Undergrad advantages/disadvantages? Marine Biology or Oceanography?

[ImperiousRex]

I've posted this question on other forums, but haven't heard anything and thought i'd give it a shot here. Well right now i'm doing an undergrad in Economics, but i was going to switch to something Liberal Arts because it's easier, and i've been in school for WAY too long. I've always wanted to go into Marine Biology, but I don't fully understand what specialties are in this field. I have heard that there is a lot of money to be made from research and grants and what not but my main objective is to do something that I like. Now of course money is a must as well, basically something i can be comfortable with.

Either way, what would the disadvantages be of getting an undergrad in something Liberal Arts to then try and further my education in grad school in Marine Biology? What are the possibilities of getting into a grad school for this? Have any of you been through this? Any tips

Also, I want to get a job in the ocean working with and around marine life. Acquiring and studying specimens, studying the marine animal and plant life, testing water for organisms or pollution etc... What types of specializations are there in the major for this and what is the best paying specialization for this type of degree or for oceanography?

Does anyone know of other Marine Biology type forums? The ones i know of now are planktonforums.org, oceanographers.net and this one but the first two i don't really get any traffic i guess.

Thanks

[Sprocket]

I'm currently a PhD student in an Evolutionary Biology/Marine Science lab, however I work primarily on terrestrial vertebrates.

First and foremost, forget it if you are focused on the financial side of things, especially in terms of an academic career. The educational expectations mean you will be on a scholarship for a 5-6 years, then a postdoc salary of around $40k for another three, and only then will you be qualified to apply for major grants from the NSF etc. At all stages, competition is high, you may have to apply several times and even then may not be successful. Pretty much anything else will get you more renumeration and security frot he input of time expected of you, with the exception of scuba instructing, prehaps.

Basically, unless you have a passionate interest in research and the naunces to make the necesary academic achievements required, forget academia.

However, enviromental consultancy in the private sector is a potential avenue. Many people I know are involved in consultancy for development and mining. There's ethical concerns I wouldn't be comfortable with, but the time you spend in the field is high and the pay is very reasonable. At least in Australia, a good BSc is the academic requirement, in combination with experience (usually through summer work experience type activity) and the willingness to go where they want you, which for a graduate will probably be where no one else wants to (i.e. midle of nowhere)

As for doing that sort of work with a marine focus, you'd be expected to have commercial scuba certification and I imagine the competition is stiff.

If you're really keen on money and diving, I'd be looking at engineering. Got a friend who works on oil rigs and earns bucketloads of cash, however he has a military clearance diver background - and got a Mech Engineeering degree through the military.

Unfortunately, people are keen to dive for free (I regularly go along on marine field trips on no pay no cost arrangements) and most "fun" research isn't industry driven, so money is from government and therefore higly sought after.

[adurso]

See this site for info : Page Not Found? - MarineBio.org (http://marinebio.org/MarineBio/Careers/USschools.asp)

And read Milt Love's info : Marine Biologist (http://www.lovelab.id.ucsb.edu/biologist.html)

Unless your liberal arts undergrad is heavy on the sciences, you will have a difficult time qualifiying for grad school in marine bio

[Thalassamania]

I'm sorry - Milt's stuff is so good it has to be replicated here. Please make note of reason three!

So you want to be a marine biologist? Well sonny, or sonnette, as the case may be, why don’t you just sit down and let a real marine biologist give you some damn good advice. And wipe that smirk off your face, sit up straight and for goodness sakes stop fidgeting! You’d think you had lice the way you are carrying on. You do? Oh well, never mind.


First of all there are three really, really bad reasons to want to be a marine biologist. If you have even an inkling that these are yours, please run away as fast as possible, ‘cause neither you nor we will be happy.


Three Really, Really Bad Reasons to Want to Be a Marine Biologist

Reason Number One: "I want to be a marine biologist so that I can talk to dolphins."

Believing this is simply the Kiss of Death. This is the verbal equivalent of reaching down your throat, pulling out your own intestines, wrapping them around your neck and choking yourself. When we hear this our impulse is to thwack you a good one on your keester with the frozen haddock we keep within arm’s reach just for this occasion.


And why is that? It is because, and please listen carefully, while you may want to talk to dolphins, dolphins do not want to talk to you. That’s right. Mostly, dolphins want to eat fishes and have sex with other dolphins. And that pretty much cuts you out of the loop, doesn’t it? Oh, I know that there are the occasional dolphins that hang around beaches, swim with humans and seem to be chummy, but these are the exceptions. You don’t judge the whole human race by the people who attend monster car rallies, do you?


Just be honest with yourself. If you want to talk to dolphins you don’t want to be a biologist. What you really want to do is explore your past lives, get in touch with the Cosmic Oneness and conduct similar-minded individuals on tours to Central America looking for evidence that We Are Not Alone. Our experience is that people who feel this way last about 6.5 minutes in any biology program.

Reason Number Two: "I want to be a marine biologist because I really like Jacques Cousteau."

That’s nice. We really like Jacques Cousteau, too. But, drinking thousands of gallons of red wine while scuba diving around the world does not make you a marine biologist. It makes you a wonderful and effective spokesperson for the sea, and gives you a liver with the consistency of a chocolate necco wafer, but it does not make you a marine biologist.


Reason Number Three: "I want to be a marine biologist because I want to make big bucks."

Okay, here’s the bottom line. By Federal law, marine biologists have to take a vow of poverty and chastity. Poverty, because you are not going to make squat-j-doodly in this job. Just how squat is the doodly we are talking about? Well, five years after finishing my PhD I was making slightly less than a beginning manager at McDonalds. Ooh, a 36 year old guy with 13 years of college and 5 years of post-doctoral experience making just about as much as a semi-literate 19 year old with pimples the size of Bolivia, who can speak perhaps 3 words at a time before the term "you know" enters the conversation.

And chastity because, well, who’s going to date a marine biologist? The smell alone tends to dissuade a large proportion of the opposite sex.


Two Really, Really Good Reasons to Want to Be a Marine Biologist


Reason Number One: "You can dress and act almost any way you want."

This is true. Marine biologists are almost entirely free of any of those silly restrictions that blight the professional landscape of our fellow proletarians. This is because no one really cares about what we do or what we say. You want to come to work dressed in scabrous khaki shorts and a torn black Sandman shirt? Fine. You want to grow a scruffy beard, get a tattoo of a gooseneck barnacle on your arm or burp at inopportune moments? No problem, just do good work.

Reason Number Two: "If you like it, just do it."

Look, the reality is that you only go around once in life and if, by chance, you do come back, knowing how you have behaved in this life, you will undoubtedly come back as a slime mold. And most slime molds cannot be marine biologists. So just go out there and do what you enjoy. Marine biology is a wonderful profession. You want to find cancer cures by grinding up sponges? How about figuring out why hammerhead sharks always come back to the same seamount? Or where is the missing carbon dioxide that industries are producing; could the ocean be soaking it up? All neat projects. But pay attention here. None of this involves drinking copious quantities of fermented grape juice, while intoning "The ocean, she is strange and wondrous, filled with animals that disturb even a Frenchman."


The ocean is an exciting, never-dull place that is perfect for piddling away your existence. And just think, you actually get paid to think cool thoughts and do cool things.


And so what if you will never have sex again?

[adurso]

When my daughter first expressed an interest in marine biology I had her read Milt's stuff and think long and hard about it. Then as time went by I had her read it again periodically to see if her interest had changed.

[archman]

First, let me totally support Thal's forward. It's spot-on.

My own (extensive) marine science training has see-sawed quite a bit between marine biology and oceanography. I have observed that the differences between the two disciplines can be rather significant. To sum the differences up into a single sentence, marine biology is heavy in er... biology, and oceanography is heavy into physical sciences and math with far less biology. I'm being rather generalistic and many schools and labs often deviate from the formalities. Marine biology is *supposed* to be the study of organisms in the marine environment, while oceanography is *supposed* to focus on the study of marine environments. There's a subfield of oceanography called biological oceanography that blends a lot more into marine biology.

I would have once agreed with adurso's statement that an undergraduate degree heavy in the sciences is almost obligate for acceptance into a marine biology graduate program. But now that I've been out amongst a few colleges and sampled their graduate student backgrounds, I can reliably state that many marine bio and even oceanography grad programs do not require extensive science background from their students. Not anymore, anyway. A liberal arts degree in *whatever* is just fine.

Less than 5% of the "I wanna be a marine biologist" high school students I've supervised in the Caribbean have actually pursued careers in the field. That's a nasty statistic.

Another nasty observation. "Marine biology" graduate (and undergraduate) programs have sprouted up at colleges all over the place within the last 10-12 years. This has created a false impression (to many student applicants) that jobs in marine biology are on the rise. I can assure you that they most certainly are not. Even technician-level positions are fairly rare. Tons of temporary, unpaid "internships" however. If anyone wants to be hooked up with one of these, I can forward half a dozen weblinks!

[Thalassamania]

First a word about marine biology and oceanography, and I say this a a Biological Oceanographer not a Marine Biologist.

Most (not all) Marine Biologists are specialists, they study things that live in the sea, some know a great deal about many other areas of ocean science, but many can't tell a Nansen Bottle from a Coke Bottle, could care less what a CTD is, have never heard on an XBT, couldn't run a Winkler Titration if their life depended on it, have no interest in Pillow Basalts and think that Potential Density is how many people could live somewhere sometime in the future. Most (not all) Oceanographers are generalists, they have similar blind spots, only they are less amusing because they tend to be down in the minutia that no one except a specialist really cares about anyway.

I am a biologist at heart, but I am also expected to be conversant at a fairly high level with physical, chemical and geological topics. I'm supposed to be the marine science equivalent to a utility infielder, best at one base or shortstop but capable of playing any of the four positions. Note that this approach does varry from school to school and that there has been a tendency lately to soften the amount of biological material that the Physical Oceanographers have to master and to soft pedal the Physics and Fluid Dynamics for the Biologists (many of whom just can't handle the math).

That said, I think that undergrad oceanography programs are poor choices, because you never really get the chance to establish a strong backround in a single major field; by the same token undergraduate Marine Biology programs tend to force too much specialization at at time when the student should be working toward a more generalist understanding of evolution, niche theory, ecoloical models, animal behavior, etc. I say, for either approach, get a good math, statistic and experimental design backround and let the rest take care of itself, but know which direction: generalist or specialist you are headed in.

[Sprocket]

Stuff

Indeed.

I'm a phylogeographer (type of population geneticist) and systematist. This requires quite specialist knowledge in genetic/coalescent theory and lab work, but also generalistic knowledge of all factors that might affect the population structure of a given study organism or group.

Although my disseration focuses on arid zone reptiles, a pet subject of mine is population structure in marine systems - what factors cause population structure and speciation in marine enviroments? In order to have any hope of developing and testing credible hypotheses for those sorts of questions, you need to make sense of oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, biology, ecology etc as well as interpreting genetic info.

However a big and exponenitally growing need is the ability to use statistical testing and simulation modelling. Both of these require a pretty solid grasp of maths and computing. I'm trying to learn Perl Script at the moment to pipeline analysis for genomic sequencing, and I just filled 3 terrabytes up with sequence data. Would've been at a distinct advangtage had I done some basic programming in undergrad.

[Thalassamania]

Good advice, very good. When I was an undergrad, since I spoke fair Spanish, they let me take a year of FORTRAN (now am I dating myself?) instead of a foreign language, best move I ever made. The courses I took in Exploratory Data Analysis were likely the most useful graduate courses I took.

Science hobbies are a must - I have a long standing interest in reptilian/avian evolution.

[archman]

That said, I think that undergrad oceanography programs are poor choices, because you never really get the chance to establish a strong backround in a single major field; by the same token undergraduate Marine Biology programs tend to force too much specialization at at time when the student should be working toward a more generalist understanding of evolution, niche theory, ecoloical models, animal behavior, etc. I say, for either approach, get a good math, statistic and experimental design backround and let the rest take care of itself, but know which direction: generalist or specialist you are headed in.

While I was still in graduate school, I would have agreed about the specialization of marine bio majors. But that impression would have been based off of 1990's and earlier higher education trends. Now that I'm out of school and in the trenches of teaching today's students, I'm seeing a vastly different picture.

From what I've been recently observing and hearing about from other biology instructors throughout the U.S., many if not most "marine biology" majors lack much specialization at all. In fact (at state-funded schools in particular), if one now peruses a marine biology degree plan, I'd lay strong odds that there are less than five dedicated marine bio specialty classes that a given marine bio undergrad would need to take to graduate. Most schools simply don't offer more than this, and if they could, the general education requirements for state-funded colleges are increasingly supplanting advanced core major courses.

Several schools (still) offer outstanding marine biology (or "biology" with strong marine science) programs. Most of these are the classic institutions strongly affiliated with marine labs. Some are newer schools. Regardless, the only SUREFIRE way that I know of to check the quality and quantity of his field is to get a copy of the university's course catalog and student handbook. At the minimum, check the following:
1. Degree Plan (see how many marine biology or related classes are required)
2. Course Catalog (see what's offered and more importantly, how often they're offered)
3. Faculty Listing (see how many professors there are that are teaching courses in the field)

From my experience, the vast majority of my college students (nor their parents) paid much (if any) attention to degree requirements or course listings when selecting colleges to attend. Given that most students nowadays don't select majors until their junior years (or later), I understand this lack of interest. But I do not endorse it.

[ImperiousRex]

Thanks for the responses. I must say that although money is a strong motivator it's not the primary one in this case. Ever since I was a kid I always knew what i wanted to study, either herpetology, or marine biology. Living in the Caribbean for a while as a kid, I spent lots of time around the beaches here, fascinated by all aspects of ocean life. I can distinctly still remember observing the different types of plants and animals that I had seen when out on the reefs and in the water, running home at the end of the day and learning as much about them as I possibly could. Wow, for some reason i felt like a little kid typing that last part out.. BTW, i would LOVE to get my scuba license, hopefully i can do that here in the next month or so before I have to go back to the mainland..

My fascination lies mainly with marine reptiles, amphibians and cephalopods but marine life and the ecosystems in general as even the different qualities of water itself still fascinate me. Unfortunately I took some unexpected turns in life and ended up where I didn't really want to and now after some wasted college years and a few changes in my major here I am. Depressing enough as it is to look back and see that I have wasted all that time pursuing something I just wasn't truly passionate about, maybe it's time to start again from scratch. So the story begins, I want to study different aquatic ecosystems and their continuing changes in the different climates as well as these effects on the life there, mainly cephalopods, reptiles and amphibious life with an emphasis on aquatic plants but fish and basically everything there as well... Pretty much a general type of specialization but I don't want to spend the next 10+ years doing so.. if that makes any sense...

[Thalassamania]

Econ likely gave you the math background that you need, that's good. It sounds like you have the interest, but I need to remind you ... there's NO MONEY IN IT!

Milt may have put it in a humorous way, but he's not kidding:

Reason Number Three: "I want to be a marine biologist because I want to make big bucks."

Okay, here’s the bottom line. By Federal law, marine biologists have to take a vow of poverty and chastity. Poverty, because you are not going to make squat-j-doodly in this job. Just how squat is the doodly we are talking about? Well, five years after finishing my PhD I was making slightly less than a beginning manager at McDonalds. Ooh, a 36 year old guy with 13 years of college and 5 years of post-doctoral experience making just about as much as a semi-literate 19 year old with pimples the size of Bolivia, who can speak perhaps 3 words at a time before the term "you know" enters the conversation.

And chastity because, well, who’s going to date a marine biologist? The smell alone tends to dissuade a large proportion of the opposite sex.

As a grad student you will be lucky to make $1000 a month, maybe a tuition waiver, no health insurance. There is a better way, which is what I did: get a job where you want to go to school, most universities let employee's go for free. Take a few classes, then apply to the degree program. If you did well in the classes you should have no trouble getting in, then all you have to do is adjust your work schedule to accommodate your classes and research, with is easier than you think. That way you go to school for free with a real salary coming in and health insurance, retirement, etc. You're still never going to get rich, but this way is a whole lot easier.

[Sprocket]

Thanks for the responses. I must say that although money is a strong motivator it's not the primary one in this case.

Ok, So here's how it works in Australia:

Undergrad: Full time, no money. 3 years minimum

Honours or Masters: Need GPA >3, Full time (and them some, expect to work 50+ hours a week), no money. 1-2 years. (I worked weekends as a zookeeper for rent and food money)

PhD: Need 1st Class Honours or MSc and publication record to qualify for an APA or equivalent scholarship. 25% of applicants successful. 3 years salary, at $20 007AUD (so about $14-15K USD). I earn a couple of extra grand teaching a year. Full time (and them some, expect to work 50+ hours a week). Expect to take 4 years to complete.

Postdoc Grant: Need PhD + strong publication record. Less than 10% of applications successful. 3 attempts, then game over. 3 years salary, $60 -80K AUD(I know in the US postdocs get around $39K USD at the moment as my partner just got one).

Tenure: Expect to do 2-3 postdocs before qualifying for a tenured position, unless you're hot stuff. Full time job, full benefits, maybe $100K AUD a year. EXTREMELY competitive, come up a few times a year.

As you can see, there's no job security or much money for a long, long time. You'll earn less than a tradesperson until you're 30ish.

To me, the benefits of working a job which I would do for free, where I make my own hours, look how I want and travel a lot outweigh the fact that all the people I went to high school with who did sensible degrees like accounting, dentistry and economics all are buying houses when I still wind up with a 2 digit sum in my bank account every fortnight.

Basically, if money is a factor at all, it's the wrong career path.

However if you know that, I'd be seaching round on the net and finding labs that do research you're keen on. Read their publications and ask them for advice and what they expect of a research student - you'll get some awesome advice from some and no reply from others.

[martinwaller]

This is all very fascinating to hear to a non-scientist, and armchair explorer like myself. I had no idea that our top young ocean scientists were is such dire straights financially. I guess you have to love it to pursue a career as a marine biologist or oceanographer.
I suppose there are lots and lots of young people out there who "want to be a marine biologist" but have no idea that it is such a difficult career path. Earlier I linked to a video talk by a young oceanographer at Scripps Institute YouTube - Adventures in Oceanography (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ENtNt-kb3o)

you could definitely see that he enjoys his work, but I didn't know it was such a struggle. Do scientists at places like that struggle as well, he seemed to have been all over, so maybe that is 'payment' enough.

Being retired (accounting -- not the most glamorous!) I can think back to a life of 9 to 5 work and only excitement on the weekends and holidays -- but I don't think I could have traded the security for a more exciting day to day existance. And, I don't think I would have been able to pass the physics and math requirements to be a scientist.

All the best

Martin

[Thalassamania]

Yes, scientists-in-training everywhere (even the top institutions) struggle financially, but there are significant compensations. Your time is pretty much your own, you work on what you're interested in, if you want there are amazing travel opportunities, many of which could not (at least until recently) be had at any price, you don't have to dress for the office, etc.

Dale is rather atypical, and the highly adventurous style that he presents, while possible, is not the usual life of a marine scientists, as I said in a piece that I wrote a few years ago:
Underwater science is usually rather dull. Hours spent collecting data. Data that’s not particularly interesting in and of itself. Data that becomes interesting only when conjoined with similar data from other sites and times. The media stars of underwater science like Sylvia Earle and Bob Ballard reach out from the pages of a glossy book or beckon from a tightly edited video production, crisp and seductive images that intersect at a precise and meaningful conclusion right there on the last page or in the last minute.

Real life is not like that, at least not very often. It’s repetitious … hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, usually strenuous, occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while, every once in a long while, there’s magic. Something really special happens that makes up for all that’s come before, something really special.

[archman]

Classically (19th century to 1930's), the majority of "naturalists" (we now call them biologists) were independently wealthy individuals who pursued scientific research as more of a hobby. Or they were monks. In any event, these were people who had lots of free time to do whatever they wanted.

Post WWII, higher education in the U.S. (particularly community colleges) expanded through the roof. There was a massive hiring binge of academics and a great deal of government funding to support them.

This "golden age of higher education" lasted through the mid-1980's. After that, government support for higher education began significantly cutting back. Nowadays, less than 40% of professors even are tenured or on the tenure track. The remaining 60% (and increasing) of professors are professors in name only but little else. They're contractual workers, paid by course (~3,000 USD for a 3-credit course), with no research allocation. Most aren't even permitted to join university health care or retirement plans. Little to no job security, either.

On the other foot, while U.S. higher education is now languishing badly, options for marine scientists in private industry and government agencies are either holding steady or even increasing. The majority of colleagues of my age are pursuing careers as marine scientists are employed as such. Whereas virtually no one has secured the coveted tenure track university position as a marine biologist/oceanographer. Universities simply aren't hiring much, and the competition for that handful (literally) of jobs is fiercer than anything I know short of the astronaut corps.

[adurso]

Adjunct professorships are not a bad part time gig. I have been an adjunct since 94, I discovered I had no interest in pursuing a tenure track position after I learned of the political nonsense involved.

Archman, are there any undergraduate maine bio programs you would recommend and why?

[ImperiousRex]

Archman, are there any undergraduate maine bio programs you would recommend and why?

This.. I would love to know

[martinwaller]

Yes, scientists-in-training everywhere (even the top institutions) struggle financially, but there are significant compensations. Your time is pretty much your own, you work on what you're interested in, if you want there are amazing travel opportunities, many of which could not (at least until recently) be had at any price, you don't have to dress for the office, etc.

Dale is rather atypical, and the highly adventurous style that he presents, while possible, is not the usual life of a marine scientists, as I said in a piece that I wrote a few years ago:
Underwater science is usually rather dull. Hours spent collecting data. Data that’s not particularly interesting in and of itself. Data that becomes interesting only when conjoined with similar data from other sites and times. The media stars of underwater science like Sylvia Earle and Bob Ballard reach out from the pages of a glossy book or beckon from a tightly edited video production, crisp and seductive images that intersect at a precise and meaningful conclusion right there on the last page or in the last minute.

Real life is not like that, at least not very often. It’s repetitious … hour after hour, cold, uncomfortable, usually strenuous, occasionally dangerous. But every once in a while, every once in a long while, there’s magic. Something really special happens that makes up for all that’s come before, something really special.



You have articulated that so well... 'That every once in a long while, there's magic'.. I guess that makes up for the "real life" nature of the job. In Dale's "Adventures" marine science talk he does make the point in the beginning that most of what you real scientists do is boring and involves an endless search for grant funding. But, then he concentrates on the 'fun' aspects of his job. Which i suppose makes sense when you are trying to give an interesting talk -- but, when all you see is that part of the job, whether by this Scripps scientist or someone like Bob Ballard, you tend to think that is what it is all about all the time. I hope that budding young scientists in high school are not being done a disservice when they only see the 'glossy side' of things.

Martin

[Thalassamania]

I've had the good fortune, over the years, to work with many of the science "popularizers," and I've usually felt that the criticisms pointed at them (and believe me there is a lot within the science community) was unjustified, except for the issue that you just identified.

We live in a results now, immediate gratification, safely sanitized world where dive training has the pretense of being an "Adventure Dive" and those too timid to go to the keys may dive in tank at EPCOT and stroll down a Disney safe Duval St. at the Old Key West Resort. I've watched more than a few "budding young scientists" come and go who were not prepared for the realities and the challanges. My son wants to go into science, I've raised him on stories of Humbolt and Scott, Crick and Darwin, Beebe and Momson, Cook and Bligh, Lindberg and Apollo 13 rather than the more popular fare, and the difference shows.

[Dan Ziegner]

Think of getting a degree in a hard science, Bio, Chem or Physics.

[Thalassamania]

Here's a nice (but kinda "puff") piece that PBS did on Sylvia Earle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeGV9rVRCj4).

I have an ulterior motive, at about 5 minutes into the piece there's a sequence where the Deep Rover is being launched off a white ship (the R/V Undersea Hunter). Standing on the deck just to the right of the sub is yours truly.

[archman]

Archman, are there any undergraduate maine bio programs you would recommend and why?

There have been some decent discussions on this topic. Here are some links.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/marine-science-physiology/105149-marine-biology-careers.html

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/non-diving-related-stuff/40131-marine-biology-recommendations.html

Personally, for an undergrad degree in marine biology (that was conducive to scuba diving) I'd go with a public university in either Florida, California, and Hawaii. There's a nice school in Washington state that has a really good undergrad program, but it's name eludes me.

[Garthak]

Hello all,

I'm looking for some information to assist Veterans in using VA benefits toward Scuba Diving courses. I was directed by the VA to conduct a labor survey. I have a form that has about 13 basic questions to ask employers. Basically what I need is contact information for companies that hire divers, not just instructors, such as Training agencies, Magazines, research centers and anyone who would need to hire divers in more than just instructor situations. Please contact me at garthak(at)gmail.com if you might have contact information. The respons to these surveys will aid in the future use of GI BILL benefits towards certifications.

Thanks

PS Need to be US based companies.