Are Schools Failing Our Businesses?
I have seen a lot of complaints recently from businesses lamenting the lack of specific skills in their new workers. One theme that keeps rising to the top is that schools aren’t preparing students appropriately for the current work environment.
This doesn’t seem fair in a number of ways.
Schools are not pipelines to certain organizations or industries; they exist to expose students to a wide variety of knowledge and ways of thinking. Schools allow students to try on many different topics and to see what’s a good for them—and what is not. They provide tastes of possible future careers, not pathways to any certain one. Students (employees) make their own decisions and create their own work futures, sometimes in fields or businesses that have never existed before. Apprenticeships or in-depth training programs would be more appropriate for what some of these companies seem to be seeking.
Jobs and the work environment change so rapidly, especially with our increased use of technology; it seems that if schools were training students in more specific skills, that knowledge would be outdated before students even had a chance to use it. Not to mention, each business has their own way of doing things. It makes more sense for companies to train their people in those specific ways of doing, while schools can focus on helping students learn the meta-skills of how to acquire new knowledge and skills.
Lastly, it feels like businesses are scapegoating the education system rather than investing in their workers – not only at the beginning of their employment but also throughout their careers via continuing professional development opportunities. Learning is not something that happens once. Industry should take responsibility for their own wants and needs – and their own deficiencies – rather than trying to pass the blame.
What do you think: Is it better for schools (high schools and colleges specifically) to teach a broad range of skills, like research and learning how to learn, or a specific set of skills that will better prepare workers for a certain trade or industry?