If you want to find out about editing and proofreading as a career choice, you can check out the Editors' Association of Canada website. It's not flashy but it has a lot of information.
http://www.editors.ca/ There are equivalent organizations in other countries as well, I just don't know much about them.
About the course, if it's offered by a legitimate institution, i.e., your local college, it's probably safe. But I wouldn't go with anything else.
By the way, I don't know the stats, but I wouldn't say *most* editors had degrees in English or Journalism. Many (most?) have degrees in something else entirely. My background is business, my bosses is theatre, I know of one at least who was a nurse. From what I can gather, most people seem to gravitate to editing after finding out in another career that their favourite part of that job was the writing and editing they did.
It seems the type of thing you're born with (though, of course, the skills are very learnable as well).
) which made mention of a few courses that specialise in teaching people about such writing careers as Proofreading and Copy-editing etc. (I'm not sure if they are one and the same). The advert seemed genuine and it did seem intriguing and although I didn't study the website it gave me in full depth I sent off for a free information pack anyway (should arrive within the next day or two).
