Jobs ... Youth Unemployment
Failed Education

Roshan, Amani Institute ... Building a Social Sector Jobs Economy

Burgess COMMENTARY
This short post addresses a very important issue. The education sector is operating in a manner that might have been optimum early in the last century but really does not work for the 21st century. The post responds to a study by McKinsey and Co, the well known conculting firm.

I would argue that the issue of mismatch between job seekers and job opportunities arising because of lack of skills should have been understood a long time ago, and not triggered by a consulting firm study ... in other words, I would have liked for there to have been meaningful metrics in play so that all the actors in society are working from the same performance criteria.

Some ... many ... argue that the laissez faire capitalist market economy and the search for money profit serves this role as per the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith, but while this was a good metaphor for the economy of the 18th century it does not work well in the 21st century. Many things are different, but most important, productivity is different. Instead of a world where shortage is endemic, the world is now in a situation where surplus (of productive capacity) is endemic and where shortage of natural capacity is becoming the critical constraint. This natural capacity comprises issues like climate, water, peak oil and the like.

All of these issues are being incorporated into the framework of metrics we call TrueValueMetrics ... mainingful metrics for a smart society ... value accountancy.
Peter Burgess

Building a Social Sector Jobs Economy

This blog post was originally published on the iHub's blog and cross-posted onInnovation Africa.

About a month ago, McKinsey & Company, the world’s premier consulting firm released a report on the divide between the need for jobs for young people and the lack of skills that graduates today possess in the hunt for those jobs. Their study was exhaustive – it covered 8500 employers, youth and educators from nine countries. And its finding was stark – seventy-five million youth are in need of jobs, while only 43% percent of employers believe they can find the talent they need even for entry-level jobs.

If you look closer, the depth of the problem becomes more evident. Nearly 75% of providers of education believe their graduates are ready for work while neither employers (42%) nor the young people themselves (45%) believe that. There is a gap between what universities think are necessary skills and what the job marketplace wants.

Social Change projects: there is no globally accepted training to prepare someone to be able to solve social problems

This problem spans the entire economy. However, it is arguably even more prevalent in the world of social change. Unlike medicine or law or accountancy or perhaps even business, there is no globally accepted training to prepare someone to be able to solve social problems. Yet nearly everyone agrees that social change work is the hardest work of all – there is nothing in business or law that can compete with the challenge of ending violent conflict or reducing poverty or providing sustainable health to a population. At the same time, more and more young people are seeking careers that involve both doing good and making money.

But they are not prepared for those careers. In 2010, the US Institute of Peace released a similar study to the McKinsey one, though focused on the specific field of conflict resolution. Their finding was that nearly 90% of education providers believed in their students’ readiness for this work while only 50% of employers agreed. In the social sector, the gap between skills and education is even larger than in the general economy.

A social change project in Venezuela

In a fast-changing 21st century economy, where problems are multiplying and flowing across national boundaries, this critical skills gap needs to be addressed, and we need radically new education models to address it, to make education more relevant to the marketplace.

We need to build future generations that can not only think and write well, but also apply specific skills such as technological literacy, yes, but also social entrepreneurship, design thinking, empathy, systems analysis, and so on. Only then will we have a society capable of thinking differently – and capable of rising to Albert Einstein’s famous challenge of developing a higher order of problem-solving thinking than the thinking that created those problems in the first place.

Roshan Paul is President of the Amani Institute, which is building a better educational model for people interested in careers in social change. Their next course is a 1-month executive training in social entrepreneurship – applications are open!