This seems to be a good time to be thinking about these issues, or depending on your perspective, perhaps an unfortunate time. In any case, the past 2 days have seen a few noteworthy developments on the topic being addressed by this study: the relationship between employer expectations and what educators are providing to students.
First, President Obama highlighted these issues in his 2014 State of the Union. Some choice selections include:
"So tonight, I've asked Vice President
Biden to lead an across-the-board reform of America's training programs to make
sure they have one mission: Train Americans with the skills employers
need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now."
"That means more on-the-job training
and more apprenticeships that set a young worker on an upward trajectory for
life. It means connecting companies to community colleges that can help design
training to fill their specific needs. And if Congress wants to help, you can
concentrate funding on proven programs that connect more ready-to-work
Americans with ready-to-be-filled jobs."
"Of course, it's not enough to train
today's workforce. We also have to prepare tomorrow's workforce, by
guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education."
Second, in Waukesha today the President, continuing on this line of thinking, made it clear what types of postsecondary degrees and training he felt would lead one to a fruitful, middle-class, family-supporting career:
"A lot of parents, unfortunately, maybe when they saw a lot of
manufacturing being offshored, told their kids you don't want to go into
the trades, you don't want to go into manufacturing because you'll lose
your job. Well, the problem is that what happened -- a lot of young
people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable
career. But I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with
skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history
degree. Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree -- I love art
history. (Laughter.) So I don't want to get a bunch of emails from
everybody. (Laughter.) I'm just saying you can make a really good
living and have a great career without getting a four-year college
education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need. "
Finally, a report came out of Bentley University (in MA) called the Prepared U Project which is about the types of skills students need to succeed in today's workforce. The data released this week are based on 3,149 respondents (corporate recruiters, biz executives, college students) and there's a lot of good stuff in there. One being that 19% felt that "hard" skills were essential, 14% felt that "soft" skills were essential, and 66% said both. That's a topic that we're addressing directly in our own study, and its great to see others are tackling this issue, in part to counteract some of the more simplistic ideas about what constitutes a skilled workforce or marketable skills that are out there.
