Sunday Posts

I wrote earlier about my recent experiences regarding the design of education for 'employability' and the field of constraints that any design must consider (see here: Limitations ).  The focus of that earlier post was on the educational side of the equation, which is not the only constraint for consideration. In fact, an even bigger challenge is right at the centre of the employability initiatives - the myth of the employers!  The mythical employer (employers, more correctly) who is invoked all the time in the employability talk has one problem - she does not exist! The logic of the employability initiatives - that employers demand certain abilities which universities can not educate for - is based on employers being fully aware and being able to fully articulate what they want. However, it is time to say, after Steve Jobs, that employers do not know what they want. This may seem anachronistic: After all, employers are the customers for employability initiatives, right? But a...

It's time for educators to acknowledge what even a first-time recruiter knows - that Purple Squirrels do not exist. Employability has become a buzzword in education for several reasons. Governments want to measure and employability - both how many students are getting jobs and at what starting salary - is a neat metric to present to the taxpayers. Private investors in education know that employability - private benefits from education - is the raison d'etre for private education to exist. Whether the faculty, or for that matter, the students, at least most of them until the final weeks of their final year, care about employability is a matter up for debate, but this is definitely the big topic in the Education Conference circuits. But, sadly, purple squirrels are not real. Employability is an empty goal. Part of the reason for this is the same as we can't always find the right people for the right job. That gap is both spatial and temporal: As we would s...

There is a talent problem in our economies. Speak to any employer in almost any country, and they will tell you how hard it is to find good employees with appropriate skills. And, this happens despite a massive expansion of public education system and rising literacy, an unprecedented level of access to Higher Education and Skills Training. There is also a near total consensus that education has an economic goal - jobs or career - and most employers have existing programmes and expansive plans to engage with education providers at all levels in search of talent. And, yet, the problem persists - and getting worse. Here, I think, we should make the case for a paradigm shift. The recruitment of talent currently happens with a supply chain paradigm. Even in the best of the cases, where employers are deeply engaged with education institutions, they try to shape the curriculum, spot student talent early and do campus interviewing, they are still looking at the educators as passive supp...

Employment may not be the only goal of Higher Education, as some educators will justifiably claim, but it is certainly one of the goals.  A good Higher Education have a great impact in building character, making one free, able to appreciate beauty, cooperate with other people and bring change. Wesleyan's Michael Roth will say that the goal of education is to liberate, animate, cooperate and agitate, and Howard Gardner sum it up as the quest for Truth, Beauty and Goodness. But, beyond this ideal of education, the political nature of the education enterprise that also must be acknowledged. After a century and half of expansion of public Higher Education, Higher Ed has a clearly embedded political purpose, that of lending legitimacy to the governments as they thrive on the idea of a Middle Class society, where everyone has access to opportunity in life through Higher Education. Consequently, the enrollments in Higher Education have expanded rapidly, and in a way, what used to be...

One of the missing pieces, a big one, in the Education-to-Employment conversation is what role does the employer play.  We know that a large number of graduates come out of school and can not find a job. Educators, in some cases resistant to the idea that a job should be seen as an outcome of education, are being held responsible for what is becoming a big social problem. Policy makers and Media are leading the conversation and demanding greater accountability, for a successful outcome defined by productive economic engagement (job or enterprise, whatever), from the educators. Several new-age Education institutions are exploring different educational models tied more closely to the outcome, including more responsive curriculum, pedagogy that mirror workplace practices, intensive career preparation for senior students as well as setting up facilities such as incubation centres connecting students with Capital and networks to start their enterprise. In summary, despite resistan...

There are two problems in modern education - access and relevance.  Access is an economic issue, and it is mainly a developing country issue. The developed countries mostly have access issues sorted out, through various funding mechanisms, particularly educational loans. In developing countries, however, a number of issues come in the way of access, including physical (there are no schools to go to), social (people of certain caste, class or gender are not welcome) and indeed, financial (one can not pay for school or afford to be in the school).  Relevance, on the other hand, is a more complex issue, and afflicts developed countries as well as the developing. At one level, educational relevance is about whether the person is getting educated at all, and we know that many people come out of school/ college not being able to do even the basic tasks meant for that level of education. And, at another, related, level, education does not deliver the expected outcome, job, ...

It is one of the things everyone wants to do and no one knows how. In theory, it works perfectly - employers need skilled people and educators can benefit from the insights and experience employers can bring to table - but, in practice, the time horizons of employers and educators are really very different. In the forever changing and intensely competitive world of business, there is little visibility of what comes next, a year from now, and there is little slack to devote to such long term considerations, at least at the operational level. Education, by definition, is a forward-looking enterprise, and any educator claiming to have a magic potion to skill people in a few weeks can safely be assumed to be a charlatan. And, therefore, despite the best of intentions, serious and substantiative Employer Engagement in Higher Education has remained one of those desirable, but unrealised, projects. The time horizon issue is real, but it is not the only reason why Employer engagement is ...