The number of students in schools, colleges and universities all over the world has increased exponentially over the years and when we add the number of admission seekers to that, it hits a very high figure and the most heartbreaking thing is that these students are less certain whether their degrees will pay off.
According to the survey Freelancing in America 2018, recently released, freelancers put more value on skills training: 93 percent of freelancers with a four-year college degree say skills training was useful in comparison to only 79 percent who say their college education was useful to the work they do now. In addition, 70 percent of full-time freelancers participated in skills training in the past six months compared to only 49 percent of full-time non-freelancers.
This data points to something much larger. Rapid technological change in combination with rising education costs, have made our traditional higher-education system an increasingly risky path. In most developed countries, the cost of a college education is so high that the debt incurred often isn't outweighed by future earnings potential.
Although, degrees are still thought of as lifelong proof of professional competency but they tend to create a false sense of security, perpetuating the illusion that work — and the knowledge it requires — is static. Which is a false assumption.
For example, a 2016 World Economic Forum report found that "in many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate."
And recent data from Upwork confirms that acceleration, with about 70 percent of the fastest-growing skills new to the index and we must expect the change to keep coming. It is therefore imperative that we encourage more options to thrive without our current overreliance on college degrees as proof of ability. We need new routes to success and hope.
So the earlier we admit that the future of work won't be about degrees, the better. The future will certainly be about skills and no one school, be it Harvard, General Assembly or Udacity, can ever insulate us from the unpredictability of technological progression and disruption.
This is evident in Upwork's latest Skills Index, which revealed that among the top 20 fastest-growing skills, none require a degree. In a statement by Upwork’s CEO, “As a leader of a technology company and former head of engineering, I've hired many programmers during my career. And what matters to me is not whether someone has a computer science degree but how well they can think and how well they can code. The rate at which Freelancers increase is alarming, the fastest-growing segment of workforce are those that education doesn't stop. college degrees or not, just ensure you have the necessary skills to thrive in this era, This is a mindset worth embracing.
Labels: Degrees, future jobs, Life-Hacks, Skills, what the future holds
