On Monday, Real Clear Markets posted the following headline:

The Labor Market Is Evolving Faster Than the Four-Year Degree

The article reports:

This summer, millions of graduates will face prolonged unemployment or underemployment in a frozen labor market – not because their degrees are inherently useless, but because employers no longer need the knowledge and skills they spent years developing. The real problem with higher education today is not access, cost, or quality, but its timing.

Each year, college freshmen are required to make long-term decisions about their education with little information about their strengths as job seekers, or the labor market they will eventually enter. Majors and coursework are often decided at the outset of enrollment, based on guidance or guesswork about employment conditions years into the future. Shifting gears is possible, but a costly endeavor involving additional semesters, sometimes years, of further schooling.

At the same time, a significant portion of coursework keeping students off the labor market is not directly tied to their intended career paths. In fact, a mere 40 percent of students complete internships or work-based learning programs prior to graduation.

The consequence is a growing disconnect between when education occurs and when it is most valuable. Students are asked to frontload their learning – acquiring most of their skills before entering the workforce – rather than developing them alongside real-world experience. This delays feedback, limits adaptability, and increases the risk that their education does not align with employers’ current needs.

There are some very good points made here, but there are also some things being overlooked. Years ago I worked for a company that I would describe as change-resistant. The person in charge of the day-to-day operations was set in his ways and resistant to computers and basic human resource requirements. He was pretty much running the company the way it would have been run in the early 1970’s. At one point the owner’s son came in and began running the business. He was young and had a much more contemporary business background. His attempts to bring the company into the twenty-first century were met with major resistance. Eventually the company failed. How marketable your college skills are depends very much on the career path you choose–there are many older companies out there that are looking for a slow transition to the twenty-first century. Today’s college students could probably meet that need.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.