendous impact today and endless future possibilities."

When I asked Dave Shewmake, an active alum of the University of Michigan, how his school came to stand out amidst all the other great educational institutions he said:

Several departments at Michigan realized the power of the Internet early in the game and built the infrastructure and programs accordingly.

The president of the University of Michigan between 1988 and 1996 was Dr. James Duderstadt. His degrees were in Physics and Engineering. When he was appointed president, the first thing he did was to place a big emphasis on the power of the Internet.

Considering that time period was just before the Internet exploded, it's no surprise that Michigan excelled in various online programs as they had a jump on most universities.

In addition to the University of Michigan, Google has also entered into agreements with Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library.

Not on Nielsen//NetRatings NetView list, but on ours, is The BioSpace Career Center at BioSpace.com.

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical portal (our previous entrepreneurial venture) offers those in the life sciences profession available jobs by company, by category or by region.

Over 1.5 million unique monthly visitors, rely on BioSpace for recruitment, investment, product, event and other biopharmaceutical industry resources.

Over the past seven years, BioSpace has also produced over 150 Career Fairs in the U.S. and Canada. Today, BioSpace, a Career Innovations Company, is the largest life science career fair operation in the United States.

On Tuesday, June 21, 2005, Carolyn Kepcher, Executive Vice President of The Trump Organization and star of the hit television program, "The Apprentice", will be the featured guest speaker for the BioSpace 2005 Career Expo in Philadelphia.

All BioSpace HR exhibitors will receive a signed copy of Ms. Kepcher's book (published by Fireside in October 2004), Carolyn 101: Business Lessons from The Apprentice's Straight Shooter.

In March 2005, look for Online Degrees, a bi-annual national magazine. The company had previously published Succeed magazine, which it parlayed into ClassesUSA.com.

"The site generates 150,000 leads per month for our partners," said CEO, Jordon Keltz.

According to the educational research firm Eduventures, more than 1 million students will enroll in online learning programs by 2005.

The online learning market is expected to grow more than 38 percent in 2004, to $5.1 billion in revenue.

Thanks to the Center for Media Research for the inspiration to post this story.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful, "educated and gainfully employed" living in 2005!

~ Jennifer Carolyn King

Source of Online Resources (save BioSpace): Nielsen//NetRatings NetView