Higher Education - Can It Prepare Today's Youths For The Job Market?

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Did you know that there are 73 million youths worldwide who are currently looking for employment, even though numerous vacancies are still unfilled? In the US, 5 million positions remained vacant in May 2015; where as over 8 million people were searching for jobs across the country. Recently the OECD surveyed a number of countries and in those nations, 39 million young individuals are presently not in education or employment (NEET). The data provides a rather gloomy view of today's world.

What Employers Want

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Sebastien Turbot, Curator and Director of Content and Programs at WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) , recently wrote in an article,

“Universities around the world are incessantly churning out qualified graduates but employers say there is an acute shortage of skilled workers. For employers, a college degree is no longer the only criteria that counts.”

Then what do employers want from candidates?

In the current technologically inclined economies, there is a strong demand for labour with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills and it is growing further. Moreover, demands for candidates are transforming to “savoir-être” from “savoir-faire”, with a rising requirement for non-cognitive and soft skills. A number of studies and surveys reveal that organisations across the globe are want to recruit candidates who possess the 4 main traits, namely creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication.

Is higher #education equipping young people for the jobs market? @sturbot @WISE_Tweets http://t.co/EHgHkhBbQZ pic.twitter.com/ynmUDTV208

— World Economic Forum (@wef) July 12, 2015

Meeting The Demands Of Job Market 

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Turbot wrote,

“...millennials are expected to make up 75% of the workforce by 2025, though a significant number will never be employees in the traditional sense. So as we transition into an era where machines will perform mundane tasks, we need to build a workforce of 'creative entrepreneurs', who will be innovative, empathetic and equipped to tackle ambiguous challenges. ”

Does this mean that higher education is empowering our youths for the demands of the job market? As per the Education to Employment report by McKinsey, 70% of surveyed educators think that current graduates are effectively prepared for today's competitive job market. However, it seems that less that 50% fresh graduates and employers tend to agree. But who is actually responsible for this skills gap? The teachers or the employers? Or is the learners who might have opted for the wrong subjects?

Turbot added,

“In my opinion, before delving deeper into this raging blame game, we need to address the “perceptions gap”. The McKinsey report is just one of the many indicators to reflect that educators, entrepreneurs and young graduates are not on the same page.”

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Need For Proper Collaboration

I believe we should start by getting the educators and employers to collaborate and work together in order to narrow the gap between the education our students need and the education our students have. Next, we must include the students as a crucial part of this discussion and help them gain real world experience. This will enable them to get the right information regarding what the employers want from them and what educators are offering them.

Sebastien Turbot concluded,

“...before we set off to redesign a new curriculum or decide that corporate universities and programs are the only to resolve the job market’s real needs, educators, learners and employers have to step into each other’s worlds.”

What do you think? Add to the discussion by sharing your views and opinions with us. Simply comment in the box below.

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Traditional And Online Education: Finding The Right Balance

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Many students aspiring to pursue higher education wonder whether they should go for traditional on-campus learning or online learning. However, the question is not about choosing between online or on-campus learning, when we focus on making higher education widely available and more affordable. It is about how much we need to use among both options.

Online Or On-Campus

This was one of main issues discussed by a panel on college affordability and access at a National Education Week “Thought Leader Summit”. As online courses and competency-based qualifications are becoming more popular in the higher education sphere, now students need to determine whether the campus experience, including fraternities, football, friends and other experiences are worth the huge amounts of

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money than the far more affordable alternatives, suggested one of the panelists.

Phil Bronner, co-founder and CEO of Quad Learning, said “For traditional schools, the cost of those institutions is not going to change in the short term.” He added “Because of health care and other things, the price will go up. The only way a parent or a student can get a lower cost is to transfer in lower cost credits.”

Finding A Balance

Bronner believes that in future our students will keep earning degrees from conventional colleges and universities; however those learners will end up spending much less time than at brick-and-mortar colleges than before.

According to Burck Smith, founder and CEO of Straighterline, more needs be done in order to assist our students realize the real price of earning a degree. Smith said, “If you think about how many ways we—the country and higher education—have to confuse what the actual price is, it’s really sort of astounding. You’ve got the list price, net price, scholarships and discounts … not to mention what kind of loan terms or what kind of Pell grant you get, whether the loans are dischargeable or not.”

About the planned college rating system of the Obama administration, which aims to support future college students take informed decisions regarding which institution to attend, Smith said “It’s almost impossible to know what you’ll be paying. Until you can actually make the price clear, ratings aren’t going to do much.”

Focusing On Competency-Based Learning 

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Chris Etesse, CEO of the online course material providing company Flat World Knowledge, propagated the importance of competency-based education. It allows learners to study at their own pace over online courses which simply “map back” to courses with credit-hours and meet at particular periods.

Competency-based learning allows students, especially adult learners with work and family commitments, to study while in transit or during lunch hours or whenever they get free time to do coursework. Etesse said “That’s where we’re going to get the benefit … when we allow students to learn the way they act in real life.”

What do you think? Share your views and opinions with us by commenting below. We would love to hear from you.

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