How To Close The Digital Skills Gap
How To Close The Digital Skills Gap
How To Close The Digital Skills Gap
July 13, 2020
Summary
"For too long as a society we have failed to close the skills gap," says Brian Napack, President and CEO of Wiley, a global leader in research, education and publishing.
Accelerating innovation has made the skills gap an urgent priority: technological change today disrupts industries and transforms jobs at a faster rate than ever before.
Sensing "a unique opportunity to make material progress, to make a difference", Wiley re-centered its business model around a "Bridge strategy" to close the gap between supply and demand of skills.
Wiley's MTHREE division acts as the tip of the spear, with the most ambitious and transformational approach: it works with leading corporations to understand what specific combinations of skills they need; then it collaborates with universities to select students and equip them with those exact skills combinations; once the students are hired into the required positions, it moves to what Napack calls "Pastoral care": upskilling the employees over the course of their career.
Wiley calls them digital skills, defined in a broad sense as the skills needed to operate and succeed in the modern knowledge-based economy.
Here is where the skills gap is particularly severe and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.
Helping to bridge the skills gap will likely become an existential challenge for schools and universities.
The value of a college degree is already being questioned, given the dangerously high levels of student debt and the worsening skills gap in the labor market.
Schools and universities that remain unable to provide the right skills at the right price will see students migrate away to other institutions and modes of learning.
Wiley knows this has to be a team effort and has partnered with corporate leaders, policymakers and educators to form the Digital US coalition, which aims to equip all US workers with digital skills by 2030.
Reference
Annunziata, M. (2020, July 13). How To Close The Digital Skills Gap: Wiley's 'Bridge Strategy' To Reinvent Learning And Career Development. Retrieved July 14, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcoannunziata/2020/07/13/how-to-close-the-digital-skills-gap-wileys-bridge-strategy-to-reinvent-learning-and-career-development/