OCTOBER 2020CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8ne of the challenges of working in education is that because everyone's gone to school, everyone's an expert. I don't get it. I get my hair cut, but I'm definitely not an expert on cutting hair. Just ask mylocked-down kids with the sad bowl cuts. But that doesn't stop millions of Americans from havingstrangelystrong opinions on education.One near-universally-held opinion is that higher education is an end in and of itself, and that degrees and credentials have inherent economic value.When I took my first job in education at Columbia University 20 years ago, this opinion wasn't wrong. But a lot has changed in 20 years, and especially in 2020. Before Covid, the return on investment from a postsecondary degree was at an all-time low. It's now clear it will never recover.Due to the cost and concomitant student loan debt, while reasons for going to college were once quite varied, nearly all students now enroll for a very pragmatic reason. To paraphrase James Carville from President Clinton's successful 1992 election campaign: "It's the job, stupid."Meanwhile, employers like IBM and federal government are shifting to skills-based hiring, including incorporating competency-based assessments into hiring processes. Google is launching new six-month certificate programs that it promises to treat "the equivalent of a four-year degree." Even venerable firms like JP Morgan have pulled back from campus recruiting.For employers, degree skepticism reflects a unbridgeable gap between traditional higher education and a labor market undergoing what economists are dubbing an automation forcing event. It reflects an awareness that colleges and universities are not only failing to prepare students with the skills employers are seeking, but may also be fueling inequality and political unrest by limiting credentials to the students with the requisite resources and stability in their personal lives to pay for and make it through 4+ years of school. Fifty-seven percentof working-class voters now believe a college degree will "result in more debt and little likelihood of landing a good paying job."This convergence of consternation betweenthetwin quasarsof higher education ­ students and employers ­ is upending that old saw that degrees and credentials have inherent economic value. Education investors like me are taking note. Because much of what we've done over the past 20 years has been to provide billions of dollars in fuel for theedtech products and services RYAN CRAIG, MANAGING DIRECTOR AT ACHIEVE PARTNERS AND UNIVERSITY VENTURESIN MY ViewTHE RISE OF JOBTECHORyan Craig
< Page 7 | Page 9 >