Archives for March 2014

What Employers Want You to Learn

Employers want you to have a very specific set of personal skills. Among the top of the list are:  critical thinking, written and oral communications, inquiry and analysis, quantitative literacy, information literacy, team work and problem solving, life long learning. Notice that this list of priorities does not include, “a college degree from XYZ university” or “a major in ABC”.  This list prioritizes what you need to be able to do to be a valued employee. Your challenge is to wisely invest your time and money in learning that can provide these personal skills. The bottom line is that simply getting a college degree (“getting the piece of paper”) is not sufficient to meet these employer needs.

You need to learn to be able to compete today. Far-reaching global, economic and technological developments have converged to make post-secondary learning an imperative for almost everyone.

Buzz Today Source: Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP): Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College Both the country’s future economic growth and individual opportunity are now closely tied to the attainment of high levels of knowledge and skill, and to the ability to continuing learning over a lifetime. Former Harvard University President Derek Bok reports that college students are under-performing in virtually every area of academic endeavor including skills such as critical thinking, writing and quantitative reasoning.

So a question you should be asking is: “Why are employers looking for better ways to hire?” I defer to Laszio Bock, Google’s senior vice president for people operations to answer this question. “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.s are worthless as a criteria for hiring and test scores are worthless – no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation,” Bock said. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything…On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything.” Source: New York Times Interview

The important thing about this information, is what it means to you – someone trying to decide the best course of action to your learn-prosper future. Here is the main take away. When it comes to getting a better job, one that is challenging, fulfilling and pays well, the things that have been valuable in the past are far less valuable today. Your opportunities are much more defined by how accomplished you are in the skills listed in the first paragraph of this blog than either the major or which college or university you attended. This all brings us to a discussion about the cost and value of your learning. This is a topic I will cover in future blog posts here. In the meantime, it is valuable to read “Your Future is Calling” to better understand why you should view learning as the path to the prosperous future you desire.

How to Separate Higher Education Politics from Facts

The politics of higher education confuses and distracts you from the decisions you need to make. What you need are facts. Here is a separation of higher education politics from the facts you need.

Buzz Today Source: The New York Times “College, the Great Unleveler” And because some colleges actually hinder social mobility, what increasingly matters is not just whether you go to college but where…More Americans than ever enroll in college, but the graduates who emerge a few years later indicate that instead of reducing inequality, our system of higher education reinforces it…Higher education is becoming a caste system, separate and unequal for students of different family incomes. Where students attend affects their chances of graduating and how indebted they will become in the process…invest more in Pell grants and community colleges It is a fact that community colleges represent a much lower cost of education. Typically the average annual cost is $3,000 to attend a community college. This makes enrollment at a community college a very attractive means to get an associate’s degree or the credits for the “gen ed” of a bachelor’s degree. But this choice is not without its negative implications. As the comments in BUZZ Today indicate, “where students attend affects their chances of graduating.” This statement could not be more accurate when it comes to the decision to attend a higher cost four year institution vs. going to a community college first. According to the US Department of Education, the official six-year graduation rate for four-year public universities is 57% compared to the official three-year graduation rate of 22% for public two-year colleges.

So what is the take away for you as you look at these facts? The take away is that the success you achieve from education depends far more on what you bring to your education than the specific institution you attend. Harvard University graduates well over 90% of its students. The reason Harvard has such a high graduation rate is because it is so highly selective at admissions. Conversely, community colleges have open enrollment, essentially admitting anyone and everyone. The fact is that Harvard students are more qualified from the point of admission which significantly increases the graduation rate from the institution.

Here is the bottom line of the politics vs. facts of higher education. When it comes to your individual success, the most important thing is what you put into your education. If you could get into Harvard University you would most likely graduate, not because of the institution, but because of “who you are”. Conversely, should you decide to go to a community college first, the fact is that, just as in the Harvard University case, your success will depend much more on “who you are” than the characteristics of the institution.

So when it comes to politics and policy, there is a lot of energy being expended on the institutional issues – for-profit vs. not for profit, selective admissions vs. open enrollment, high cost vs. low cost, etc. In the end, the fact is that your success in education depends most upon the decisions that you make about yourself. For help with those personal decisions see “Your Future is Calling” for how to tips, help and useful exercises.