Labor Market Trends and Skills for Higher Educated Graduates

1. Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market 21st Century Skills for Higher Educated Rolf van der Velden

2. Two topics • What are the main developments on the labour market for HE graduates and how is this related to skills? • How are these skills related to graduate’s employability?

3. How does the world of work for HE graduates look like? Findings REFLEX • International: 40% firms has an international scope • Competitive: 85% firms in private sector faces strong competition, mainly on quality • Innovative: 70% of firms engaged in innovative activities • Insecure: 50% graduates experienced reorganisation since start of work • Professional: strong emphasis on professional role of graduates

4. Main developments and related skills • ‘Knowledge Society’ -> professional expertise • ‘Risk Society’ -> flexibility • ‘ICT revolution’ -> innovation and knowledge management • ‘High performance workplaces’ -> mobilisation of human resources • Globalisation -> international orientation • Changes in economic structure -> entrepreneurship

5. 1: ‘Knowledge Society’ • Facilitated by: globalisation and ICT revolution • Post-industrial society: primacy of theoretical knowledge • Knowledge most important factor in sustaining competitive advantage • Demand for knowledge workers

6. Skill: Professional expertise • Key characteristic of knowledge workers: tasks are complex and involve unstructured decision making • Different aspects: • Specific body of knowledge • Expert thinking • Reflectiveness and analytical thinking • From novice to expert? 5-10 years of experience!

7. 2: ‘Risk Society’ • Concept introduced by Beck, 1992 • Closely related: ‘Transitional labour market’ (Schmidt, 2000) • Distinction between core labour force and flexible counterpart • Employability and life-long learning: need for flexibility

8. Skill: Flexibility • Ability to deal with uncertainty and cope with changes • Ability to rapidly acquire new knowledge and skills • Not just passive but active

9. 3: ICT revolution • The driver of most other developments • Technological change is skill-biased • Polarisation of labour market

10. Skill: Innovation and knowledge management • E-skills: medium- and content-related • ICT also changes the characteristics of most existing skills • Not just digital skills, but also innovation and knowledge management

11. 4: High performance workplaces • Customised production and fast product renewal • Less hierarchical levels, more autonomous teams, delegation of responsibility to lower levels • Strong implications for skills

12. Skill: Mobilisation of human resources • Ability to effectively use one’s own and other’s human capital • This involves: • Interpersonal skills • Self-management and organisational skills • Strategic skills

13. 5: Globalisation • The world a global village (McLuhan, 1962) • Made possible by the ICT revolution • Globalisation affects the trade levels, production processes, information flows and the competitiveness of the market

14. Skill: International orientation • Fast flow of information, products and people from different cultures • Not only foreign language proficiency, but also intercultural skills • HE has become more internationally oriented, but the world even more!

15. 6: Changes in the economic structure • Decline of traditional manufacturing and growth of service sector • Growth of SME’s • ICT major role in small firms’ success • SME’s key role in innovation and thus in generation of new jobs

16. Skill: Entrepreneurship • Ability to recognise the commercial value of an idea and to pursue opportunities to turn this into a successful product • Entrepreneurship not the same as self-employed • Usually regarded a weak point of HE

17. The relation between these skills and success on the labour market • Professional expertise most important for success (even when working outside own domain!) • Mobilisation of human resources also important • International orientation important for career • Digital skills are basic, but innovation and knowledge management not always rewarded • Functional flexibility not rewarded in itself • Entrepreneurship needed in certain types of jobs

18. Choices to be made in HE • Time is limited, so we need to ask: • Is HE the most efficient environment to develop these skills? • Are these skills more important to develop than others? • What is the minimum level that everybody needs to have? • What is the optimum mix across students?

19. Conclusions • ICT is the major driving force behind other developments, such as knowledge society, globalisation etc. • ICT does not only lead to new digital skills, but also changes the characteristics of most existing skills • Main challenge for education: • Make choices about what and when • Make good and effective use of ICT

20. Sheets panel discussion

21. Challenges for education • Task for education and teachers is unprecedented: never before was so much expected • Main challenge: good and effective use of ICT • Not only a goal in itself but also needed for other challenges, such as: • dealing with individual differences, • the need for flexibility • the need for life-long learning • decreasing resources

22. ICT and education: developments • Curriculum: Open content, simulation and virtual reality systems, authentic tasks • Staff: communities of practice, distance teaching, intelligent tutoring systems • Assessment: diagnostic systems, automated scoring of text, instrument development

23. But there are major hurdles • Students more ICT-savvy than teachers: over 40% of teachers do not feel confident enough to teach ICT skills • Even students are not very well skilled in content-related ICT skills, like information-processing skills, logical thinking etc. • Lack of vision on how education can and should develop and how ICT fits in

24. What needs to be done? • Infrastructure is not enough, nor can implementation be left to the ‘lone wolf’ • Balance needed between vision, expertise, digital learning materials and ICT infrastructure • First and foremost: professionalization of teachers: • School’s budget for training (10%) • Act Occupations in Education (Wet BIO) • Role of professional associations