Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Educational Revolution



Richard Riley popularized the notion that "the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn't exist in 2004." He said this to push the idea that the most important thing a student can do today is to learn how to learn.

Moreover, although we can't predict future problems of future technologies that require new job descriptions, we can anticipate. By getting involved in actual practices in the industry, students can get the sense of the trends and can therefore adapt to the chaotic flux of change. In this kind of environment, students need the skill of creative solutions providing rather than prescriptive problem analysis. Education, then, needs to be informal and organic rather than formal and linear.

The current system forces companies to train entry level personnel to achieve minimum competence. This is done from a few weeks to a few months. Something that colleges and universities should have been doing for two to four years. If we take out the focus on diplomas, we will just have training centers. These schools of actual learning are partnered with companies to provide the exact skills that these companies are looking for in job candidates. In a sense, the companies are outsourcing their training department. It's totally a win-win-win situation.

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