Global Career Compass

There has been an enormous uptick in story lines – in all media formats – which attempt to unravel the mysterious linkage between education and employment or “employability.”  I’ve covered a lot of those stories in my blog and more appear daily.  I think the stubborn global recession accounts for this, in part, because there is a re-thinking about the structure of curricular offerings in the developed higher ed systems, and a re-examination of  the same in the developing world – all driven by the tremendous pressure created by high rates of un and under-employment (of graduates)  throughout the world. These pressures surely stem from different causes, however, the fact remains that educators must squarely face the new realities of the marketplace.

This article’s headline infers the focus needs to be on skills:   http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130103154436919#comments

The attention of education policy-makers and the international education community is moving away from raising literacy levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education, towards skills required by the workforce to promote economic growth….Higher education experts say that universities are coming under increasing pressure to ensure that their graduates are ‘employable’, although preparation for ‘employability’ is still only rarely incorporated in university courses, and the skills that could make a difference in finding employment and ways to deliver those skills are still not evident.

New ideas are beginning to take shape such as the expansion of MOOCs and their potential to reach millions of people. In the U.S., new linkages between industry and universities and a resurgence in students undertaking practical work-based internships.  The focus on employability most threatens traditional methods of delivering classroom content and the traditional aloofness of faculty as far as the linkage of their discipline to the marketplace (alas, I was a liberal arts major and it does hurt to say this).

I will continue to seek out and highlight innovative best practices when it comes to university-business partnerships and forms of collaboration which do make it more likely that students will receive BOTH a broadening of their intellectual horizons and a practical set of skills and competencies which make it more likely that they can begin to pay back their student loans in some reasonable period of time after graduation!

This is not about our society looking down its nose at working class jobs. No, it is about China’s college grads and, as the NY Times reports, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/business/as-graduates-rise-in-china-office-jobs-fail-to-keep-up.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, why most urban-educated students do not want to take advantage of the over supply of factory jobs.  The student quoted in the piece says, ” I’m not afraid of hard work; it’s the lack of status..The more educated people are, the less they want to work in a factory.”

The irony of this story is that the more highly educated one is in China, the more likely one is to be unemployed.  In fact, the rate of unemployment for 21-25 year olds with a college degree is twice that of those of the same age with only a high school education.

What I find so interesting in this story is that if a student graduates with a focus on engineering or science, then it is likely they will find employment with companies seeking to expand their business internationally. however, it appears that China is “churning out millions of graduates with few marketable skills, coupled with a conviction that they are entitled to office jobs with respectable salaries.”  Sounds somewhat similar – despite the obvious difference between our economic models and higher ed systems – to the debate swirling here and in Europe about the linkage between educational attainment and employability.

Of course, the Chinese government is worried about the ever-growing number of college grads and the prospect of social instability.  What comes to mind during our economic downturn was the Occupy movement which did focus on the 1% but then, it was not about the class distinctions which have always been at the core of our higher ed system – the so-called “elite” academic institutions and all the rest…and the fact that despite the increases in tuition, there was no major downturn in recent years in the numbers applying to the most expensive of our colleges and universities. And this was happening as  families knew that it was getting tougher for grads to find work upon graduation.  We are an ever-optimistic people after all.

As this Economist essay points out, the global reach of online classes is expanding opportunity around the world, but, especially for those with both access to online education, and the ability to take lessons in English: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21568738-online-courses-are-transforming-higher-education-creating-new-opportunities-best.  So what does this mean?  On the one hand, MOOCs would appear to have the capacity to democratize learning and skills development for the poor and disenfranchised in the developed world; but what I fear is that this technological advancement will further widen the gap, at least in the near term, between those with and without the motivation -and computer access-  to learn online.

Online learning, as the article points out, has been around for a decade or more.  What is different now is the scale – and the numbers for classes being taught at our top tier universities are enormous.  But what will this mean in terms of advancing employability for those taking such online classes?  Will employers give equal weight to learning that occurs via MOOCs?  Will people taking MOOCs be able to leverage such courses to advance their careers?

MOOCs enrich education for rich-world students, especially the cash-strapped, and those dissatisfied with what their own colleges are offering. But for others, especially in poor countries, online education opens the door to yearned-for opportunities. One famous MOOC graduate is Khadijah Niazi, an 11-year-old girl in Lahore who completed Udacity’s Physics 100 class. Of the 155,000 people from five countries who registered for MIT’s prototype Circuits and Electronics course, only 45% were aged between 18 and 25. Most traffic came from five countries: America, India, Britain, Colombia and Spain. Some 7,200 students passed the course.

It’s definitely as trend to follow.  But I’m just not so sure that it will lead to the democratization of education.

This story about linkages between business and universities in Mexico, http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130110110144741, points to the weakness of current partnerships and the missed opportunities for both institutions.  More importantly, as I’ve often cited here, there is increased demand from the private sector to strengthen skills of graduates to match the needs of business.

For one, university-business partnerships can help shape professional degree programmes so that graduates better meet the needs of businesses. He feels that if college graduates fail to bring the skill set to the workplace that the country needs, businesses will relocate to other countries. Partnerships can also help identify opportunities for further business development, and generate research-based knowledge and technologies that can help develop new businesses… Also, improved collaboration can contribute to the ongoing education of the workforce.

In a recent article from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard’s Fernando Reimers wrote: “If universities are to transform themselves into engines of innovation, economic as well as social…They will need to proactively seek to shape the policy agenda…“They will also need to explicitly provide students opportunities to develop entrepreneurial skills and aptitudes…[and they will need] more fluid communication between universities and various industries and fields of practice.”

He concluded: “As in the past, aligning the university with a new social role will require extraordinary conditions, support and leadership.”