Online Learning Update

Hallie Busta, HigherEd Dive

Employers remain confident in the value of higher education but continue to think new graduates lack the skills needed to succeed in the workplace, according to a survey of nearly 500 executives and hiring managers. It is the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ seventh survey of employers, and past iterations showed a similar disconnect between companies and colleges. However, the latest findings show graduates are getting better at communicating their skills and that employers’ views vary by age.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/employers-say-college-grads-lack-needed-skills-but-that-could-be-changing/597821/

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

AAC&U survey of employers shows liberal arts skills are valued and sought out in the workplace but raises questions about student preparation. First the good: employers generally have confidence in higher education and value the college degree. They believe that a liberal education — or preparation for more than a specific job — provides knowledge and skills that are important for career success. And increasingly, employers say, college graduates are more effective at explaining what they bring to the table. Now the not-so-great findings: employers see room for improvement in how colleges and universities prepare students for work.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/06/aacu-survey-finds-employers-want-candidates-liberal-arts-skills-cite-preparedness

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Fewer students started or returned to college last fall — numbers were down half a million below 2019 [1]. In understanding those numbers, we should remember that enrollments have dropped each of the past 10 years. Prospective students have been balancing the prospect of launching a career or at least a full-time salary or putting that aside for college benefits such as greater long-term income, campus social life, maturing and finding the right career. It is, as Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta suggest, “A Not-so-Tidy Narrative [2].” Nevertheless, as Horn and Moesta point out, “According to the University of California, Los Angeles’s annual survey of freshmen entering four-year colleges and universities, roughly 85 percent say they are going so they can get a job. That is up from roughly two-thirds in the 1970s, although down slightly from its peak in 2012.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/print/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/higher-eds-future-intersection-learners-and-employers

Steff Chalk, 401KTV

Education benefits assistance is becoming increasingly important to today’s workforce. In addition, education benefits assistance is becoming an integral part of employers’ recruitment and retention of top talent. Technology is quickly changing the workforce and the way we work, creating the need for education benefits assistance and innovation in the workplace. As such, employers are racing to keep up. Employers are re-skilling workers in an attempt to stay a step ahead of the coming era of automation. In particular, frontline workers are vulnerable to automation, so employers are working overtime to level up their skills via education benefits to keep their workforce viable and competitive.

https://401ktv.com/education-benefits-assistance-employers/

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

The college is part of a new effort called the Learning Credential Network, announced Thursday, that plans to use the same technology popularized by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to store academic records in a way that is nearly impossible to counterfeit. Students can send their records without having to ask the college registrar to get involved. The system is up and running, sort of, but so far officials haven’t finished putting a public user interface on it or launching the public website, says Tobe Phelps, chief technology innovation officer at Central New Mexico Community College. About a dozen people have put their transcripts into the system to test it, and if all goes well the public rollout will happen next summer.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-11-14-new-blockchain-effort-will-let-employers-search-for-candidates-with-proven-skills

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Roughly half of American adults without a college degree (46 percent) said they need additional education to advance in their careers, according to new survey data from the Strada Education Network and Gallup. Employers were the first-choice providers for this group, with 33 percent saying they are most likely to participate in additional education and training from employers. Community colleges were next (23 percent), followed by trade schools or programs (21 percent), and traditional four-year colleges (17 percent).

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/09/23/choosing-employers-over-college-more-education

Hallie Busta, Education Dive

And while reports indicate new technology is fundamentally changing existing jobs and resulting in the creation of new ones, Matthew Sigelman, CEO of labor market analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies, said that trend is incremental. Rather than seeing many new jobs emerge, he argued, it’s more often that existing ones are adding new requirements. That could raise the salary and knowledge levels of the workers required and make jobs harder to fill. Sigelman gave the example of a marketing manager, a position that now often requires the ability to work with customer data. That went “from being really quick to fill to really hard to fill,” he said. “(This) represents a real challenge for educators in terms of how they can keep their programs up to date,” he said, as well as for workers and employers.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/whats-at-stake-for-colleges-as-employers-rethink-hiring-and-training/562916/

By Sean Gallagher, EdSurge

There’s a growing consensus that today’s economy is increasingly defined by the need for continuous learning. What hasn’t been worked out is who should bear the responsibility for this ongoing re-training—the employee or the employer, or some mix of the two? And what role should higher education play? The reality in the tech sector is that skills have a short shelf-life. Software engineers must re-develop their skills every 12 to 18 months.

Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Amazon moves deeper into offering postsecondary credentials, following Google and other big employers, but largely bypasses traditional colleges with the expanded training options.  Resistance by many colleges to adapt to the economy and evolving education and training needs may be a reason why Amazon is building its own credential infrastructure, said Jim Fong, chief research officer for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association.  “The message is really more about core competencies and who can do it better, cheaper and faster and whether colleges and universities can do that anymore,” he said via email. But Fong added that the Amazon news “might be the shot in the arm that higher education may need to accelerate what may be a slow and bureaucratic process regarding content and credentials needed in the marketplace.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/07/17/amazon-google-and-other-tech-companies-expand-their

By Riia O’Donnell & Katie Clarey; HR Dive
U.S. workers hunger for learning opportunities because employers aren’t providing enough of them, according to a report by City & Guilds Group. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they want a bigger focus on L&D in their workplaces. Only 46% said their employers have provided on-the-job training in the past year, and only 52% said it’s easy to access L&D at their jobs. The majority of employees (82%) said they feel “fairly well equipped” to do their current jobs, but 63% want a heavier focus on training. Many American workers aren’t waiting on their employers to upskill them. A majority of workers, 62%, have invested personal time in training during the past year, with 30% paying for training out of pocket.

https://www.hrdive.com/news/workers-want-ld-focused-work-but-employers-arent-delivering-survey-says/557926/

Sarah Surette, Thrive Global

With ever-increasing competition from other job seekers, you need to stand out from the crowd to potential employers. So, what will give you the edge over other candidates? There are several skills and certifications that employers want more than others. Now that online learning has taken off, there are hundreds of different certifications you can get. They offer classes in any number of different skills and trades, and the consensus among HR professionals is that certifications can, indeed, make a difference, but not all of them. Take a look at these top skills and certifications that should place you ahead of your competitors.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/9-skills-and-certifications-employers-want/

by Wendy McMahon, EdSurge

Real world problems are exciting to solve but devilishly hard to assess, especially when there are many students involved. Yet that’s just the approach that Mark Schneider is helping lead at NAIT, a 40,000-student polytechnic school that offers one of Canada’s biggest apprenticeship programs. What’s made the work possible, Schneider says, is a special combination of online learning tools that is helping NAIT educate students so they are prepared for the complexities and responsibilities of real world situations from the day they graduate. Schneider, an Educational Technology Specialist at NAIT, sat down with EdSurge to share the top lessons he’s learned as he’s built NAIT’s online learning offerings over the past five years—including why delivering the kind of education that students crave is helping NAIT produce the kinds of graduates that employers want.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-12-how-to-build-an-online-learning-program-students-crave-and-employers-want

By Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed
A report released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that New York community colleges engaged widely with employers. Two-year institutions routinely work with local employers to help shape work-force training programs offered by the colleges and build students’ skills for future work-force needs. However, community colleges administrators said in a survey administered by the Federal Reserve that they do not have enough financial resources or staff to expand their efforts, especially in rural areas of the state.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/11/15/employer-engagement-community-colleges

By Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

New study says the evolving economy creates a greater need for their skills, but that many colleges could do better at thinking about what graduates can do and helping them translate that into jobs.  A report being released today says higher education is not keeping pace with the ever-changing job market. The report examines the “translation chasm” between the skills graduates of liberal arts programs have and the skills employers say they’re looking for in an applicant. Turns out, they’re not all that different, but “liberal arts graduates are too often left to stumble upon the valuable mixture of layered skills” required for any specific career, according to the report. While many reports suggest that students should focus on studying marketable skills, the new report identifies career value in liberal arts education, albeit with some tweaks.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/13/new-report-shows-colleges-how-bridge-gap-between-liberal-arts-and-work-force

By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Inside Higher Ed
Though public support for higher education seems to be waning, this skepticism doesn’t appear to extend to potential employers, who say they still have faith in colleges and universities, according to a new survey conducted on behalf of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. But while executives and hiring managers believe that institutions are teaching graduates the skills needed for entry-level jobs, they reported that students usually aren’t ready to be promoted.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/28/survey-business-leaders-believe-students-are-learning-skills-not-those-needed

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

More than half of respondents (56 percent) participating in a recent survey say they believe today’s employers are not adequately preparing workers with future-forward tech skills. The survey, conducted by Researchscape for Coding Dojo, measures consumer attitudes about technology skills and offers insights into how employers can “upskill” the tech workforce and improve tech literacy. The results come at a time when many colleges and universities have to prove their return on investment for students who are increasingly more eager to learn about cultivating skills and post-graduation career prospects than athletics programs or campus social life.

Survey: Employers should prepare workers for lifelong learning

By Wendy McMahon, EdSurge

Steph YoungGonzaga credits online learning with enriching her education and helping establish herself as an IT thought leader.  YoungGonzaga recently returned to her roots. She pivoted her career in order to focus on supporting students who, just as she did, are pursuing their education online.  As Assistant Professor and Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and Technology at Ashford University—a fully online university—she developed the new Master of Information Systems Management degree program. Today, she’s focused on giving students the hands-on experience and peer connections they need to become the the next wave of IT leaders. A key part of her arsenal? Virtual labs.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-12-this-professor-uses-virtual-labs-to-teach-real-world-it-skills-that-employers-want

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

When Americans think about the artificial intelligence “revolution,” they expect it to have a positive impact on life and work, but a negative impact on the workforce and the economy. While only nine percent believe AI will “decrease inequality,” seven times as many (63 percent) think it will increase inequality. And while 14 percent anticipate AI creating more jobs than it eliminates, five times as many (73 percent) predict just the opposite. However, while nearly a quarter (23 percent) are afraid they’ll lose their job to AI, three-quarters (77 percent) have no fears about that. Also, 76 percent “agree” or “strongly agree” that AI “will fundamentally change” the way we live and work over the next decade.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/02/27/survey-in-an-ai-world-retraining-will-come-from-employers-not-higher-ed.aspx

By Tabitha Prisinzano, Columbia College of Missouri

Online education is the way of the future and employers are viewing online education more favorably in recent years.  Since more and more jobs have entered the digital realm, studies show that employers increasingly view online degrees favorably, as opposed to just a few years ago. Increasingly, nonprofit, brick-and-mortar schools have started offering distance-learning programs, and at some point, most students enrolled in conventional college programs will take at least one class online. Plus, even as the stigma of online education continues to fade, the benefits of a computer-based classroom are becoming increasingly apparent. In fact, online classes teach students skills and learning techniques that are invaluable in a digital workplace, yet often go untaught in traditional classroom settings.

4 Ways Online Classes Can Make You More Attractive to Employers

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

Many colleges these days are experimenting with short-form online degrees to try to reach new audiences and offer new options, often at a lower cost. And new upstart providers are also getting into the mix, including coding bootcamps and startups like Udacity, which offers unaccredited nanodegrees. These trends raise a host of questions about the future of credentialing.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-23-in-evolving-world-of-microcredentials-students-colleges-and-employers-want-different-things