Is there any financial aid available from either the Department of Education, Department of Labor, Sallie Mae or other sources for the CISSP one-week training that is offered by ISC² or the PMI PMP certifications?
QUESTION POSED ON: 06 OCT 2004
QUESTION ANSWERED BY: Ed Tittel
This is a difficult question to answer in a vacuum, because the answer depends on your location, your personal and work history and your credit rating. That said, I'm not aware of financial aid from the Dept. of Education for CISSP or PMP per se -- they tend to offer a variety of large government programs (like the Pell Grants for college financial aid) but not much focused on short-run, high-end professional training. As for the Department of Labor, I'm not aware of anything that applies to these circumstances, unless you've been recently displaced from a job and qualify for retraining benefits (and often, they're small enough that they wouldn't make much of a dent in the typical price tag for ISC² training or a PMP class).
But I do have what I hope is a "killer suggestion" to make: Since the ISC² and the Project Management Institute would like to see you earn their credentials (and take their training, where applicable), why not ask them what kind of financial aid you might be able to find to help you bear the costs? I'm guessing, true, but I'd bet my own money that they'll have at least some recommendations to make that does apply to their programs and offerings, because surely they've had to deal with such needs before.
If nothing turns up, I urge you to investigate the pages of Certification Magazine (for which I am the technology editor, and a regular contributor, I must also disclose). They run annual feature articles on various forms of loans and other financial aid available to pay for certification, and such coverage can also give you some ideas on how you might best borrow the money to cover your needs, if you can't find somebody to give you the money instead.
Good luck in your search for funding. If you keep at it and investigate further some of the resources I recommend here, you'll get it figured out.
--Ed--
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