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‘What will the Uber university look like?’
An expert in analysing employment outcomes from higher education has delivered a stinging appraisal of the Australian university sector's ability to prepare students for the outside world. It's a deficiency he puts down to traditional and unwieldy institutions being slow to adapt to technological modernity.
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Well, probably it will have no Qualifications. I suppose with Uber and Airbnb you want a taxi or a room and they provide it but they don’t own it. So if we extend that out; you want a qualification so the uni becomes an administrative function linking you to a company that will give you a “qualification” through training that will be specific to their needs. You then get a degree or a job with them. Like a sponsor system.
The only problem is, what if you find you don’t want to work with them? your qualification may be useless to anyone else. You might be contracted to them etc. Might be worth looking at what Uni’s provide rather than only at what they don’t.
There’s a reason why Mr HR at IBM finds students are not fully equipped for their specific company. IT’S ‘CAUSE IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THEM (stupid). Students with a business degree learn transferable skills for a range of jobs and companies and first and foremost learn to think critically and analytically rather than learning the GROUPTHINK of one specific company or even the industry. Maybe companies are in need of these types of thinkers more than they know. maybe there is already enough “following the herd” in business as our constant ever increasing wave of boom and bust indicates. Maybe they are looking for the wrong things in new recruits (seeing them as ‘spare parts’ rather than unique potentials).
Perhaps industry needs to provide the internships that enables the theory and critical thinking and analytic capabilities students learn at university to become applied learning?
An Uber Uni? Who needs a uni? A degree is evidence that students have attended a number of courses/subjects in a particular discipline and have achieved a specific knowledge level. If they can prove that they have that specific knowledge level without the degree – who needs the degree? A website in which you can gather evidence that you have specific skills in specific areas (think Linked-in) would do the trick. People you have worked with could endorse you. Employers could look on the website, find the individual with the skills they require and contact you. To gain further skills, go online and study a MOOC. After all that’s how Airbnb undertake their quality control, it is through the endorsement of others. Seeing individuals as ‘spare parts’, yes, casual labourers, yes, try and buy, yes.
Do I work in a Business School at a University – yes. ]
The world is changing and I’m not sure what it is going to look like!