By Craig Howie, for AOL Find a Job

Cyndie Miles says her job was neither downsized nor outsourced. Her position as a designer at a mid-size metropolitan newspaper in Southern California was "consolidated" when she and about a dozen of her colleagues were informed early last year that they would be laid off and have to apply for fewer jobs at a sister newspaper about 30 miles away.

Cyndie's job effectively had disappeared as newspapers printed fewer, smaller pages and increasingly moved to the Web, and she joined the hundreds of thousands of Americans laid off from traditional industries who now found themselves in a similar situation: Technology had rendered their skills obsolete. Cyndie applied to dozens of places but found few responses. "It's a tough economy right now and it's hard to get work," she says.

So the 35-year-old decided to adapt to the changing global economy in the only way she knew how: by going back to school and learning a whole new skill set. It's a course increasingly taken by thousands of laid-off workers across the industrial spectrum as economic conditions worsen seemingly by the month. But Cyndie doesn't get discouraged. "Just 'cause someone laid you off doesn't mean they define what you are," she says.

Workers and industries are suffering in California: the state's unemployment rate is 9.3 percent, a 15-year high. Nationally, California's jobless rate trails just Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate at 10.6%, and Rhode Island at 10%. Last year, employers in Orange County -- where Cyndie studies -- last year cut nearly half a million jobs largely in the home-building and mortgage industries, the county's worst figures since 1991. More than 3,000 newspaper workers have been laid off across the US already this year.

Leslie Phillips, a Southern California newspaper union coordinator, says: "Media workers are reeling from industry economic conditions that have devastated the media and newspapers. Workers are being laid off by the hundreds and thousands and they're all leaving the industry because there are no jobs. Many people are going back to school to be retrained to do other things. A lot of younger journalists who recently left school are going back and saying I gotta do something else [while] veteran journalists are landing gigs in the blog world and internet startups."

Cyndie enrolled in the two-year digital arts program at Golden West College, which she says mostly involves graphic design for Web applications including animation, Web site layout and writing Internet program code. There's also an element of print media, though Cyndie believes the medium's time has passed. "Employers don't want just print, they want Web."

Cyndie's modular courses take up about 25 hours of her time a week, usually in the evenings. She says she talks with lots of students in a similar situation to her own. "People in my class in Bachelors degrees are coming back to do this." She says the main attraction to many is connecting with an instructor or lecturer who works in the industry; often the instructor is working part-time to bolster their own pocketbooks in a tough time for many. "So the information they give us is from their own experience -- this is what employers are looking for and when employers are looking for people they call the instructor."

Miles says that financial consideration played a big role in her decision to attend Golden West, which is about 10 miles from her Long Beach home. She says: "I don't have the money to invest in going to university again. I know people who have gone to a big art school and now go to a local city college and say the education is as good as the one that costs ten times more. I did research on local schools and Golden West seems to have the best program."

She says she was "excited and nervous" to enter a campus for the first time since she studied art and design 15 years earlier. "It's been a while since I went to school, you're in a brand-new campus, I didn't know where anything was." And Cyndie says her course has given her the ability progress in a career in Web design, adapting and using many of the skills she learned in print media in a new environment. "I've already learned a lot since I started last August. I love being able to create something from scratch."

Ray Angle, the director of academic advising and career education at Cal State East Bay University, an area once rich in newspaper lore but which now faces the possible sale or closure of its most esteemed newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, says many workers choose to study in a tough economy and for many it is their "plan B."

She says the "No. 1 skill" any college student learns is "the ability to learn how to learn. In an ever-changing global marketplace if something changes in a particular industry you have the ability to learn a new skill or trade and you can be more flexible and teach yourself how to learn new things."

From an employer's perspective Angle says communication skills and technological knowledge are often prized, and the college experience by its nature forces students to develop these skills .

"Technology is such an integral part of hiring these days. I need to know how to create a Power Point demonstration or understand the concept of blogging or podcasting and that comes out of college experience."

Kathy Sims, the director of the UCLA Career Center, say she is preparing her staff to deal with an upswing in the number of their alumnus who may choose to return to the university to build their skill set, but advises caution for anyone looking to make the move.

"We would suggest if an alumnus is seeking to get some sort of focus to get more competitive or able to deal with a softening of job market, we would suggest they evaluate whether investing in additional education is valuable and not jump into a decision about a graduate program or degree based on their current job situation. It's an expensive thing to retool."

Sims says UCLA has programs including its Anderson School of Business and some higher education programs that may be of use for someone looking to adapt or learn new skills," adding: "If the research indicates a combination [of skills] is valued by a marketplace, and if you look at emerging job market, there are some industries and pockets of opportunities where there is growth, if that growth is sustainable over time and it matches your skills, talents and capabilities, that is a good opportunity."

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