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America has more than 6 million vacant jobs, yet the country is "facing a serious skills gap," Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta recently said. And last week his boss, President Donald Trump, said he wants to close this gap by directing $100 million of federal money into apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeships in the U.S. are generally known for training workers for blue collar jobs like plumbers or electricians, but with a little tweak, they could be the path to lucrative, white collar tech jobs across the country. Not just in coastal cities, but also in the Midwest, South, and across the Great Plains.
But to get there we need to erase the notion that highly paid jobs require a college degree. It's not always true. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, among others, has called for a shift in focus: "skills, not degrees. It's not skills at the exclusion of degrees. It's just expanding our perspective to go beyond degrees."
An academic degree signals to employers that a person has successfully completed a course of study, but it does not provide a clear assessment of someone's skills. Companies, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) industries, are shifting their recruiting process from "where did you study?" to "what can you do?".
Germans have long cited their apprenticeship system as a factor in their economic success. Would it help America and elsewhere, too?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday June 29 2017, @07:09PM (8 children)
> I realized that if I ever wanted a different job I was gonna have to have that useless piece of paper
A bit self-contradictory, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @07:45PM (7 children)
No, HR departments rely on pieces of paper because they are incapable of doing their job.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday June 29 2017, @07:52PM (6 children)
If they rely on the pieces of paper, said paper is not useless, descriptivist-ly.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:06PM (5 children)
Wrong, they shouldn't be relying on pieces of paper. Who do you think would be the best employee for a programming role; a self taught programmer with a couple of reasonably successful open source projects to his name or a CS grad who never did any coding before he started his degree?
We don't know but assuming no serious personality flaws, the person who was already successful purely off their own initiative is the first guy I'd want to interview.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:21PM
When I started my coding career I feared all the competition from CS grads.
After a couple years I learned not to worry because in my actual experience, recent CS grads couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:55PM (3 children)
> Wrong, they shouldn't be relying on pieces of paper.
Yet they do, which makes the paper useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2017, @12:47AM (1 child)
Maybe, but I refuse to participate in that game on principle. Others should do the same, or this stupidity will never end. If the employer requires a degree for a job that doesn't need it, they are not worth working for anyway.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 30 2017, @05:22PM
Well good luck with your idealistic one-man crusade on that.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday June 30 2017, @02:38PM
This AC obviously has never heard of Descriptivism :P
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"