A recent article in the NY Times not only shared data on declining college enrollment but also raised the question: Is College Worth It? To quite a few college age young adults in the USA, apparently not. According to Best Colleges, their research shows college enrollment has been declining since 2010. In the past decade, total college enrollment has dropped by about 1.95 million students, or by about 10% to around 17 million students in the spring of 2023. Why?
It could be a myriad of reasons. It seems quite a few young people are questioning the value of their education based on the high cost of education versus its relevancy. Or perhaps, it’s because Fortune 500 companies including Google, IBM, and Apple, have eschewed their longstanding degree requirements. It shows. In November 2022, just 41% of U.S.-based job postings required a bachelor’s degree, per an analysis from think tank Burning Glass Institute. Or maybe, due to technology, young adults have figured out how to acquire knowledge and skillsets from a variety of other sources.
The nature of employment is changing quickly, and the average job tenure is dropping. According to Payscale, the average person currently goes through 12 jobs changes during their lifetime. Because of automation, we should anticipate that number to more than double over the coming years. With employment trending towards shorter commitments, employers are far more interested in immediately applicable skills that a prospective worker brings to a task than the classwork they’ve completed or reputation of the school they’ve attended. Perhaps its time to consider an alternative to a college degree: certifications.
For quite a few employers, certifications are becoming a far quicker and more effective way for hiring managers to gauge a person’s competency. They’ve become less invested in how the learning took place and far more interested in only interviewing those who have passed the proficiency test. Because of this, hiring companies may rely far more heavily on certifications than academic degrees for their preferred form of new employee recruitment.
Both LinkedIn and Indeed have offered up their point of view on the type of top certifications to acquire to get hired. A few of the key areas are listed below.
Computer Networking. The whole world is now connected with computers and devices and someone needs to manage the complex networks that we rely on.
Cloud Computing. Cloud is an interesting marketing word for remote server computing storage and power. Almost all viable applications that we rely on today are in the cloud from Amazon to Instagram to Microsoft applications. Certified experts are needed to manage all things cloud.
Project management. There is nothing that really gets done today especially in a work environment that is not a project. Oh, you might have a strategy and even a tactical plan, but you need really competent people to manage all these projects.
Online marketing. Today, there are quite a few elements that can go into a marketing campaign. Not just offline but also online marketing all done in an integrated manner with a variety of media choices. Getting key certifications here in Hootsuite, Google Analytics and Tableau among others will be critical.
Sales. You really can’t move any business forward unless you have people who know how to sell. SPIN Selling and other sales training certifications will be important to those among you who were born to sell.
For those of you have entrepreneurial ambitions, honestly, go to work for an entrepreneur in any of the above job positions and get ‘on the job’ knowledge you just can’t get in college. Hang out with entrepreneurs where they congregate and volunteer at their events. Get a few certifications in the work you might enjoy. Because, being an entrepreneur is not a job title, you still have to be good at doing something in the company.
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