Lifelong learning is no longer optional — it’s mandatory. According to many experts, a new economy is emerging that will include more technology and automation and will require higher levels of knowledge and skill. Ironically, as technology becomes more prevalent and remote working becomes more common, “people skills” — things like communication, teamwork, and problem solving — will also become increasingly important.
The COVID-19 pandemic has likely hastened these changes, potentially leaving behind many people who lost their jobs in the last 15-18 months. Change will continue to permeate the workplace, and it is unlikely things will go back to the way they were. So continuous learning and upskilling will be required for ongoing protection against obsolescence.
In this emerging economy, it is more important than ever that curriculum and learning outcomes are connected to what employers are saying they need. Educators must continually monitor the job market for in-demand occupations and emerging skills and partner with employers to adjust current offerings and create new ones.
From self-paced training to more structured approaches
How will people upskill or reskill to participate in this new economy? Learners have many choices, and more are continually being added. They range from apps on your phone to advanced degrees, and everything in between. There are a myriad of self-paced training options available, and while they have their place for learning many tasks, a more structured approach to learning may have larger and longer lasting benefits.
For those with the time and resources, bachelor’s degree completion as a part-time student is an attractive choice, especially since the evidence still indicates that in most cases individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn about $25,000 more per year on average than individuals with just a high school diploma. There are a variety of options for degree completion. Some students choose a self-designed path that allows them to focus on their areas of interest and incorporate previous courses and life experiences. In other cases, students may choose a more defined path that teaches in-demand skills and competencies.
[image_caption]Bob Stine[/image_caption]
Bootcamps are another relatively new type of credential that prepares students for work in the new tech economy. Bootcamps, which are shorter, more intensive dives into higher tech fields, continue to grow in popularity among both students and employers.
Updating or expanding skills
As they face the future, many professionals don’t need another degree, but find they need to update or expand their skill set to stay competitive. For them, short, affordable courses and certificates that teach in-demand skills is the right option.
To be useful, these types of offerings must be designed with adult learners — people who have jobs, families, and other obligations to manage — in mind. These folks represent the vast majority of learners in higher education across the country and will continue to form the backbone of the workforce in the future. That means offering courses and programs in some combination of online, short format, evening, weekends, or other options to make them accessible.
Higher education has often been thought of as a stodgy, slow-moving ivory tower disconnected from “real life.” At the University of Minnesota’s College of Continuing and Professional Studies, we are intent on disrupting that mindset by continually innovating and offering courses, credentials, and degrees in formats that provide what people need, when they need it, to succeed in the new economy.
Bob Stine is interim dean of the College of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Minnesota.
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I will agree with your slogan that isn’t one. As a former student in the U of MN Master’s program for Adult Education, I see a few discrepancies in your motivational advertising to the under-educated workforce. They lack depth in their diversity of knowledge. The very first speaker in my Master’s Certificate program at St. Thomas said(paraphrase), “You must do more thinking and less doing.” These are not the terms dictated by corporate American, “do not think, just do.”
The land grant University of Minnesota is being held hostage by corporate America, and encroaching on the Minnesota public school districts. The goal of education is now the achievement of “a job” and not knowledge. Students are now considered customers and the rigors of university standards are dying. Corporate influence has degraded the quality of education by demanding substandards of hurry up, and cheap labor. This continuous march by corporate America onto education begs the question of why do students pay for it if corporations reap the most benefits?
This is the questioning of authority. Our educational institutions are perceived as vanguards of communities. Why is there so much ignorance of fact-based evidence threatening our world?
Because its marketable. Just wait, now that you’ve rang the bell, those defenders of “education as vocational training” will come running, to tell you that ” “critical thinking” isn’t something to be taught by schools, it should be learned on one’s own time” or some other such nonsense.
Everything you’ve said is correct. The problem is, most Americans – at least, the most vocal ones – like it this way. Colleges and universities are just becoming another form of vocational training, albeit a more expensive and prestigious one. A few years back, Governor Walker even tried to make that explicit, by attempting to delete the language in the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement that said the goal of the University was to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society . . . Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” His replacement language? “To meet the state’s workforce needs.”
“Critical thinking” and “imagination” are valued by capitalism only insofar as they can be monetized. Critical thinking that, say, asks questions about the foundation of our economic system are dismissed as worthless. Thinking is good if done within the confines of being a compliant employee.
College costs too much now to approach it as anything other than job training.
This is another example of capitalism outsourcing its externalities. If businesses see it as important to have a well educated workforce- be it technical certificates, or overall business training then they can pay for it. It is not the worker’s job to come to a role fully ready to go on day one, it is the responsibility of the business to train their staff for current and future needs.
I’ve got more important things to do with my personal time than pay for and attend classes for the benefit of my boss.
Life long learning starts with the basics of reading, writing, math and problem solving. With 1/2 of students coming from Mpls public schools being not proficient in those areas, how do you propose they continue learning? I only wish public funded, Government run, public schools taught children how to learn. It is an absolute joke that somehow people feel corporate America wants uneducated, mindless trolls working for them. There is a massive shortage of quality workers out there and poor k-12 education is the main driver.
Do businesses want employees who ask why the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 320-to-1?
Do businesses want employees who ask why people of color are statistically less likely to be interviewed or hired, despite all the battologia about “hiring the best person, regardless of their color”?
Do businesses want employees who ask how the company can sponsor Pride events while its PAC donates to anti-LGBTQ candidates?
Joe is under the impression (or well at least his narrative is) that we all believe “Business” to be solely composed of salt-of-the-earth, blood-sweat-and-tears, mom-and pop (I’m sure there’s more tired tropes I’m forgetting) entrepreneurs, striving for nothing more than the American Dream and baseball and apple pie. Of course he’ll never admit that corporate America has an agenda, one that conservatives like him share, to keep the “common” folk ignorant and compliant with whatever exploitation folks like him (or frankly folks much wealthier than him) desire. It’s just not in his make up, HE’S a drone, through and through.
Keeping the common folk ignorant is most definitely not a conservative agenda. Conservatives want school choice and vouchers for parents to get some competition in the monopoly that is Public funded Government run public schools. It is not the conservatives that back a failing public school program. Conservatives believe the parents know what is best for their own child, not a paid government employee.
I have never heard of a person getting turned down for a job because he is too qualified.
“Keeping the common folk ignorant is most definitely not a conservative agenda.”
Unless it means ignorance of the racial history of America, right?
Conservatives back wasting taxpayer money on failing voucher programs. All part of the conservative plan to keep people ignorant.
Religious indoctrination (what you mean when you say “school choice”) is the epitome of keeping the common folk ignorant. We can all see and understand what you mean when you exclude science from your list of “basics”.
RB, I would love an employee to look at what upper management makes and strive to get there. It is called climbing the ladder of success. Blacks make up 14% of USA population, I assume they make up 14% of workforce. Some corporations are worried about “pride events”, many are not.
“RB, I would love an employee to look at what upper management makes and strive to get there. It is called climbing the ladder of success.”
It’s also a breeding ground for resentment. Do you think the mass of employees are delusional enough to think that, with just some real effort and a “can do” attitude, they can achieve the same wealth and status as the CEO who was born into money and leveraged that into the C suite?
Most workers know that they are never, no matter how hard they work, going to be fabulously wealthy. They do know, however, that their paychecks are stagnant compared to the pay of the boys upstairs. They aren’t trying to earn enough for a private jet, a tacky mansion, and a trophy wife who immigrated under questionable circumstances. They would, however, like to live their lives in some reasonable comfort and to give their children the opportunity for a better life.
“Blacks make up 14% of USA population, I assume they make up 14% of workforce.”
We’ve been through this. African Americans have a harder time getting hired, and tend to earn lower salaries, than their white counterparts. Whatever platitudes get thrown around at the Chamber of Commerce luncheons are just that: platitudes (isolated success stories notwithstanding).
“Some corporations are worried about ‘pride events’, many are not.”
Some corporations talk a good game about human rights, but drop the ball when it comes to their own businesses.
So workers don’t have aspirations and goals? Really? Not sure your experience with companies but folks advance, get paid more and strive to make themselves more valuable every day.
Yes, they have aspirations and goals. Many of those aspirations and goals, if not most of them, don’t involve their jobs. They involve providing for the workers’ families and having some reasonably good quality of life. Their only concern regarding their “value” is that they are paid enough to live. Being “valuable” to their employers is not a concern.
I have some experience with real working people. It may surprise you to know that they are living, breathing individuals, not a “resource” to be exploited and made “valuable.” My father worked for 30+ years as a mechanic, from his discharge from the Navy after the Korean War up until his retirement. His aspiration pretty much revolved around his family. He understood that he would never be CEO, but he also knew that the company couldn’t run without him and his co-workers. They created the jobs that the C-suite boys filled.
He never does have an answer for all those hard working folks who never succeed, why the conservative ethos fails them over and over and over, while for many born in lap of luxury, success is always assured, effort not being something that’s needed.
A couple of years ago, I read an interesting article in (of all places) the American Conservative that made a similar point. Not all workers can be CEO, and not all of them want to be. Focusing on the triumph of a few very wealthy people as proof the economy is working ignores that reality.
It imparts a measure of control to what in many cases is random chance. The one thing I’ve learned over countless interactions with conservatism is that conservatives absolutely abhor the idea that they cannot be in command of every minute detail of their existence, that there is some measure of uncertainty there, that luck might play a role. I suppose when one’s worldview is that only one very small group is “deserving ” of the spoils of capitalist success, whilst all others are detritus, suitable only for servant labor to that small group, it’s necessary to have a means to quantify “deserving”, no matter how specious that definition may be.
The thought that folks don’t ascend in whatever field they work in is totally wrong. Getting back to the original point, k-12 is not giving children a base to learn from. When you read the responses here you get all feelings, no facts. Once you can read,write, do math and problem solve lifelong learning is not hard.