Hey, the world really IS my oyster!
Well, whaddya know. . . I may have missed my calling here. I've been so focused on what makes a good or bad MT course and trying to move upward and onward into CTR that I totally neglected other possibilities. Those of us who've been around any length of time at all know that the world (and particularly, the internet) is full of bogus courses that will promise to train you as transcriptionist in 12 easy lessons and have you making $60K a year in no time. If a $3000 course with a stellar track record will get you there in 9-12 months, why not pay half the money and just apply a more concerted DIY effort? Heck, why not hit eBay, where you can drop anywhere from $1 to $500 and really save some money?
The same is probably true of coding and other HIM courses, of course. There are countless "matchbook" schools (so called because that's where they're apt to advertise--matchbook covers, magazine inserts, even postcards in that diaper bag of goodies the baby formula company gets your OB to hand out on your first prenatal visit) just hoping you'll be enticed by their hype. Of course, this isn't confined to the pink collar ghetto of work-at-home-mommies. You can train to become all kinds of cools things, from locksmith to crime scene investigator, paralegal to IT specialist, dog groomer to court stenographer. . .
. . . and now, even doctor! Yes, in a mere two years and ten months, you too can finally hear your mother introduce you as, "My son, the doctor." No pesky Bachelor's degree or MCATs to pass for admission. No quotas, no age limit. Heck, you don't even have to worry about dragging your hiney out of bed to your first class because the campus is apparently virtual, cleverly concealed in this PO annex in a California strip mall. (To be fair, the campus photos elsewhere emphasize the lovely public beach across the street as the apparent student union.) Now, I've been told that a good acute care transcriptionist has a fund of knowledge on a par with a third-year medical student and being quite full of myself and eager to believe this, I find myself wondering if I couldn't just breeze through this school with such a background. I see they take PayPal, after all. *big grin* I don't think it's too alarming that their faculty only has four instructors, do you? Maybe the rest of them are at those "Caribbean locations" where you do your clinical rotations. Cool--a medical degree AND a great vacation!
All kidding aside, I don't know whether this makes me happy to see it's not just SAHMs being taken advantage of or really depressed because the internet has really outdone itself. Do they honestly have more than the one student who fell for this? Are there really hospitals who would happily accept a new resident with such a pedigree? More importantly, how many of us are going to pay a little more attention to those diplomas on our MD's wall, hoping we see almost anything but this particular alma mater? I bet PT Barnum is laughing himself silly about now.
For myself, I think I'm content to aim just slightly lower and revel in the knowledge that I seem to have chosen a field with considerably fewer loopholes on the educational end. Even though I'm still floundering around the starting line, I've been really bolstered by the feedback from fellow MTs that I'm on to something here.