Jobs and education

Thousand of students have now started their tertiary education with the optimism that characterises youth who look at the future through rose tinted glasses. For many decades a university degree was a sure passport to a good job and financial security.

The best advice for career success one can give to the majority of graduates is: save more, consume less, study longer and work harder- John Cassar White

Automation, globalisation and deregulation are rapidly changing the landscape of the employment market for graduates. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to University increased by 22 per cent in North America, 74 per cent in Europe, 144 per cent in Latin America and 203 per cent in Asia.

Millions of graduates in the western economies now compete with the multitude of brilliant graduates from countries like India and China who are willing to work longer hours for less money. Developing countries in the Far East are investing heavily in new universities to cater for the very motivated army of young people who have an insatiable hunger to succeed.

But the main threat to future prosperity for today’s educated elite comes not so much from over-supply of well qualified young people, but from the irreversible trend of the “application of the division of labour to brain-work”. So, a soft landing in the labour market after years of flying in the rarefied air of university life is becoming a thing of the past. Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman speaks of the “hollowing out” of mid-level jobs that are being destroyed by smart machines bringing about a decline in high-level jobs.

It is easy to get depressed when contemplating the consequences of this irreversible evolution in education and the labour markets. Politicians often rightly urge parents to focus more on their children’s education. Parents continue to make gargantuan sacrifices to ensure that their children get the best possible education that should give them a marked advantage in the labour market.

The future of our young graduates will be less daunting if our educators hardwire the curricula of our university courses with the acquisition of skills that the labour market demands. Dublin City University recently commissioned a survey of 1,000 employers on the relationship between tertiary education and the labour market.

One interesting conclusion of this survey is that “the three graduate skills identified by employers as most important during uncertain economic times were being hard-working, flexible and good communicators”. This survey complements this University’s attempt to instil six employer-friendly ‘attributes’ in graduates to prepare them for “work in the 21st century”.

The model graduate will be “creative and enterprising, committed to continuous learning, solution-oriented, effective communicators, globally engaged and active leaders”. This is a tall agenda but it is the only way to make university education relevant in today’s economy.

Traditional educationalists may feel uneasy with this development as they continue to insist that learning has an intrinsic value that should not be debased by economic considerations. But lifetime employability is the greatest value that any graduate should aim to acquire after years of study.

The way that Dublin City University intends to proceed to implement this strategy is to review the modules that it teaches to ensure that they contain the elements that help to fill the gap between the world of academia and the tough realities of the labour market. To promote entrepreneurship, for example, undergraduates will be expected “to takes initiatives such as campus business plan competitions and bringing business role models to speak to students”.

This does not mean that all graduates will be expected to become entrepreneurs as there is “an innate spectrum of abilities”. What is important is that all graduates embrace the concept of enterprise and risk taking. This university’s vision and foresight has been endorsed by business leaders who now expect that this reform will also be rolled out in the first and second-level of education.

We need to go beyond repeating the mantra that investment in education is the best way we can guarantee our future prosperity. Doing what needs to be done in our educational system to make our graduates more employable is the single most important factor that will determine our success in linking jobs with education.

A university education will continue to be an essential starting point for those young people who have the ambition and the aptitude to further their education. Traditional professions like law and medicine will still provide an avenue to well paid jobs. But the best advice for career success one can give to the majority of graduates is: save more, consume less, study longer and work harder.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com