The connection between education and employment has never been better explained than in Katz and Goldin’s The race between technology and education. Katz and Goldin describe an education system in the US that emerges over a period of, say, 1850 to 1950, in response to the needs of industry. That system includes nods to business (my mother-in-law rest her soul learned shorthand, the 10-key add[ing machine], and touch typing, all skills that are gone away or that are going) and to academe. The premium attached to college education is more slight when there are union jobs or at least good-paying jobs for young adults who have specific skills. But as the job market matures (and as unions go away, at least in the US), everything changes: The extreme targeting of specific jobs and matching those with specific skills goes away.
The auto-manufacturing market (it’s a market for graduates from the point of view of educators) is a case in point. At present, specific skills are in demand, sufficiently so that where there are factories there are jobs
and there are high-school graduates to fill them.
(Don't miss the irony, btw: The auto industry gave education one of its most persistent frameworks, one in which teachers are the producers and students are the products; now as the industry's needs and those of society are changing, that model is woefully inadequate and has produced [see what I did there?] students who have become educators and decision-makers who are themselves limited.)
In the future, as demand for new cars dwindles, demand for specific skills will dwindle as well. The ability of TVET to shift to meet the need for specific skills will be undercut by increasing need for general skills and capacities—empathy, communication, problem-solving. But each of these skills in isolation won’t be enough. You need to employ all three, probably, to be successful.
And add to that, um, innovation. Or creativity.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 3:24AM 