Creative Industries Need Skills, Not Diplomas

Let's Keep Talents Out of College

Colleges as we know them are becoming obsolete, especially for creative industries such as software, video games and marketing. More and more companies including Apple, Google and IBM are taking diplomas off of their job requirements. Upskilling and reskilling channels such as incubators, accelerators, bootcamps and apprenticeship programs are replacing what schools used to be with unprecedented speed. Unorthodox education alternatives such as General Assembly , BloomTech and Udacity have successfully been delivering hundreds of thousands of trained talents to creative industries, despite the backlash from the status quo.

10 (of the Many)?Reasons?Why?I?Believe?Colleges?Fail

1. The "one-size-fits-all" approach through classrooms, curricula and programs simply don't work.
2. What is taught at schools does not meet industry expectations.
3. It is impossible for schools to keep up with the ever-changing industry demand and come up with new programs (e.g. I recently posted a job opening named "Game Ideator " for tiplay studio . There is no school for that job).
4. The measurement, assessment and evaluation systems used at universities are designed to let young people move on without achieving mastery (e.g. a student can pass an exam or graduate from college with a mediocre level of understanding of the subject they are studying)
5. Schools are charging way too much.
6. Degree programs are way too long.
7. Schools, diplomas, degrees etc. create rigid social groups similar to the caste system (e.g. "Ivy League", MBA, "Alma Mater" etc.), giving way to various discrimination channels. Even though gate keepers of the ivory towers try to "cancel" anyone who dare to speak out, the archaic and discriminative rank-based schooling system cannot align itself with the merit-based requirements of the fourth industrial revolution.
8. Neither research and teaching, nor science and vocational education are well-separated in academia. Future teachers do research and future researchers teach at colleges, creating one of the most unproductive learning environments for students.
9. Colleges became unrealistically comfortable habitats where young people party for years, instead of competitive incubators for professional environments.
10. Schools endorse pre-determined conservative career paths and discourage innovative professional initiatives.

Life is "Open-Book"

What if we stop enrolling students and start employing apprentices? How about getting rid of standardized tests, tuitions, one-size-fits-all courses? Wouldn't it be nice to offer young talents mentorship, educational resources and tools while they make money? Why don't we stop enforcing pre-determined curricula, and offer customizable learning paths instead? What if we stop schooling young people, and start accelerating their professional careers? Information is not scarce, insight, vision and action are - we must provide future generations with them.

Let's Hire Mindsets and Skills, Not Diplomas

If you are an employer in one of the creative industries, please hire for mindsets and skills. Offer apprenticeships, internships, bootcamps and other innovative entry points to your ecosystem - you won't regret it. Einstein famously said “education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think". Your employees need to know how to teach themselves things, how to build structures with limited resources and spark creativity under stress, which are neither priorities nor outputs of the current education system unfortunately. Eliminating academic credentials in recruiting is a huge competitive advantage for your business, don't miss out!

If you are a creative soul who is planning on starting an amazing career, please stay away from school and just get started. There are plenty of unconventional resources, programs and opportunities out there for you to use to get your dream job - the more efficiently you utilize them, the more successful you can be. You need to be brave and take action though, just start doing what you want to do. As Elon Musk says "the first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur."