The University Problem And What It Means For Leaders

Businesses for a long time have utilized certain metrics to gain a better understanding of whether candidates would be good fits.

One of the most popular sections of any Resume for many years has been the "Education" section.

In fact, when you go looking online at job forums, the majority of the time a University Degree is a requirement to even apply.

However, is this still a good metric for deciding on candidates?

The Old Theory

For many decades, a Degree was an indication of a few things.

It was a sign that a candidate was willing to go above and beyond to stand out in the marketplace.

Degrees also meant that employees were open to learning more, which would mean that they were easier to work with.

Plus, the Degree was an indication that the employee knew how to think on their own and so could contribute at higher levels to an organization's success.

Often these Degrees were indicators that they also had knowledge that could allow them to succeed as Leaders.

The higher the Degree, the more dedication and potential the employee was demonstrating.

All of these combined to demonstrate that you had a more intelligent, and wiser candidate that had the potential to really be a game-changer for any organization.

However, is this still valid?

The Problems

There may have been a time when these reasonings were actually true, but they simply aren't today.

Why is that?

Well, there are a significant number of problems that have arisen over the years that have created huge gaps.

Oversaturation

One huge problem that has become more prevalent is the oversaturation problem.

As it has been said, "When everyone is special, no one is."

For Millenials especially, they were told that a college education was a one-way ticket to success in life, as it had been for their parents.

Unfortunately, this drove many Millenials to get degrees right away.

The amount of Millenials, mixed with the number of previous generations who would go back to school, created an extremely oversaturated market.

It has gotten to the point where even a Master's Degree is oversaturated and isn't really an "accomplishment" anymore.

Experience

The next problem is that of Experience.

As businesses have grown, they have begun to notice that there is a difference between "Book Smarts" and "Street Smarts".

Educational institutes have been giving students some of the "Book Smarts", but rarely do students also get "Street Smarts".

Aka, they may be "smart", but that knowledge is useless because it isn't working with any "experience".

We are seeing Intelligence, without any Wisdom.

What businesses need is Wisdom, and it's something that schools aren't providing.

With this, Students are going through long periods of their lives, sometimes into their mid-twenties, and ending up with no actual experience on their Resumes.

Archaic

A Third issue is how Institutes are able to improve their programs.

For most Universities, there are extremely high levels of Regulation, Accreditation, and Federal Subsidies that have made education evolution extremely slow.

In fact, it can take over 10 years for any new material to be accepted by institutes in order to maintain all of these aspects.

What in business is still relevant from 10 years ago?

Overall, very little, and that is assuming that the Institute is staying on top of what changes are occurring, and attempting to adapt as quickly as they can.

However, most aren't keeping up with the continuing changes.

This is leaving most programs teaching subjects and topics that simply don't matter to the workforce.

Businesses don't have time to retrain people who have information that has been that antiquated, which is why Experience is becoming so prevalent.

Cost

Another issue we are starting to see is a cost issue.

The price of educational institutes has risen astronomically over the years.

Over the past decade, prices have risen on average by 12% per year.

This is 12% per year, from institutions that are teaching information that is horribly outdated.

When you mix the extreme price increases with the rates of inflation, the stagnation of income, and overall economic challenges, it is a horrible recipe for disaster.

Many exceptional students are finding it impossible to keep up, not because they are bad students, but because they simply can't pay enough due to their economic positions.

This has actually led to a staggering number of students, nearly 40% between 2012 and 2017, who have taken out loans but were unable to finish their degrees due to costs.

The students who suffer the most are also the same students that organizations need to fix their diversity problems.

Results

So what does this mean for education overall?

Well, we are seeing dramatic drops in enrollments from students.

Why would they pay excessive fees for a degree that doesn't get them any real advantages?

From the statistics, graduates 1/3 of the time actually ended up with worse-paying jobs than those who didn't attend.

It's actually so bad that 49% of graduates didn't apply to ENTRY-LEVEL jobs because they didn't "qualify".

What is the point of a degree if you can't get an entry-level job with it?

We are also seeing a rise in MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).

These tend to be significantly cheaper, much faster to obtain and actually contain courses that are relevant to today's world.

I also recently wrote an article about the growing fear from College-Educated workers around fears of losing their jobs to AI.

It is a phenomenon occurring solely with College-Educated workers, but why?

It is because colleges are not preparing them to adapt and change with new technology.

AI as it currently is (which is not truly artificial intelligence) shouldn't make anyone afraid who is able to adapt and think creatively.

But we're seeing fears arise because so many "Educated" individuals are not taught to do this.

The Needed Leadership Perspective

Due to these factors, we will see a few changes occurring.

Traditional education will continue to decrease until Universities can fix their problems (if they can at all).

Courses that are not "Traditional" will gain steam due to their relevancy and significantly lower costs.

Leaders will need to find new methods of identifying high-potential candidates that have nothing to do with their education.

Experience is a better indicator, but is still lacking to uncover the hidden gem employees that exist and are being lost due to economic circumstances.

For the employee workforce that is currently there, Leaders should also look to avenues to provide training for all of the life gaps that the Educational system fails to give.

There is a high level of employees who are more than happy to learn and become amazing, but organizations need to provide them with the avenues to achieve it.

Organizations that actually accomplish this will have a gigantic advantage against other businesses because it will act as a double benefit - Their employees will grow astronomically and it will also act as a great hiring tool drawing the highest potential employees.

The #1 thing that businesses will need to figure out to accomplish this is to fix the well-being of their organizations.

Wellness programs currently are completely lacking due to the levels of Stress Damage that employees have which aren't being fixed.

Fix the Stress Damage, and you will have the opportunity actually reduce Stress.

This means that programs will need to be able to fix the Mg-ATP problems that currently exist.

If a program can't tell you how they directly fix this problem, then they will be unable to accomplish the underlying Dis-Stress problems.

Failing to do this will also lead to even higher levels of Burnout, which is already up to 80%.

Leaders who also fail to reduce Burnout will see significant costs rise for keeping employees, both in productivity and in medical costs.

We will be seeing major changes in the future workforce.

Smart Leaders will adapt their methods to grasp the glowing opportunity that exists.