What Should Public Education Systems For the 21st Century Look Like?
World Teachers’ Day – an annual celebration of the great craft that is teaching. But is this most noble of professions struggling with an identity crisis? And what does this say about the nature of education systems across the world? Working in education, it sometimes feels that no news is good news. There are steady […]
Are There Really Skills Gaps Everywhere?
Virtually everywhere we turn there are discussions about what to do to solve the skills gap problem, both in the press and in public policy forums. The skills gap notion started in the US, surprisingly, in the middle of The Great Recession when we would have thought there was never a greater glut of talent. […]
How Are Corporations Making a Difference in Providing Middle Skills?
This article is part of a series on innovative solutions to tackle the main challenges of Latin American education (part 3 of 6). Demand for skills is rising fast in Latin America—much faster than the region’s education systems can handle. Latin American businesses are struggling to fill their open positions even as youth unemployment remains high. The private sector […]
Filling the Right Gaps with the Right People
The Gap(s) For all the recent discussion around the skills gap, the numerous reports indicate that there are gaps, not a gap. A broad survey of the research divides skill gaps into two broad areas: the lack of technical skills, and the lack of transferable or ‘soft’ skills. On the technical skills plane, economists such […]
Skills Gap or Communication Gap?
Globally, 73 million young people are looking for work. Yet, millions of vacancies remain unfilled. In May 2015, five million posts were vacant in the US while more than eight million were looking for jobs there. In countries recently surveyed by the OECD, 39 million young people are not in education or employment (NEET). The figures offer a […]
Closing the Skills Gap with Cross-Sector Collaboration
In an era where the only certainty is uncertainty, talent is the key for success. Nevertheless, we face a great paradox. On one side, there are people searching for jobs; and on the other side, companies cannot find the right candidates with the right skills. According to the ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage Survey 2015, globally, 38% of […]
Many College Graduates Are Not Equipped for Workplace Success. Why?
Most employers hiring college graduates take it for granted that these candidates are more qualified than other potential employees who don’t have a degree. Many job postings emphasize a college degree as a requirement for a position. And there is long-standing evidence that people with college degrees make more money over their lifetime than those […]
Is Higher Education Still Worth It?
Today, we often hear about high prices charged by universities and colleges while, at the same time, graduate unemployment and underemployment has increased with the sluggish economy. Students may be saddled with sizeable loan debts in order to complete a degree. We have recently seen students very visibly complaining about this situation in the “Occupy” […]
Who Should Equip Learners for the Job Market?
Globally, study after study is coming up with one message: graduates lack essential skills to get by in the workplace. They lack skills like communication, teamwork, critical thinking, the ability to work under pressure, and even punctuality! In a global survey of business leaders by Hult International Business School (2013), one of the key insights was that leaders […]
Make College Worth It
I am the youngest of seven children from an agricultural province in China, and the only one to have made it to college. The late 1980s in China was a time of transitions, when the government started to let students fund themselves through college, as compared to the previous decade when tuition was minimal. Our […]