Education is Holding Back Millennials
A year and a half ago I told you I had no interest in going to graduate school, and that hasn’t changed. I think our higher education system is flawed, and so does Donna Harris, co-founder of 1776, a hub in downtown Washington that aims to mobilize the assets of the city to help startups. I became familiar with Harris’ work from this Forbes article, in which she illustrates how millennials have 20th century skills that don’t match the 21st century jobs available. I interviewed her to find out why those skills are lacking, why higher education is at fault and what learning leaders can do about it all. You’ve mentioned before that millennials are looking for future-focused jobs, but their skill sets don’t always match the requirements necessary to be successful in the future. What skills are they lacking? Harris: If you ask employers whether millennials are prepared for the workforce, there is no shortage of concern. Frequently cited are lack of ability to communicate well (both in-person and in writing), difficulty with analytical thinking and problem solving, difficulty thriving in unstructured environments, and concerns over personal responsibility and reliability. Alarmingly, these are the very skills that every employee will need to thrive in tomorrow’s economy. Being able to take charge of one’s own career, question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate
Office of the Executive Director | Date Released:6/20/12
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Education is Holding Back Millennials independently and be entrepreneurial will become increasingly crucial for career success. Why do you think this is the case? What’s to blame? Harris: If we look back, the Industrial Revolution changed our world in dramatic ways — telephones, steam, railways, steel, electricity, oil, automobiles and airplanes completely changed the ways our world lived and worked. The resulting mass production economy was built around stability — dividing labor into minute tasks and relying on a massive hierarchical structure to keep operations moving. To succeed, workers had to embrace structure, follow instructions well, master their individual tasks and work their way up the corporate ladder. The average worker followed a single employment path and typically worked for the same employer their entire career. Fast forward to today and you’ll see that our entire global economy is
undergoing a seismic shift. More than 80 percent of Americans use the Internet and over half the U.S. population owns a smartphone. Every industry is undergoing massive change as technology, the Internet, mobile and social disruption proliferate. The resulting economy is one being increasingly driven by interconnectedness, openness, transparency and collaboration; and the world iterates at an incredibly rapid cycle of change. Today’s workers will have dozens of jobs in their lifetimes and need a vastly different toolkit to be successful — the ability to question the status quo, initiate change, be creative, solve problems, operate independently and be entrepreneurial become crucial. This massive change from a transactional, hierarchical, closed economy to one that is global, networked, transparent and entrepreneurial is a major challenge to our overall education system. We have large institutions, degrees take years to complete, students invest tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars, and yet employers are still
Office of the Executive Director | Date Released:6/20/12
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Education is Holding Back Millennials saying that graduates are not well-suited for their needs. We have to rethink what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it, with a fundamental understanding of the global economic shift we’re in the midst of. What’s the solution? How can corporate learning and development help? Harris: In some areas of our economy, such as technology, we’ve seen successful experimentation with new models that focus on just-in-time learning. Short-term programs designed to teach a specific skill set which is aligned with a specific job category have emerged. For instance, with General Assembly or Startup Institute, you can learn the skills and tools you need to get a technical job without ever setting foot on a college campus. I believe we’ll continue to see more of these trade-oriented programs emerge in the coming years. Whether in technology fields or elsewhere, I’ve also seen a trending toward students starting to get educated in cycles — shorter bites of education rather than years-long programs, targeted at a specific job, and repeated as the workplace environment changes and new skills are warranted. All of this is a tremendous opportunity for private providers of education and
corporate learning and development programs. Starting first with clearly identifying the jobs that need to be filled, backing into the skills that need to be mastered, and then running short-cycle programs to flow candidates through a recruit/train/hire cycle that repeats as the jobs and skills needed evolve.
Office of the Executive Director | Date Released:6/20/12
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