On the skills crisis
For all those of you in technical and vocational education; listen to this BBC "File on 4" programme to find out how present policies are causing distortions in the system.
posted by James A @ 3:27 PM: Permalink
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The biggest bugbear for me about education, whether vocational or academic, is that it is increasingly being described in terms of 'what employers want'. This means it is no longer seen as valuable for people to seek education for education's sake (how quaint) and employers no longer see it as being in their interests to train staff who are recruited based on potential rather than existing skill.
My own research into design education found that employers ask courses to teach skills that they do not in fact use in their business - the problem is a lot of employers seem to have a distorted view of what they actually do.
Another issue, that of graduates lacking 'experience' (of course they do!) is actually down to employers replacing experienced staff with cheap graduates and then wondering why they don't have the tacit knowledge of the person they're replacing. Far from courses being at fault, it's actually their own recruitment policies that are to blame.
So really, if we're going to spend money on developing skills, the first onea that should be developed are defining job specs, proper interviewing techniques, and staff development. It's employers that need the skills injection, not employees ;-)
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