Harnessing the Power of Data for Universities to Remain Relevant: Meet Caroline Depierre of Emerging Data

Welcome to this edition of the Xperienceships' World Of Work for Educators (WOWEd) series. We met Caroline Depierre, MD of Emerging Data, a digital transformation organization working at the forefront of higher education research, to interview her about the changing face of careers and the links that universities have with employers.

Read on to find out what stories about the relevance and usefulness of university degrees for employment can be told by the data her organization collects. You can watch a two minute clip on our Youtube channel or see the full interview below.

Xperienceships: Caroline, thank you for joining us. As Co-founder and Managing Director of Emerging Data, we would like to know, what has made you passionate about what you do?

Caroline Depierre: Well, it might surprise you, as you might see me more as a data person. But the reason why I chose that is because it's all about people. My academic background is in politics and social sciences. Data helps understand the way people act, what they need, why, what should be done to improve things for them, or for all of us. In the field of education and work, where our data is applied, I give organizations the ability to learn different points of views to set a common goal and work towards reaching this goal. Over the years, I've noticed, what is important for me is to feel that what I do has an impact, that it can make a difference. And I think with this job and with this career path, it is what I do. 

X: So what do you think is the best age to start talking about careers in education? 

C: I think generally, it's never too soon to talk about careers, right? What is a career? We all are somehow working for something public or private. It's about what difference we are going to make in the world.

So for the children at school, I think the approach should be very broad. It should not be too specific, because most of the roles that exist today and that will exist in the future are not as clear as a nurse or firemen. It's more about making the kids curious and fighting stereotypes. It's also very important that each person feels they can be anything, a gender topic, but it is also a social question. If you come from a family where no one studied, you won't naturally think going to university as a possibility for you.

With older children, I think we should talk about the diversity that exists and be very transparent and specific about the requirements and “the how” to access that kind of role, or company. I think that's important also to strengthen accessibility, which for me is a key requirement to the future world and the world our children will work in. I think this is important to create a very diverse workforce.

X: There seems to be a common thread in a wide spectrum of professionals we’ve interviewed around gender bias in career choice, with data proving that as soon as the age of four, bias will show, then later the choice of studies. How can we, as educators, make sure that we are aware of those biases, and which learning experiences help us open up and break those barriers? 

C: To approach complex problems, we need data. Emerging Data, supports organizations in their digital transformation, using data. So we use existing data or data we collect that can be surveys, benchmarks, official statistics, online metrics, or other kinds of information - and we transform this information into actionable insights for those organizations. We let the data speak, delivering customized reports or dashboards or action plans.

One of our focus of research lies in higher education, and specifically graduate employability. We have our own data we've been collecting for 10 years. And we can analyze, for example, what drives employability now and in the future. With our model, we can predict what university models will thrive and which ones will decline. And we know also from the data that employability is a critical topic for higher education, we are convinced that universities should build their offer and brand around employability. That is what the data tells us. And that is why we have developed a set of KPIs for universities to measure and monitor their employability performance and to somehow sustain and thrive in this uncertain context we are in. 

With our data, we can tell the 250 universities worldwide that are recognized by recruiters as the ones that produce the most employable graduates, based on their experience with graduates. It is concrete feedback from the market. It's not a reputation ranking, we delete this bias to just let them assess the people they work with. And what we see is that classical education models based on academic excellence, which is very linked to reputation, does not drive employability performance anymore.

Looking above the top 20, you see that other drivers and factors are becoming relevant. The two we have identified as future drivers of employability are: firstly, digital competence of the university, digital transformation in terms of learning formats, and the tools and the methods they use to learn. And the second driver is graduate competency. We separate it into digital literacy, and soft skills, the two main fields of competencies that build this characteristic we call graduate competency.

Based on that model, you can look at countries, for example, that evolved in the last 10 years, and in the ranking, you have many more countries than before. Universities join that ranking from countries that were not even in the ranking 10 years ago: countries like South Korea, for example, jumped into the top 10.Whereas the main driver of performance in France is academic excellence. Their system has been known for being advanced in vocational studies. But now, we don't see any of the future drivers really underlying the performance of the whole system. Or take the US. They used to have much more impact in this ranking than today. Based on all this information, we tried to predict which countries and which kind of model will evolve in future or will have more success.

X: Are there any learning methodologies that would help you shape and see as a driver of the future?

C: Problem based learning, for example, is something that recruiters back very positively. And generally, collaborative learning forms, everything that develops cooperation, and creativity skills. As a university you have to make it credible that you set your focus on this, on completely reviewing your learning approaches. It is not just about having one or two workshops that are a bit innovative. It is about embracing a very deep change process.

X: One thing that we start seeing is that there is this growing trend where the value of the undergraduate degree is being questioned. There are places in the States, big tech companies that I'm not going to name but everyone knows which ones, are even removing the need of having an undergraduate degree to work for them. Why do you think this is happening? And how are universities reacting to this trend?

C: I think the trends you just described have only been increased by the COVID crisis. It's all about the skills shortage. Universities should be the places where we find new solutions. We survey managers every year, and last year, half of them told us they would prefer to invest in internal qualification programs in the company than in partnering with universities! This number really makes clear that higher education needs a reset.

X: As we move from a knowledge based society where the knowledge is developed in universities in silos, I think of an article you wrote, where you talked about this innovative industry/university cooperation to help bridge that gap. Could you describe how you envision these different models?

C: What universities need to change is their approach to employers; companies are critical stakeholders, and universities must work on their relationships with the corporate world. Think about hackathons or incubators - but there are many other ways. We know that industry/university cooperation is key to remain relevant.

There's really a correlation between involvement with companies and university employability performance (and the recognition of it by the market). So, the first thing is to realise as a university: I'm offering a product, called “graduates”, and I have to place this product and it has to fit certain requirements. And these requirements depend on the market. And this market is segmented. Finally this is a very classical marketing approach. To really want to change things you need governance backing, and you need a budget. You have to understand your market and for that you need data.

To come back to your question about universities and corporations, they are different cooperation fields: research, training on the job, branding, entrepreneurship, curriculum development. What needs to be explored further is the curriculum design. Career paths should be reflected in the curricula designed by universities. I think that co-developing job based curriculums is key. And to understand “work” not as the first job after my studies where I can have earnings, but more like a part of my career path.

X: With a fast paced, changing job market and new jobs and roles coming up what do you think about students having a skill base that allows them to be more resilient to those changes?

C: Absolutely. The question you ask is, what is the curriculum? You have some things you have to learn for your life and something that are more specific to a job. I think microcredentials is a super interesting approach for that. Reduce the scope to specific skills to build incrementally into your own profile - that makes your degree more sustainable, I think, definitely. 

X: We like the idea of lifelong learning and some universities, such as Stanford, are piloting this idea of subscription learning for life, to kill the four year degrees. But these are still pilots, the model fundamentally hasn't changed.

C: It really makes sense. We have to develop a greater vision or concept, for example, on how to approach the topic of curriculums and why, and to have tested some things is important to nurture the innovation process.

Referring to our specific audience, which are counsellors at high schools, talking about industry cooperation with universities: do you think that there would be room for having some sort of cooperation earlier on in this application process?

C: I'm sometimes shocked how little focus is made at school on how the world is going. Advising on career is all about helping people find their role in this world. First, you have to know this world, and then you can think of the impact you want to make.

What I observed until now, in terms of industry cooperation with schools, are banks or service companies (that have no real product that the children know, because the children are not yet using their product), showing what career path there is in their organization. This kind of cooperation is a branding tool for companies. 

Schools should focus on what kind of studies can lead to what kind of jobs, on getting away from stereotypes, and what could be done, for example, to get more girls into technical or mathematical fields. They should also help pupils develop skills like creativity, critical mindset, collaboration. That can be done in cooperation with companies, but that can just also be done by the school. I don’t think you need companies for that. ?

You can read more about the work of Caroline and Emerging Data here, and follow their Twitter account here.

This November, Emerging Data will publish field research for the 2021global employability survey and ranking as part of their work with the Higher Education Evaluation Platform HEEP, a dashboard enabling universities to measure and improve their employability performance.