CAREER DREAMS CAN COME TRUE

In the last few years, I’ve met not one, but two remarkable young women named Anya. Both have, in this long season of “no jobs” for young adults, worked hard to envision and find ways to earn a living doing something they enjoy. Here are their stories.

Part One ~ ANYA KAMENETZ

Successful writer Anya Kamenetz has just published her second book.

I discovered Anya Kamenetz in April, 2006. Both our first books came out with in days of each other. I read hers as soon as I could get a copy. At 25 years of age, Anya had just published Generation Debt. Her subtitle, How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, No Benefits and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers, established Anya as someone who could call situations as she saw them. Anya analyzes and describes issues and situations with little bias.

I felt an immediate kinship with Anya. We both cared about what was happening to her generation. Recent grads were having great difficulty finding jobs that used their education or paid enough to meet their loan repayments.

In pursuing college degrees at any cost, young adults were being mangled in the gauntlet of an educational Gallipoli. Bad information and entitlement myths created the military Gallipoli of WWI. Those, along with other global phenomena growing in strength since 1998, have created the education one.

In our first books, Anya and I cited many of the same studies, articles, statistics and trends. Since our books are on different subjects, we used the research in different ways. Still, it made me feel good that this young, smart writer found significance in the same details I did.

Anya is a true journalist, willing to speak the truth about the university system as she and her peers found it. She also knows her cohorts well enough to realize that a decade from now, higher education will be very different. Why? Gen Y, Millennials, Gen Next–or whatever you call those born between 1980 and 2000–will transform the delivery of education as they transformed the delivery of music from store bought CDs to Mp3 downloads.

Peek into the future of learning. Here’s what Anya has to say about her next book and the changes she sees coming to higher education:

“I have a new book coming out in April (2010), from Chelsea Green publishers. The book’s title is DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education.

Among other things, the book is about how young people can take charge of their education and conquer the major problems of college. It is often seen as too expensive, too hard to access, and not relevant enough to finding good jobs or achieving your other personal goals. New technologies and new institutions are available to help. This book is one of them.

"DIY U is about creating your own personal learning path." Anya Kamenetz

DIY U is about creating your own personal learning path.The majority of students already attend more than one institution during their college career. One in five takes at least one course online, and 80 or 90 percent do at least one internship.

When you think about college, don’t think in terms of applying to one institution, choosing a major, doing what your teachers ask of you, and then going to career services to get a job. That’s not how things work anymore.

Instead, to be successful (in life and work), think in terms of identifying your goals, gaining the skills you need, publishing your work on the web in the form of a portfolio, and becoming a contributing member of a community of peers, mentors and practitioners who will welcome you into your first career opportunities.” Anya Kamenetz

With all the hand wringing about access to higher education for US students, DIY U helps young adults create education options. You can get the training or education for the jobs you want. You’ll just need to be a bit more creative. For help achieving your educational goals, check out Anya’s new book.