The arrival of the Third Age of online education (i.e., getting employers to pay for online degrees) may be the ultimate proof of declining perceived value. Third Age math only works when the operative outcome is employee retention. The shift in emphasis from self-pay to employer-pay has ushered in an era of fin de siècle online degrees.
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Our most famous schools spout the virtues of meritocracy and diversity while continuing to fill themselves to the brim with sons and daughters of the rich and famous.
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Direct election of directors and proxy advisory services have improved corporate governance. College and university boards need a comparable boost.
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In the education and workforce arena, giving equal airplay to skills gap deniers is tantamount to giving equal airplay to climate change deniers or ICE. Conveniently, turns out it’s actually the same people!
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Social entrepreneurs intent on closing the skills gap should focus more resources on business model, value proposition to candidates, and selection technology than on curriculum. It may seem like an unnecessarily long and winding road. But it’s the surest path from coal to code.
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Imagine if you will a bizarro United States – even more bizarre than the current one – where reduced federal and state funding of higher education has been exactly offset by the lower cost of delivering online or even blended programs.
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Last week I was at a meeting with a well-known professor and expert on the future of work who shared his considered opinion that “most Human Resources managers make Stalinist-era Soviet bureaucrats look thoughtful and progressive.” Is it possible, I wondered, that Human Resources is the potted plant of the employer?
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Any celebration of the Business Roundtable statement is like spiking the football on the 50 yard line. The fact that the Business Roundtable made this statement simply underscores that they are putting shareholders first, “because it makes shareholders feel better.”
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When it comes to getting a good first job, students aren’t meeting prospective employers at five ceremonies (four weddings and a funeral) across a number of years. For most students, there’s only one ceremony – graduation – and the timeframe for employment serendipity is extremely limited. The result is often less four weddings and a funeral than four years and a funeral of underemployment.
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While adults in fast food jobs find themselves blocked from participation in the dynamic economy, they in turn are blocking teens from getting the summer jobs – the work experience and soft skills – that prior generations accessed as the very first rung of a career ladder. And without these summer jobs, teens are growing into underemployed 20-somethings. It’s America’s skills gap begetting a greater skills gap, and the skills gap becoming a vicious circle.
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