business field licensure or certification recommendation

Would like to get any suggestions/recommendations for a certification or licensure in the business field. My employer has given me the following restrictions:
- Non-degree based but classes could count towards college credit are ok
- Cannot be based on semester or quarter hours
- Cannot be a college or university program
- Cannot not cost for than $4500
- Community college, private trade and technical school programs are ok
- Programs must lead toward licensure or certification at state or national level

I have a MBA and would like to take advantage of this opportunity. My interests are in the management, finance, marketing, and information systems fields. I am assuming professional certifications that lead to state licensures are ok such as a CPA.

 

What's about PMP, Project Management Program?

 

CSUDH certficate courses

How about a certificate in quality assurance – important for any manufacturing or service company or organization:
http://www.csudh.edu/msqa/msqasercert.htm

CSUDH also has other certificates:
http://dominguezonline.csudh.edu/programs.php

 

Unfortunately, I'm afraid they will not approve the QA certificate since it is through California State University.

 

UC Berkely extension Certificate

Hey Dave,

Try UC Berkely Extension Online Certificate in Marketing. It's 6 courses at about 675.00-700.00 a class. So the total would be around $4200 and is in the price range. Since it is an Extension course it might be approved. Here is the link http://www.unex.berkeley.edu/cert/marketon.html. The scheduling of courses is different from UC Berkely's quarter schedule.

 

Ideas

PMP is a good one.

If you're into finance, how about a Certified Financial Planner - CFP? http://www.cfp.net/become/

Or CFA - Chartered Financial Analyst? http://www.cfainstitute.org/

These are both very rigorous programs. There are classes available for each certification and of course some self-study is also possible.

There are some Real Estate and Human Resource certifications too. I guess it depends on what area of business interests you, as it is a wide field.

 

Here's some more worth looking at for applicability:

National Contracts Management Association
NCMA

Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering
AACEI

Society for Human Resource Management
SHRN

 

Thanks for the recommendations, keep them coming. It would be a plus if the certification was through a B&M accredited school which includes some graduate credit.

Initially I requested funding for the financial manager certification offered by eCornell but it was rejected with the excuse "funding is not for university programs." This leads me to believe the certification or license needs to be offered through a source without university in its title.

I wonder how they would react if the course was offered through a program with both university and community college in the same title such as University of Arkansas Community College or Ohio University Community College. I'm going to contact them tomorrow to find out if they will fund a university extension course which leads to certification.

 

Are you asking about certificate programs or professional certification programs? I believe there is a difference.

Colleges and universities typically offer certificate programs, where as professional associations offer professional certifications. For example, I believe UCLA Extension offers a certificate in Government Contracts, but the National Contract Management Association confers the Certified Professional Contracts Manager (CPCM) professional certification. Also, many schools offer a certificate program in project management, but only the PMI confers the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Certificate programs typically require completing the specified number of courses.

Professional certification typically requires having a specified number of years experience, completion of education courses, and passing exam(s), as well as continuous learning required to maintain professional certification.

 

Some further info I got was "Programs must lead toward licensure or certification at state or national level. A nurses aid program that will train someone to sit for a state or national certification would qualify."

So it appears the training program must lead to a state or national certification/license. Some of the approved training programs are real estate sales training, medical transcription, professional private investigator, appraiser, truck driver training, administrative assistant, EMT, although there are various computer application training programs which are approved.

 

Doesn't this violate an initial ground rule?
"Cannot be a college or university program"

Your employers ground rules remind me of my last employer who had separate education and training funds which could not be mixed. I believe this had to do with government contract law - training is an allowable expense - education had to come out of either overhead or profit. No credit course could be used for training.