Skills vs Education

Historically, the only way to guarantee an interview at an international company was to have a degree, at least a Bachelor’s degree, if not an advanced degree. It was considered the “minimum requirement” to walk through corporate or other institutional doors. That’s the main reason why back in my childhood everybody kept saying “If you don’t study well, you’ll end up wiping the streets”. 

The idea of having a diploma as a must-have and sometimes exaggerated to be the one and only reason for being successful stuck in my head but eventually proved to be wrong. For our parents and older generations going to university or college really was the only valid source of getting a good education and building a career. But times have changed.

Now we are living in an environment where any technical skills acquired at college become outdated in a matter of a few years, if not months. And all this due to drastically developing technologies, for instance, AI (artificial intelligence), robotics, big data analytics, and quantum computing.

Therefore, the skills that matter in the long run are soft skills, such as the ability to research and find the right information in no time, handle complex situations outside the jurisdiction of your profession and experience. Of course, these are the ones you’d find nowadays in any given job description, i.e. creative thinking, communication and negotiation skills, team management, critical and analytical thinking.

However, if you were to ask me which skill I find the most vital one, I’d say the ability to learn (both soft and hard skills) at the same lightning speed as the technology is evolving.

Even in the late 90s, people who got jobs were feeling secure and safe to work in the same company up until they retire, but it’s not the case anymore. Why? Because those people who feel secure and safe, tend to not learn anymore after they even graduate, which harms them as a professional, and degrades their ultimate value as a professional, and eventually harms the company in terms of their value-delivering.

Now any HR Manager would tell you that when hiring they seek a candidate with the basic soft skills that have no expiration date, with the basic knowledge of hard skills that are “modern” at that period of time. However, the professionals will have to either upgrade their knowledge of hard skills in a few years or leave the corporation because of the lose-win situation of newcomers who have the skills they “have had time” to acquire. Or they will leave just because they end up just not understanding the new methods of working which makes their work-life more and more uncomfortable day by day.

Why am I saying all this?

Because this combination of knowledge and skills may not require a degree. So, does that mean that education is absolutely worthless? The answer is quite ambiguous since the degree is quite a necessity to have in hand nowadays, but the world definitely goes in another direction. And the change happens right in front of our eyes. 

Why does this happen?

Because the world is ever-changing and evolving, hence skillsets stay longer with a person, than the basic education received in university. At such changing times, technical know-how is more crucial than theoretical methodologies.

There is a growing tendency that in the future we will systematically and consciously acquire skills rather than degrees. The trend has started already with major tech companies, such as Apple and Google announcing that they no longer require a college degree for entries.

Then why my answer to the dilemma of skills vs formal education is ambiguous. Because despite the fact that tech companies are practically executing a lifestyle we all will witness in the future, skills are being over picked on top of the degree (degree as the basis). 

Once having a diploma from a prestigious university was merely enough to consider the candidate as one who would take on the job easily and do well practically. Nowadays, it’s not only not enough, but the main competition between candidates occurs over the skills each one offers (as most of them have degrees, and it doesn’t impress anyone anymore). 

Eventually, you will get the job if your skillset brings the highest value to the company at that given situation and time. These are skills and qualities that you don't necessarily get from a university education. These skills are applicable to any profession and can be used for effective communication, negotiation, business modeling, and so on.

So, when will all this change?

As the shortfall for high-skilled specialists will become overwhelming and massive in its numbers, companies will be extremely happy to find someone who can do the job at least at the skill-level. Many countries already announce the shortfall of tech specialists, developers, UX/UI designers. Europe already faces a shortage of more than 800,000 skilled IT specialists. Finland for example reports a shortage of engineers, despite the 4,000 unemployed engineers in the country. The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland states that there is a skills mismatch because people who graduated 15 years ago do not have the skills in demand of today’s working environment. Therefore, vacancies remain unfilled. Find more information about hard-to-fill vacancies in various industries below:

What measures are being taken?

The Danish government for instance plans to increase the number of IT, mathematics, science, tech graduates by 20 percent during the next ten years. But formal educational measures take too long and again become outdated after another 15 years.

Therefore, companies have shifted from looking for blue-collar (manual workers wearing “blue denim-shirts”) or white-collar workers (office workers, managers wearing “shirt and tie”) to“new-collar” workers (with no labels, just skill sets). These “new-collar” workers shouldn’t have a four-year degree from a university and usually have gone through nontraditional educational paths.

There are companies that are more active about solution-creation. For instance, Google has launched an IT support course on Coursera, granting a certificate to those completing it. In2018, more than 75,000 people got enrolled. Now there are hundreds of online courses available for anyone interested, in any given tech field. The trend extends outside the tech field too, involving business, management, marketing, sales, up to engineering, mathematics, etc.

Gradually, people want to study comfortably from their homes, especially that there is no single subject one cannot master by just having a stable Internet. Some people argue that it’s inevitable that enrollments at universities will become a luxury and total waste of time. We are now in the eighth straight year of declines in university enrollment, resulting in hundreds of higher education institutions being closed down. 

The ex-CEO of LinkedIn said: “It’s not skills at the exclusion of degrees”, but expanding the perspective to consider beyond degrees. Having a  degree will become optional, and the basic education will be considered a fulfillment of basic soft skills, such as creative, analytical, and critical thinking, communication skills, and leadership. And of course, being practically well off modern technological practices and ability to implement them in new environments.

If you manage to do both, earn a degree and cultivate skills, you’ll stay relevant in the evolving labor market.

But what if you have to choose? Are you ready to lead this change in your school, university, or society to meet the new realities of the demanding future?