Bob Barker operates the San Diego-based Website, EDUDegreeDirectory.com, an interactive database designed to match working adults returning to school with the right college program for them.

Just as it was for Homo habilis aeons ago, the key to advancing remains learning how to master new tools. In San Diego today, continuing education — topping off a day of work with a course at night, a Saturday morning or online at 5 a.m. — is providing the new tools for working adults to shape their future.

While Calcutta is cornering the global silicon sector and Shanghai has earmarked every bag of cement in the world, San Diego already has one abundant resource — continuing education — as the flint to ignite a career or retool for a new one in computers, construction or even chromosomes.

The Unites States has 70,000 engineering graduates, but India has 350,000 and China, 600,000, reports the San Diego chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation. San Diego is a mecca for students from around the world who enroll in the city’s internationally renowned universities to study engineering, management or pharmacology.

UCSD Extension helps make that world-beater education available to any San Diego resident. About 20,000 students a year enroll in UCSD Extension professional and enrichment courses that encompass 100 certificate programs and 12 specialized study programs. They include business, engineering and defense technology, information technology and software engineering at the UCSD campus and other centers in La Jolla, Sorrento Mesa, Mission Valley and Rancho Bernardo.

“Lifelong learning is more than just a catchy phrase; it’s a philosophy that successful people adopt and follow,” says Don Muehlbach, director of technology education at UCSD Extension and a Navy captain. “Our focus is to help deliver technological advantage to our men and women in uniform. The key to improving the quality of the talent pool is integrating the collective knowledge of the university, defense industry leaders and engineering professionals.”

‘Lifelong learning is a philosophy that successful people adopt and follow, says Don Muehlbach, a Navy captain and UCSD Extension’s director of technology education.

The defense technology program works with the university’s Jacobs (as in the Qualcomm Jacobs) School of Engineering to provide advanced technical training to government, military and industry personnel employed in the $18 billion San Diego defense sector that represents 15 percent of the regional economy.

UCSD has programs in clinical trials administration, design and management; pharmaceutical development; a new master’s degree in health law conferred jointly with California Western School of Law; as well as OSHA and customized corporate training for companies that include Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Sempra Energy, Northrop-Grumman, SAIC, Raytheon, Sea World, Callaway Golf and Pfizer.

UCSD Extension also offers standalone seminars, and among this month’s is “The REAL Real Estate Forecast” with instructors Gary London and Alan Nevin for one half-day meeting at 7:30 a.m. Jan. 11 at UCSD’s Mission Valley center. (Their forecasts are also in this Future Visions issue of San Diego Metropolitan.) For more information or to register, visit extension.ucsd.edu/registration or call (858) 534-3400.

Most UCSD Extension courses with five or more meetings allow for the first class to be attended at no charge. Certificate students also have free access to the university’s career resource center and the Job Seekers Club, a five-week series to build contacts and improve job search skills like salary negotiation. For more information contact careers@ucsd.edu or call (858) 822-1366.

With so much continuing education available, assistance in matching the right college program to the working adult is the mission of San Diego-based EDUDegreeDirectory.com. The directory went online in 2007.

“We came up with the concept because we understood that individuals are facing unique challenges and situations when deciding if and when to return to school,” says Bob Barker, EDU Interactive’s operating partner and the former executive vice president of the University of Phoenix. “There are many online educational directories out there, but we felt that none of them offered busy professionals a one-stop shop for everything they need to choose the right school to earn their degree. We built ours so that working adults can find the school that best meets their individual needs.”

Searching by degree program, level (associate, bachelor’s, master’s), modality (online, campus or both), location and accreditation, the directory aims to answer the groundwork questions: How do I begin? What can I study? How long will it take? How much does it cost? Can I keep working?

Mid-career adults returning to school are not an anomaly at Chapman University College; they are the student body. And Chapman welcomes them. The Mission Valley campus offers credential programs in teaching and counseling and certificate programs in organizational leadership, human resources, gerontology and criminal justice as well as undergraduate studies.

A new term starts every 10 weeks. The next begins Jan. 21. If that’s too soon, the one after that starts March 31. Orientation programs for prospective new students will be held Jan. 10 – 16. For information, visit chapman.edu/sandiego or call (866) 242-7626.

Over its decades in San Diego, the student body at Alliant International University (formerly United States International University) has included banker Murray Galinson, county treasurer Dan McAllister, bow-tied auto dealer Tony McCune and Cubic founder Walter Zable.

Today, Alliant still attracts working San Diegans, amid one of the most diverse international student bodies in the nation, to its Marshall Goldsmith School of Management, Graduate School of Education, California School of Professional Psychology and Center for Forensic Studies. Academic programs offered include master’s degrees and doctorates in industrial and organizational psychology and business administration.

Fundamentally organized for the working adult, the Marshall Goldsmith School (named for the acclaimed business executive coach) is conceptually designed on neither the supply side nor the demand side but the human side of business. With one-third of its enrollment from outside the United States, Alliant is rooted in multiculturalism.

“Learning beside the future leaders of the world” is a school theme — and a golden opportunity for San Diegans to establish lasting personal business relationships today with the next computer moguls of Calcutta and Shanghai’s entrepreneurs of tomorrow.