The technology of higher education
For
nearly 30 years, pundits have predicted that education technology would
disrupt higher education. Online courses will reduce costs and create
unprecedented access to higher education, so the argument goes. Likewise,
adaptive learning will improve — or replace — the art of teaching as
the right digital content is delivered at the right time to each individual
learner.
It’s
looking increasingly like none of these are the game-changers we
expected. While online learning is commonplace, higher education remains
firmly in the crosshairs of critics targeting high tuition, student debt, poor
completion rates and unemployed and underemployed graduates — demonstrating
a growing skills gap.
But
all is not lost. It may be that technology’s transformation of higher education
lies not in the transformation of teaching and learning, but the advent of a
new digital language that connects higher education and the labor market and,
in so doing, exerts profound changes on both.
The
historic disconnect between higher education and the needs of the labor market
is a data problem. In the past, data translating the discrete skills or
competencies that employers need was not easily available or meaningful to
faculty who create courses, or the students who take them.
Meanwhile,
hiring managers have consistently relied on signals supported by anecdotal
evidence, at best — for example, assuming that philosophy majors from Brown
made terrific analysts, or that teachers with master’s degrees performed better
in the classroom.
Today,
technology is changing the relationship between education and the workforce in
four distinct ways.
First,
competency data is becoming increasingly available. Online psychometric
assessments, e-portfolios and micro-credentials are surfacing student
competencies beneath the level of the terminal credential (i.e. degree). In
addition, many colleges and universities are in the process of migrating to
competency-based models, which will allow for the output of transcripts that
better describe the competencies of graduates.
Second,
there is a clear path for employers to interact with this new
data. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are incorporating analytics and
will soon begin gathering new competency data as inputs for assembling
candidate pools for human hiring managers to evaluate. As such, ATS is
transitioning from a backwater of HR technology to Application Information
Systems that will radically reduce the preponderance of false positives and
false negatives in candidate pools, thereby significantly reducing bad hires
that cost employers about $15,000 each, on average.
Third,
this data is being extracted and parsed into competency statements by
algorithms originally developed for purposes other than human capital
development (i.e. search, e-commerce). On the other side, the same algorithms
are extracting and parsing competency statements from job
descriptions, then matching the two.
Of
course, regardless of the caliber of student competency data, matching students
with jobs only works if employers’ job descriptions accurately capture and
describe key competencies. So the fourth major development is the advent of
“People Analytics” technologies, allowing employers to track employee
performance with a feedback loop to job descriptions. The result is that job
descriptions continuously improve, moving from vague and data-poor to precise,
data-rich renderings of the profiles of top performers.
Together,
these four technological developments will close the gap between higher
education and the labor market and usher in a new era in human capital.
The resulting “competency marketplaces” will help students understand the jobs
and careers that they’re most likely to match and help employers identify
students who are on track, or on a trajectory to match in the future.
Competency
marketplaces will inform students’ direction through postsecondary education by
providing a human capital GPS to help them select which credentials, courses,
assessments, projects or virtual internships move them most efficiently and
effectively toward target professions or employers.
The
core of the competency marketplace is the candidate or student profile. Your
profile will include your resume and transcript, along with badges, projects,
the results of standardized tests taken over the course of your life (SAT, ACT,
GRE, LSAT) or new industry- or employer-specific
micro-assessments. Students with more comprehensive profiles (i.e. more
competency data) will be given preference by employers via the
ATS. Colleges and universities that fail to recognize this may find that
their students are at a relative disadvantage in the labor market and, over
time, may face enrollment pressure.
The
market for competencies will ultimately put unprecedented pressure on colleges
and universities to unbundle the degree. As employers move to competency-based
hiring, many will determine that degrees are not a priority — or even required
for certain jobs. Over the next few years, degrees will become MIA in many job
descriptions.
Unbundling
doesn’t mean liberal arts will disappear. It may be that liberal arts
courses provide high-value competencies that predict career success across many
professions. But it does mean that revenue per student will decline, and
that colleges and universities will need to work a lot harder and be a lot more
creative to capture the lifetime value of student-consumers. No longer will
students fork over $200,000 in tuition for a standard four-year bundle.
Postsecondary education will become increasingly affordable. Completion rates
will rise. Placement will improve. This is how technology will ultimately
disrupt higher education.
While
this seems like the stuff of science fiction, it is not far off. Millions of
new job descriptions are posted online every month. Colleges and universities
are issuing millions of micro-credentials, millions of students are posting
work in e-portfolios. Thousands of employers use Applicant Tracking Systems
that are transitioning to Applicant Information Systems.
As
the new language of competencies disrupts higher education, we will need to be
vigilant to protect the central role that our colleges and universities play in
civil society and economic development. At the same time, colleges and
universities must take no comfort in the fact that prior predictions of
technological disruption have proven false. This time really is different.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Best
Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on
Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23,
2016. The title of the paper is “Removing
Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”
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