Are We Educating for the Right Jobs?

We Don't Need As Many College Grads As People Think

You've suspected this for a long time. Me, too.

Look around at the growth of technical specialties, professional 'assistant' roles, and retail employees. Then look at the charts below:

It's important to differentiate between media headlines and sound bites that scream, "Ten fastest growing occupations!" at some given moment in time. The consequences could be far-reaching: Do we really need to be sending Brittany, Madison, Monroe (and maybe even John Quincy) into Saturday SAT tutoring to bump up those scores from 1218 to 1241?

Caveat: Just in case you think I'm dumping on the advantages of a good education, I'm not. I've been a public school teacher and college administrator in an earlier life. Which is also where I first began looking more carefully at the relationship between "what is taught" with "what is needed." Thus, the use of the term "good education."

If you look at the top chart of the 10 occupations with the highest rate of growth, you'll see that six require either an associate or bachelor's degree while the other four require short to moderate OJT.

Seventy percent of the the top 10 with the largest growth don't require college; 30 percent do.

Here is another graphic to tweak your career/talent/education synapses:

Add up the actual percentage of jobs requiring a Bachelor's Degree or more--now and in 2014--and you might be surprised at the results.

The Education/Job Implications?

Here are just a few that come to mind:

1. Is there a realistic connection, beginning early in public schools, with what is really going to be helpful to job candidates and employers?

2. Same question for colleges and universities.

3. The biggest piece of the pie (OK, Bar Chart) belongs to On-The-Job-Training. Yet the figures I've seen published in ASTD and other sources show that large companies are cutting back; (medium and smaller companies are actually increasing their T&D investment).

4. Is the intense competition--and unbelievable tense high school prep--an unhealthy response to an overstated and misunderstood need?

I want to be clear that what I've presented so far is designed to take interested readers to a more complete and fully contextual article in The Carnegie Mellon Change Magazine. The synopsis above is from the article. Kudos to Paul E. Barton on his clear and easy-to-digest explanations of the facts, the evidence and some of the implications in How Many Çollege Graduates Does the U.S. Really Need? He also does a nice job of clarifying the distinctions between fast-growing and largest growth; two terms that are often tossed around without a closer look at what they are really saying.

When it comes to Talent and thinking systemically about it, we can't ignore the institutions who educate and supply the workforce. We can and should question whether the current system is designed to effectively produce what, and who, is needed. Although these figures represent the U.S., the readers here at All Things Workplace are totally global. What are you seeing that may reflect a mismatch between your education system and real-life workplace needs?
 

Comments

[Paul Williams]

Boy -- I can't help myself but to comment.

I agree that we "need" fewer college grads than we actually produce. But come on, who wants their kids living a subsistence life on a Men's Warehouse "consultant" wage?

I do wish I had gone to vocational school and become an electrician instead of a software engineer... I probably would own my own business by now... But any of the "desirable" jobs really do require some kind of post-secondary education. My cousin recently (well, about 8 months ago) decided he didn't want to go to college, and has been looking unsuccessfully for a job ever since.

aside: need a high school graduate who is good with people & kids (5 years as counselor at a local Jewish summer camp) in the Madison, WI area? Let me know -- he's a good kid.

[Mile High Pixie]

You make a good point here, Steve. First off, my sister the college professor is finding that probably 10%-30% of the kids in her classes don't really belong in college--they either need to grow up some more and come back later or go to vo-tech school where they could really thrive.

I also think that on-the-job training is just as meaningful in college professions as it is in other trades. The college degree is becoming the "cover charge" that gets you in the door of the workplace, but the experience (and how well you learn from the experience)is what makes the difference. Doctors, lawyers, architects...we all require that our newbies spend some time on the job before we sit for the exam.

[Janna Rust]

Steve,you bring up some interesting points here, reminding me of when college education requirements for a CPA were increased to require a Masters in Accounting. (Luckily, I was already out!). Personally, the profession would have been better off to increase their experience requirement from 2 to 3 years instead.

Education is great and necessary but I think there reaches a point of diminishing return. On the job training helps people apply what they've learned. The real world requires more thinking than solving problems in a textbook. You've proved a point with the rankings you mentioned.

[Mike Cook]

Steve, Information of this nature is not so much a surprise as the fact that as a nation we continue to look at what "jobs" will be available for our children rather than coach our children to learn about themselves first before we ask them to face the world.How do I feel about the information, actually pretty good. What I can see is that while my kids are preparing themselves for what it is that they really want to be doing with the time of their life they will be able to find part time employment!

How about this for a thought, universities go to value based tuition arrangements, degrees priced on the market value of the knowledge base acquired?

[Kathy Mitchell]

I think it is important to keep in mind that a college education is more than job training. It is about educating our citizens. We live in a Republic, where citizens have a responsibility to make decisions about our governance. Understanding history, philosophy and the sciences help us to make informed choices and not be at the effect of media hype.