Anya Kamenetz is today's guest blogger.  Higher education is undergoing great scrutiny for many reasons: useless costly degrees, excessive student debt (2011 grads carry an average debt of $27,500), poor teaching, etc. They are also undergoing great change. A decade from now, universities and colleges will be quite different. When we look back, Anya will be seen as the fulcrum that caused much of this change.  I am honored to know her.  Here's her post which explains her new project.  If you know a non-traditional learner or a bright, ambitious young adult that has no way to finance a college education, please send this post to them!

"Three fourths of the nation's college students are "nontraditional" in some way either because they're older, working adults or have family responsibilities, up to 60 percent of students graduate with more than one institution on their transcript, and there are more adults in this country with some college (44 million) than those with a college degree (41 million.)

 The Edupunks' Guide is for all of them. It's a first-of-its kind resource to enable people to take advantage of all the resources online to enhance their learning, complete their credits, get credit for prior learning, accomplish their goals and, if they choose, get a degree. It's not a traditional college guide; it coaches people through steps like creating a personal learning plan, finding a mentor, and participating on a network that will eventually help connect them to jobs."

I'm Anya.  I write the column Life in Beta, about change and innovation, for Fast Company magazine and write a money column for 50 Tribune newspapers.  I've been covering education issues since shortly after I graduated college. I started out writing about student loans for the Village Voice, a beat that led to my publishing the book Generation Debt in 2006.

Generation Debt dealt with all the cultural, emotional, and economic fallout that comes with Millennials being the first generation in American history not to improve materially on their parents' circumstances: lower salaries, job uncertainty, credit card debt, and of course student loans.

The book caused some controversy, though in the intervening years I've been glad to see that people are taking these issues a lot more seriously. An international debt crisis has a way of making folks sit up and pay attention!

Generation Debt thrust me into the role of a student and youth advocate. I spoke in the media, trying to make the point that there are severe circumstances, not laziness or some generational malaise, holding young people back.  And I spoke to students around the country at colleges large and small, rich and poor, public and private.

My message was a combination of the big economic and political picture, combined with money management and other advice young people can use to take control of their lives right now.
Most student advocates I rubbed elbows with in Washington were focused on increasing the Pell Grant while reining in Sallie Mae and the University of Phoenix. All of these are important. But in my role as a policy expert I saw that there were systemic issues in higher education causing tuition to spiral upwards while quality suffered. In my travels around the country I saw that many students weren't being prepared for life or the workforce and weren't happy about it. And writing for Fast Company magazine, I saw that technology and innovation had transformed so many sectors of the economy; why not education?

DIY U, my second book, was an attempt to explore what's going wrong in higher ed, and also potential pathways of transformation. Seismic change is coming to this sector whether the current stakeholders like it or not, and I believe passionately that it's time to embrace innovations like open courseware, adaptive learning technologies, and peer learning both for their improved outcomes and for their lower cost. 

And that book led me directly to this new project that I'm pleased to be sharing with P4T readers:
The Edupunks' Guide to a DIY Credential.  It's a free e-book you can download in several versions here.

Three fourths of the nation's college students are "nontraditional" in some way either because they're older, working adults or have family responsibilities, up to 60 percent of students graduate with more than one institution on their transcript, and there are more adults in this country with some college (44 million) than those with a college degree (41 million.)

 The Edupunks' Guide is for all of them. It's a first-of-its kind resource to enable people to take advantage of all the resources online to enhance their learning, complete their credits, get credit for prior learning, accomplish their goals and, if they choose, get a degree. It's not a traditional college guide; it coaches people through steps like creating a personal learning plan, finding a mentor, and participating on a network that will eventually help connect them to jobs.

My number one goal is to get the book in front of youth and people of all ages who fit the edupunk definition for any reason. I really hope the readers of this blog can help! You can reach me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .{jcomments on}