Source: http://www.twincities.com
By: Debra O’Connor
Out of work? Your best bet may be to go back to school.
Your education and skills may no longer be sufficient for the economy of the future, and that job you had, perhaps for decades, might be gone forever.
But one option is Minnesota’s state community and technical colleges, where you can get vocational training or a skills certificate or finish that associate degree you started back in the Summer of Love. These colleges focus on getting their students employment, and to that end, their officials keep in close contact with businesses and create programs to suit the job market.
They also understand the older worker’s situation: Some programs give credit for work experience and offer special counseling for people who are unexpectedly unemployed after years of work. And they have scrambled to create and enhance programs suited to the out-of-practice laid-off worker: short-term training, fast-tracking academic classes, dovetailing classes with state and federal retraining requirements, and aligning courses with what specific employers say they need.
Semester classes begin Monday; if a class isn’t full, students can enroll up to the last minute. Continuing-education classes often have rolling enrollments so students don’t have to wait for the beginning of a semester. That can be particularly important for older workers with immediate obligations such as trying to pay a mortgage.
“Some people don’t have any time to waste,” said Jane Nicholson, continuing-education dean at Century College in White Bear Lake.Although community college programs aren’t age-defined, some fit particularly well for older students who have been out of the classroom for a while.
“We’re trying to be responsive and welcoming for people in this situation,” Nicholson said.
Patricia Anderson, of Maplewood, who worked in the printing industry for 19 years, has college experience from the 1970s and the early 1990s. This week she is starting at Century College to prepare for a totally different second career — perhaps performing health inspections at restaurants and hotels.
“I worked so physically hard that I eventually had carpal tunnel (syndrome), and I had to see a hand specialist and she said you need a new career,” Anderson said. “The company let me go (in March 2008). And I said, ‘I’ll go back to school.’ ”
Federal stimulus money is being used to pay tuition for workers laid off in specific industries; many of them are headed to community and technical colleges. Also, President Barack Obama announced this summer a plan for a $12 billion cash infusion for community colleges that could begin in early 2010, endorsing them as a way to get an education in a slumping economy.
Thinking About Classes / “Frankly, we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Wayne Young, a dislocated-worker counselor at the Minnesota WorkForce Center in North St. Paul. In the past three years, the number of visits at the centers in Ramsey County zoomed from 48,500 in 2006 to 58,500 in 2007 to 84,000 in 2008. His center received stimulus funding to hire three more staff members “to help in terms of the sheer numbers.”
A big reason for the deluge is layoffs from industries that aren’t expected to rebound. At a workshop titled “Job Search in Mid-Life” this summer at the North St. Paul center, participants were considering going back to school to get a new job.
Patrick Zenk, 49, of Little Canada, had been laid off for just a few days when the Watchdog talked with him. His job had been in field-service electronics, installing color copiers, for example. He didn’t foresee finding another job doing the same thing, so he was considering turning to a growth industry — health care — and learning to work on medical equipment.
Carol McDugle, 57, of Little Canada, had been in customer service and already was taking computer classes to upgrade her skills. This month, she is starting a three-month course in medical billing and coding.
“For our age, you have to go back to school. It’s a must,” she said. “This is another layer (for me) to be able to market myself.”
Judy Lyons, 51, of Shoreview, has been laid off twice. She has had several types of jobs, and her what-next decision is complicated by the fact that, as she says, she just doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She’s thinking about a computer certificate or maybe a bachelor’s degree in computer science. But that would mean school loans, and she wonders, “Am I going to be able to pay it off at my age?”
Scott Hauble, 49, of Maplewood, was a forklift operator experiencing his second layoff in three years. It was a declining field, and he was feeling burned out anyway, he said, and he wants to do something different. He earned a degree in photography in 1983 and does wedding portraits on weekends, but he doesn’t see expanding that into full-time work. He said the upside of being unemployed is having an opportunity to go back to school.
The Hot Courses / As the unemployment rate rises, so does enrollment at Minnesota’s community colleges. Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System Chancellor James McCormick has required each campus to respond to the unemployment problem and to work together so programs don’t duplicate one another. MnSCU also will pursue new grants from the federal departments of Labor, Energy and Commerce for job training in green occupations, energy efficiency, health care and other high-growth industries, said MnSCU public relations director Melinda Voss.
Some new Century College programs are aimed at hot and emerging job markets: language translation and interpretation in health care and legal situations ($150 for three Saturday morning sessions); pharmacy technician ($850 for a semesterlong one evening per week class).
Other programs drawing interest include solar-assessor classes, computer networking security and the GPS LifePlan program, which helps students figure out their goals and develop plans for achieving them.
Hot courses at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount are in railroad conductor training, landscape horticulture, biomedical equipment technology and business entrepreneurship.
“We see a lot of older adults who want to do that,” said spokeswoman Erin Larsen. “Usually, they have an idea in mind.”
Have Gone Back Already / For 13 years, Kristi Paul, 47, of Andover, was a telephone technician for Minneapolis Public Schools. She had lots of on-the-job training installing and repairing telephones but no formal education after high school. When the school system outsourced its telephone staff, she had no obvious employment choices.
“Any jobs I thought I was qualified for, I didn’t have a degree. They wouldn’t look at me,” she said.
She got help figuring out what to do next through a dislocated-worker program at the Minnesota WorkForce Center in Blaine. Last spring, she took five general-college-level courses and this fall will begin Anoka Technical College’s occupational therapy assistant program.
“Going to college was scary because I’d never done it to begin with,” she said. She chose Anoka Technical College because she feels more comfortable among other older students, she said. And so far, “I aced all my classes, as the kids say.”
Community colleges in the Twin Cities area can build their own programs based on demand. For example, Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights has Adult Success through Accelerated Programs (ASAP). The goal is to get an associate degree, which typically takes two years, in just a year, using credits from college courses taken previously plus credits earned through a formal evaluation of life experience. The school also offers “cohort groups” — that means whenever 18 students or more sign up for certain programs, classes begin right away.
Some four-year colleges also are adopting approaches that work especially well for older students. Concordia University in St. Paul has an evening program of 10 to 20 students per cohort and acceleration options including credit for experience, such as for having a real estate license. Laid-off workers who’ve taken “survival” day jobs fit well into this, spokeswoman Lindsey Brown said. “They’re making ends meet and going to school at night,” she said. And the cohort becomes a support system for the students.
Gary Johnson, 56, of Apple Valley, is headed to that program. In 1973, Johnson received a vocational degree in graphic arts. He later took a few courses at St. Cloud State University. After being laid off from a graphic arts job, he attended church networking groups, then the ASAP program at Inver Hills, thinking long and hard about what kind of work he wants to do now. He has begun an associate degree at Inver Hills with the idea of getting his bachelor’s degree in organizational management and leadership at Concordia University.
“I consider this whole thing to be a total gift and an incredible opportunity for me, to go forward and do things in life that I would never have done,” he said.
