Career Planning Moves Into The Home

TSC, a Houghton Mifflin Company subsidiary, announced that 350 southern California households now have access to career planning and guidance information. The Guidance Information System (GIS), a computerized career data base maintained by TSC, is one of the services made available during a six-nine month Los Angeles Times Mirror Videotex experiment. Both two-way cable and telephone lines are delivering this information to television screens in the home.

Richard T. Bueschel, president of the New Hampshire-based educational and informational software company, explained that the computerized GIS database is already being used by over one million customers at 4000 institutions across the country. The service, which is updated and verified annually, permits subscribers to quickly identify and compare on the TV screen options that answer their individual vocational or academic needs and interests. The awesome information bank provides four major categories of information instantaneously:

1. The Occupational Information covers 875 occupations, with descriptions of jobs, educational requirements, training routes, wage levels, working conditions, and more. Additional information is also available for armed services occupations.
2. The College Information describes 3,300 two- and four-year colleges, universities and technical institutions in terms of over 500 characteristics, such as programs of study, location, enrollment, competitiveness.
3. The Graduate and Professional School Information lists over 1500 schools offering both doctoral and nondoctoral programs. Degree requirements, placement, financial aid, residence facilities, and costs are all described.
4. The Financial Aids Information file describes in detail national funding sources and such as foundations, business, the military, trade and labor organizations, and religious and charitable groups, in addition to federal programs.

TSC
Box 683
Hanover, NH 03755
(603)448-3838