Concerning education (and training)

It would seem that a sound part of current educational policy, then, is what we call "employability". Anyone who knows me knows as well that I'm a staunch opponent of the concept (cf. here, here, here, here, here, and here). Letting industry into education, be it general, vocational or higher, is like inviting the fox to guard the hen house. It will simply be bloody in the end. Considering what is happening to labor worldwide, I don't think it's too radical to accuse them of wanting little more than obedient wage-slaves. (There are exceptions, I am sure, but I don't care at the moment: if there are, they are too few; if there are more than I think, they're not making themselves visible enough.) It cannot be that we -- who are supposed to know something about education and training -- simply roll over and let the least qualified among us (let's be truthful: what qualifies an employer in regard to the needs of education?) tell us what needs to be done. Well, that's really what industry thinks, and oddly enough, that's pretty much what education and politics are doing.

We saw last time that the so-called skills shortage is little more than a red herring. There are, I would bet, more than enough qualified people to fill all those allegedly unfilled jobs. So what's the problem? Well, if industry can't snow us with the unrealistic-compensation-expectations argument, they can always fall back on the doesn't-have-the-right-piece-of-paper argument. I'm sure many of you have experienced that.

I know a guy who once interviewed with a major semiconductor company, and when I say major, I mean major. He had a degree in chemical engineering from a nationally well-respected university and since semiconductors weren't exactly his thing, he spent a good deal of time prepping for the interview by boning up on semiconductor production. The interview went spectacularly: the interviewer and my friend hit it off from the start; technically, according to the interviewer, my friend was top-shelf, remarking in fact that he'd never met any interviewee who knew as much about semiconductor production as he did. But ... it will come as no surprise ... my buddy didn't get the job. The reason: well, without some kind of documentation ... you know, a course or two in electrical engineering, a minor in computer science, well, something ... he could never justify the hire. So there was my friend with great paper, but not the right paper; in-depth knowledge but not documented knowledge. And, without the paper, no job.

Yes, something is terribly wrong with this picture, but it's anything but an isolated incident, and many, many of you will know for yourselves. So, how do we get past this barrier? We'll look at one possibility next time.