When the world paused for Covid, there was a real sense of stasis or loss in higher education, as the remote experience failed utterly to replicate or replace the immersive on-campus experience. But while higher education paused, the rest of the world didn’t stop. In fact, digital transformation of the economy accelerated.
The fall and campus leaders tout a return to some kind of (masked) normalcy, it’s natural to want to throw frisbees around the quad and put all the digital, remote stuff behind us. Headlines about the hot labor market for college grads make it even more tempting. Unfortunately, given the digital transformation we’ve seen, this is the calm on campus before the storm. Colleges and universities must urgently figure out how to provide students with digital platform skills and get them essential relevant work experience. Institutions that do so will position themselves at the forefront of higher education in the post-pandemic era.
Before Covid, higher education was facing a crisis of employability as nearly half of all college students were graduating into underemployment. This crisis has been building for decades. While colleges have continued to do a reasonably good job of preparing students with the cognitive skills they need to become successful professionals — critical thinking, problem solving, executive function capabilities — employers have changed. Systems and processes that were once physical or manual are now digital and automated, and governed by sophisticated new business software or SaaS platforms that require dozens — if not hundreds — of hours of training in order to navigate them competently.
Recognizing that a lack of trained talent on these platforms will inhibit growth, companies like Salesforce have made significant investments in developing training resources and programs like Trailhead. But self-paced online courses only work for a small minority, and generally not for those who need the most help getting good jobs. So the question becomes, who will provide this training?
Employers themselves don’t seem to be the answer. Before the Great Recession, more employers were accustomed to providing training for new employees. But as a result of the economic downturn, increasing entry-level churn and the higher cost of bad hires, many large and mid-size companies abandoned entry-level training programs. Hiring friction continues to rise for employers, and the prevailing view is that new hires should have the requisite skills from day one.
The increased pressure on relevant work experience is a direct result of the increased hiring friction that employers are feeling. The bar has been raised due to the increased cost of making a bad hire, increased churn at the entry level, and sclerotic hiring systems that screen out hundreds of potentially qualified candidates. It’s common knowledge that the best qualification for a job is whether candidates have previously succeeded in a similar job. But that’s a problem for emerging roles like SaaS jobs, many of which simply didn’t exist before.
The good news is that there are a couple of very promising models for colleges to go beyond the traditional (limited) career services function to provide students with relevant digital training and work experience.