MS Leaks “Career Assist” Details in Blog

Microsoft Certification Project Manager Ken Rosen has let slip the details on the “Career Assist” program in a post to his Born to Learn blog. It actually went up on Wednesday as I was waiting for official word from MS, and reports the same Friday, February 6, public release date that MS PR shared with me yesterday by phone. You can see his original language at “Oh, the heck with it…”

Here are the salient details:

• Between today (2/6/2009) and June 30th (6/30/2009) individuals who register for Microsoft’s Second Shot program can get an E-Learning Collection for $35.
• This e-learning offering remains available for only 90 days (rather than the usual 180 days for full-price e-learning collections).

It will be interesting to see if this also applies to Premier Collection 6337, as I wondered in yesterday’s blog. It seems pretty clear that this is a “one and only one” kind of offer, though Rosen says that those signed up for Second Shot already will have to sign up again to qualify for the e-learning discount. Does that mean if somebody is willing to work hard enough between now and the end of June that they can knock off more than one collection to prepare for multiple exams? That’s not yet clear, but when MS does release the final, official word some time today, I’ll post an addition to this blog to clear things up.

After all the initial hoopla, I was hoping for something more (and thus, also find myself hoping that this is an “all-you-can-eat” deal rather than a “single-serving” one). But only time, and Microsoft, will tell…

10:53 AM CST (GMT/UCT -06:00) 2/6/2009 –Ed–

Update on 2/10 10:41 AM CST

Career Assist is now live and official. Read more about it on Born to Learn. My guess was correct: it is a one-and-only-one offer so once you sign up for a single collection, that’s the only item of that type for which you will qualify for the discounted $35 price. Still one heck of a deal, though, and obviously intended to entice more students into the e-learning classroom for other, follow-on courses at full price. No all you can eat, though. Bummer!