[#WIEWLT] What if education was like this: Work Experience Apprenticeship

I have a goal to elevate education where the current post-secondary system is great for what it was designed to do 100 years ago. The reality is that, the post-secondary system hasn’t necessarily evolved at the same pace as the world has changed/is changing. The #WIEWLT is fiction, and at the same time, one of my visions for education that I am looking to make it happen in the coming years. Just a bit of a glimpse into my head. The concept is very early stages, and I am taking a page from Gary Vaynerchuk's "document vs create" approach. So here's me thinking out loud about a possible future education scenario. Which follows-on from the previous scenario #WIEWLT Soft Skills 101

Beyond high school

Imagine Lily. She is about to graduate high school. She would normally be frantically applying for universities or colleges. However, in this #WIEWLT scenario, she’s instead choosing from a menu of potential career options. Business, engineering, science, technology, arts, whatever she wants. Very similar to choosing a degree. But in this instance, she's choosing a starter role. She decides to pick accounting because her dad is one, and she was always good with numbers. She isn't too fussed about the other options as she has options to change later on. With her choice of accounting, she can choose to enroll in the "Big 4" work experience apprenticeship (WEA) which she chooses instead of the "Private accounting practice" WEA, and an assortment of others. She likes that it's easy to switch between the various options. She is excited to start and see if accounting is right for her. But she's also excited that she could join another WEA in science or psychology later on in her career. She'll also need to do some learning on "learning how to learn", which she envies her little brother a bit as she knows that they have already started integrating those soft skill courses into high school and will start to bring them down earlier.

A different way to gain work experience

Lily starts at the "Accounting Big 4 WEA" in September along with a cohort of others looking to explore accounting as their current area of interest. She already chose to rotate into a smaller accounting firm WEA in a subsequent rotation to confirm whether she does better in the bigger or smaller feel. She has a few career switchers in her cohort. One is a lawyer. Another an engineer. She knows that these classmates will probably be accelerated as they'll be higher on many of the assessments but knows she can still compete with her drive and determination. The rest of her classmates are closer to her age.

As with most WEAs, the initial weeks are to build their professional toolkit. Learning soft skills, about professional culture, even how to understand expectations. These are all laid out in the initial orientation and training workshops. She takes a few soft skills maturity assessments and the ones that surprised her was that she is high-level on communication and emotional intelligence, low for time management and building meaningful connections (she thought she'd be the reverse). She took the "soft skills 101 accelerated programs" but would otherwise just need to make sure she meets the appropriate maturity level (which she would out is a consulting term to model best-in-class). Taking those classes ahead of time will help her skip ahead, though her presentation skills were a little low, so she might need some refresher courses. No matter, as the workshops are well integrated into the WEA program. She'll need to do some learning on "learning how to learn".

Shadowing and immersion

Once her foundations are validated, she’ll start to shadow accountants. Although she starts her oversight so soon, a friend explained using the entrepreneurial analogy of "fail fast". She agrees that spending a few months trying out her potential future career path, versus 4 or more years is a better approach.

She will spend at least a month with different people from various accounting functions in a real accounting company. Tax. Audit. Advisory. And potentially others. She’ll be a fly on the wall at these companies. But she’ll be a fly on the wall that can ask questions. She asks questions to her WEA mentor-coach (who was previously an accountant that switched over to education) so as not to derail the accountants.

Coaching and mentorship

She calls her Big 4 WEA mentor-coach a "professor" as an homage to the previous educational term, though some are informally calling them sensei or master Jedi for those that like pop cultural references. Her professor takes her to one of the Big 4 and she starts with shadowing a tax professional. They go to several meetings with the client. She observes and takes down a bunch of questions as notes. Before the shadowing, Lily had to consume prework content ahead of time that was relevant to what they'd be looking at. Out of the mix of education content in text, audio, and video form plus exercises, she likes the exercises most as she feels she's a kinesthetic learner. She mostly gets it but does have a few questions. Back at the office, her professor recaps the meeting and promotes a discussion on the question the students have. He wants to make sure that the concepts they learned are starting to sink in. Lily has her questions answered, and the discussion brings her learning to a whole new level as she saw how the concepts are practically applied.

Now, out of the meeting debrief sessions, Lily and her other classmates are brought into a room to interact with accounting analysts pour over entering transactions into the system. The analysts aren't meeting with clients so they give her and her classmates a moment to share what they're doing. The foundation of WEA is mentorship, and the analyst pay pack the guidance they were provided when they were in a similar experience. The process that the analyst shows Lily is one she's aware of. She takes lots of notes since next week, she'll actually help one of the analysts with the entire process. Getting data, entering and validating the information. All of that sounded exciting to her and wants the opportunity to impress the analyst and the client.

Value exchange for learning

Although there is extra time needed for teaching and coaching, clients are happy as they pay a reduced fee for the same quality. They know that the Big 4 company still validates the work. She knows the feeling that the client must feel, as she recalls going to the hair salon and getting the junior stylist instead of her normal one. She was pleasantly surprised at the extra attention and care that she received from the junior stylist, making sure Lily was happy with the way her hair looked. The junior stylist even got her complementary manicure to go with her hair, provided Lily let a junior nail stylist do the work. All her experienced stylist had to do was to provide a few reminders and quality checks and the junior hair and nail stylists made her look awesome!

She really wants to start adding value to the company soon. When she contributes to the company above the draw on the company resources caused by her learning, then that reduces her tuition. And soon, she'll transition into a paid-learner and eventually a full-time employee.

Lily thought that she would also need to put in the extra work to prove herself as a junior accountant and contributing member of the team. And she's consoled by the fact that her professor will be there to answer any questions and provide help, just as her experienced stylist was there to help the junior stylist. She likes the innovative model that was created. A company can hire one of the Big 4 to do their accounting. Or they can hire “Big 4 junior” at less than half the price and probably not twice the duration. With the same quality of the Big 4 as there will be folks from the Big 4.

She loves this immersive environment and is learning a lot. She totally understands the apprenticeship part where in the olden days you would get your skills by studying under a master. To be a blacksmith, you would work alongside them and picked up whatever you could through real-life experience. It's funny how old things become new again.

At the same time, she doesn't understand when her dad said that when he was learning, he just sat in a class listening to a lecture instead of actually doing real work. She's happy to not have to deal with that. She's not sure if tax accounting is the right fit for her, but she's keeping an open mind. She actually can't wait until next month when her rotation has her shadowing an auditor as that's what her dad does.

Options and iterations

She recalls her older brother who went through the same path and decided to switch to the technology WEA, then the psychology WEA, before landing in the marketing WEA. Good thing it’s a buffet and sampling is encouraged. She recalls the conversation that they had when she asked whether he felt he was behind. “Not as behind as when aunt Sarah told us about how she did a 4-year degree in accounting then spent even more years in accounting, only to find out finally come to grips that accounting wasn’t for her. I spent half as much time testing my interests. Plus those other experiences will make me a better marketer too.”

Lily can't wait to continue gaining more practical work experience in accounting as she's pretty sure it's a good fit for her. But she knows some of her career switcher classmates had the same thoughts so she's open to going back to a WEA in the future!

Concept

Sounds unrealistic? For now, yes. But in the future, I think a variant of this can be achieved. Why pay an institution tens of thousands of dollars to learn the theoretical knowledge of whatever, when you might as well pay the same amount to go right to a company and get that practical. That's apprenticeship model brought forward to present day.

It will take a mind shift to make it socially acceptable to pay that kind of money to a company which would normally be paying you for the work. Plus all the nuances of how to measure all the value provided and all. But we'll figure that out.

It's unlikely that all companies will have the scale or focus on education, hence the establishment of the WEA industry professionals turned mentor-coaches. These are former practitioners of the craft that now want to focus on education. For larger companies, they'd be dedicated, and for small-medium companies, they'd represent the roles required for the companies. These WEA facilitators could be universities and colleges. Or they could be the regulating bodies. Or something else (like https://focusinspired.com hehe, yes, shameless plug. Though I'm not there yet so there's not much to plug).

Considerations

Some thoughts to consider:

• Would the high school/secondary school system need to change? I would hope so, however, I didn't make it a requirement (though I alluded to it based on Lily's little brother getting the benefit of additional soft skills courses)
• How can you assess soft skills? They are called soft skills because they are more challenging to assess, however, I believe that we'll get their shortly (as referenced by the soft skills maturity levels)

There are way more complexities than that to consider, and those are mostly details that can be tested and sorted out.

What do you think?

Could this be a reality? If you're a company and want to give it a shot, let me know, and I'm game to help work with you to make it a reality!