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Infosys Tries to Turn Autoworkers into Programmers

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Although most of Infosys’ charitable activities are, as would be expected, focused on India, the firm also has a few global programs plus more focused contributions and work in many of the other countries in which it operates. For example, it contributed to and provided logistical support to the New York City fire department after 9/11 and continues to support educational initiatives, such as New York City’s STEM Mentoring program and efforts by local governments that need help in responding to natural disasters. Recently it launched a new, very different type of program that draws specifically on some of Infosys’ unique strengths and is intended to form the foundation for a much broader initiative.

A Second Chance for Ex-Autoworkers

As I discussed in two 2011 blogs, Infosys, along with a number of other Indian and multinational IT service companies have developed world-class training programs to bring graduates from India’s uneven college system to a common base of competence. Every one of Infosys’ computer science recruits goes through a 23-week Boot Camp at its Mysore Development Center, now called the Narayana Murthy Centre of Excellence.

It is now bringing this time-tested program to the U.S. in an attempt to retrain unemployed workers for new, high-skill jobs while simultaneously helping to address a growing shortage of skilled computer scientists and programmers. In March 2012, it launched an 18-week “Software Boot Camp” to provide unemployed Detroit autoworkers with an education comparable to a BS in programming.

The idea to boost training and employment opportunities for Detroit-area workers was initially spawned in a discussion with the Office of the Science and Technology Policy in the Office of the President. Washington then put Infosys into contact with potential partners and generally stepped back to let these partners design and run the program. Among Infosys’s primary partners in this endeavor are:

  • Wayne County Community College (WCCC) which will provide the facilities, manage the program and provide programming instructors who, after learning the Infosys program, will deliver it themselves and ultimately train others to deliver it;
  • The Workforce Development Department, which identifies and selects candidates who have lost auto industry jobs; and
  • The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, which recruits and works with potential employers and will run a job fair to help the graduates find jobs.

Infosys is funding the entire program (which will be free to students) and is using the same curricula, courseware, exams and instructors as in Mysore. However, its Indian and U.S. programs have a few important differences. For example:

  • The Mysore program is targeted at new college graduates that Infosys has already hired. The Detroit program is open to older, non-employees who, after graduation, will be able to take jobs with any employer (including Infosys, for any of its 13 U.S. development centers) from which they receive an offer.
  • All Mysore students have a BS college degree in a computer science or engineering-related discipline. The Detroit program will accept graduates and non-graduates, with all types of backgrounds, who pass an entry test designed to assess analytical and quantitative capabilities.
  • The Detroit program, which is targeted at older people who have work experience, has been reduced from Mysore’s 23 weeks to 18 by eliminating the “soft skills” component that help new recruits adapt to a work in a professional, corporate environment.
  • While Infosys runs the Mysore program itself, the Detroit program was designed and is managed in conjunction with partners.
  • Infosys instructors conduct the Mysore program. These instructors will come to the U.S. to teach the first 18-week program, while training WCCC Computer Science instructors (initially 3 instructors) to take over the teaching—initially with oversight of and guidance by Infosys instructors, and later on their own.

The Detroit program is an experiment that is intended to determine the applicability of the Infosys training program to older students (an average age of 41) with diverse backgrounds. Although Infosys declines to discuss the background of the current students until the course concludes, they are clearly not the relatively heterogeneous lot of new BS Engineering and Computer Science graduates that make up a traditional Mysore class.

The company acknowledges that these factors, combined with its goal of maximizing completion rates, may combine to limit some graduates’ employability as programmers. It does, however, expect that even those who may not get jobs as programmers will be qualified for IT administration and support roles.

Scaling the Initiative

Where will this program go in the future? This will depend largely on the success of the initial class plus the determinations of employers and as to whether changes are required. Some big questions include whether there should be minimum educational requirements (such as a two-year or a four-year degree), whether students should be required to have a STEM-related background and whether the program can be evolved into a scalable, self-sustaining program that can be delivered by a broad range of non-Infosys instructors across multiple locations.

There are, of course, also a number of more nuanced questions, such as the types of jobs for which graduates will be best suited and how to best tailor the curricula, courses and pedagogy to the needs of students and prospective employers. The answers to such questions must await completion and a formal evaluation of the first program, as well as the success of graduates in getting jobs, feedback from students, instructors and employers and, of course, of Infosys’s partners.

While these and many other decisions must await the completion of the first Detroit program, Infosys has already begun to plan to expand this program and to launch others. For example, it hopes that WCCC will be able to immediately scale to three—and longer term—four programs per year, each with about 100 students. It also hopes to apply this same model to other constituencies and other geographies. It is already outlining a program that will be tailored to the needs of returning veterans (probably in conjunction with the Veterans Administration) and has initiated conversations with colleges and universities in other areas, such as Boston and Northern Virginia.

Such programs have the potential of delivering huge value. They can, for example, help:

  • Individuals acquire high-value, real-world job skills in areas for which there is strong and growing demand;
  • Community colleges develop and deliver more business-aligned retaining programs;
  • Cities and towns convert unemployed workers into participants in the knowledge economy; and
  • Companies, across all industries, beef up their IT staffs with professionals with up-to-date, state-of-the-art skills that can deliver immediate business value.

The program can also help Infosys. Although the vast majority of the company’s previous U.S. hires have been experienced professionals, it is now beginning to hire fresh out-of-school (“freshers”) for its U.S. development centers. While Infosys will have to compete with other companies in hiring such people, the programs will provide an expanded recruiting pool of people trained in Infosys methodologies, some of whom may help fill the company’s 300 current U.S. openings.

The program will also provide a supply of talent to Infosys customers (albeit also to its competitors). Just as importantly, it has the potential of improving Infosys’s public image by demonstrating its commitment to training U.S. citizens to provide the type of services that have recently gone offshore.

Although it is too soon to know how the current or subsequent Infosys efforts will pan out, the concept shows great promise. While community colleges have long offered all types of career retaining program, many such programs have not been well suited to actual market needs, much less to the needs of specific employers. Many of those programs that have been targeted to demonstrable market needs have focused on highly company- or industry-specific skills.

The Infosys effort has the potential of combining the best of both worlds—the broad reach and multi-employer appeal of traditional community college programs, with the teaching of specific, real-world skills for which there is a proven business need. Just as importantly, Infosys is providing these colleges with valuable intellectual property in the form of curricula, training materials, exams and even instructors that have already been proven in the training of tens of thousands of people who have gone on to successful IT industry careers.

As I have written previously, this approach is exactly the type of bridge between community colleges and the private sector that is required to retrain America’s workers (and possibly, in the future, initially train some of America’s students) for the jobs of the future. (See, for example, my 2011 blog series on the Future of Community Colleges). One can only hope that the results show as much promise as the concept and that it sparks the creation of many similar programs—by Infosys and hundreds of other companies—in many different fields and in many different cities. It is, however, somewhat ironic that it has taken an Indian company to pioneer a program for which the U.S. has such a critical need.

Posted in Community/Other Colleges, Corporate Social Responsibility, Infosys, IT Industry Role in Education, IT Industry's Role, Job and Career Opportunities, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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Solutions to STEM Skills Mismatch

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

My December 26, 2011 blog, Expanding the Ranks of STEM Professionals, examined some of the realities and the myths behind the much discussed skills mismatch in the U.S. labor force; a mismatch characterized by a surplus of people looking for jobs, but a shortage of people with the skills for which employees are looking. This is reflected in an economy in which there are more than four unemployed workers for every job opening, but also thousands of unfilled positions (primarily technical) for which employers have been unable to find people with the required skills.

In a nutshell, the disagreement, as I explained in last month’s article, boils down to three interpretations of the shortage problem:

  1. We are not educating or training enough STEM professionals;
  2. We are educating/training enough people, but employers are not paying them enough to attract them from jobs in fields such as management consulting or investment banking. This problem is exacerbated by U.S. government policies that make it difficult or unattractive for U.S.-educated, foreign-born citizens to stay in the U.S. and by increased aggressiveness of emerging country companies (especially Chinese and Indian) to recruit and attract top university graduates with offers of permanent visas, comparable salaries, attractive benefit packages, and the promise of interesting, resume-burnishing overseas work; and
  3. We are educating/training enough people, but many have insufficient functional skills (in their specific discipline) or broad foundational skills (communications, cognitive, etc.) to be hired in STEM jobs.

Although proponents of each of these interpretations disagree on many things, they generally do agree on two issues:

  1. Our K-12 educational system is not doing a good job at teaching STEM fundamentals (and thereby not preparing students for college-level work in these fields) or in creating the type of curiosity and excitement required to motivate our best and brightest to become engineers and scientists;
  2. Employers, who are cutting back on their own training programs, will accept only graduates who can fill a current need or otherwise deliver immediate value.

In Search of “THE STEM Solution”

We certainly don’t and possibly never will, fully agree on all of the specific “cause/s” of the STEM skills mismatch problem. However, most agree that the tech industry is having trouble getting the number and quality of people that it needs. Many agree that the reasons for this are two-fold:

  • The imitations of our K-12 education system; and
  • A dearth of corporate training programs;

I, along with virtually everybody else who examines the education-to-career pipeline, fully acknowledge that K-12 education is at the root of many of our problems. Unfortunately, none of the experts seem to be able to agree on the cause of this problem, much less on its solutions. Even if they could agree, the educational system is highly unlikely to get additional money (or probably, even avoid additional cuts) from state and local governments. Moreover, even if we were to identify the magic bullet, and could afford to develop and shoot it, it would probably take at least half of a generation to begin seeing meaningful results.

Compared with fixing the K-12 educational system, improving corporate training programs should be a piece of cake. After all, big companies already know how to provide training. Some, particularly those with large operations in India and China, already provide extensive education and training programs to compensate for the big gaps in these countries’ educational systems. Although smaller companies may not have such capabilities, even they can retain specialists to develop and administer programs that are tailored to their needs. The “only thing” that it will really take to address these needs is money. This too, however, will be a very tall order in the current era of economic uncertainty and unrelenting belt-tightening.

Moreover, even if we identify solutions to, invest in and address both of these potential issues, what if the underlying problem—companies’ inability to find people suited to fill specific STEM job openings—is not resolved?

Plugging the Leaks in the STEM Pipeline

There is no question. We absolutely must work to fix the K-12 educational system—for the good of our society, as well as for our companies. I would also love to see a recreation of many of the traditional corporate training programs. Ideally, I would particularly like to see U.S. companies go further, as by creating programs of the type that are widely used in India—whereby companies establish their own schools in which all new recruits are brought up to a common, base level of capabilities and then provided basic training in the specific disciplines to which they will be initially assigned. Such programs, could be used both, for new graduates (whichever level of school is appropriate for the anticipated positions) or for current or displaced employees who need to be retrained for new jobs.

In reality, however, such hopes are little more than pipedreams, at least in today’s economic and fiscal environment. Although we can certainly hope for progress in each of these areas, there are a number of generally smaller, more incremental steps that have the potential of at least alleviating part of the core STEM skills mismatch problem. For example:

  • Employers can work with state and local governments to develop and continually update an online jobs guide, using a companies’ best estimates on which and how many positions are likely to be available over the next year, the next three years and the next five years, as well as the types of skills, qualifications and/or certifications individuals will need to prepare for these jobs. The postings should also provide anticipated compensation ranges, the schools and programs that train people for these jobs, and examples of potential career paths.
  • Employers can partner with schools—particularly two-year colleges and universities—to jointly develop curricula, courses and materials for teaching the skills that will be needed for these jobs. Employers should also provide volunteer instructors, tools (computers, software, machines, support, etc. on which students can get hands-on training and practice), and, where appropriate, create meaningful internships, apprenticeship or sandwich year programs.
  • Schools, local government organizations, companies and labor unions can invest in training and building networks of “career navigators” who can help students or transitioning workers assess their interests and skills; match these to colleges, curricula and career pathways; and guide clients through college planning and the college-to-career transition. Some non-profits, such as CAEL, already help companies, local governments and labor unions create such programs. It is also working with other organizations to develop an online training and certification process for these navigators.
  • Governments and unions could make it easier for companies to put people though through company-run or company-sponsored training programs, test-hire them at low or subsidized rates for defined periods and easily dismiss those who do not meet expectations.

Most importantly, all students and employees must take much greater responsibility for planning, preparing for and managing their careers and for continually upgrading their skills. They must seek out and proactively work with career navigators to identify and prepare for careers that match their interests and skills, and that are likely to offer strong long-term employment opportunities. They must select schools and employers that offer the educational and training opportunities that will prepare them for these careers. They must, though coursework, reading and extra-curricular activities, develop the foundational skills, as well as the functional skills they will require. And, in the current era of perpetual uncertainty, they must continually assess the long-term trends in their own and other potential career paths and industries, identify needs and opportunities for changes, and continually update and supplement their skills to ensure they will can provide higher and higher levels of value to current and future employers.

Posted in Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers | No Responses »
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Expanding the Ranks of STEM Professionals

Monday, December 26th, 2011

The U.S. industry in general, and technology-based sectors in particular, have decried the lack of STEM professionals and have called on everyone from government, educational institutions and non-profits to take steps to address the shortages. As I’ve discussed in numerous blogs, a growing number of companies (including IBM, General Electric, Intel, Exxon Mobil and many others) are taking matters into their own hands. They are sponsoring competitions and after-school workshops, funding scholarships and fellowships, helping universities create curricula and train instructors and helping their own employees identify promising career paths by providing skills maps and classes designed to prepare employees for future jobs.

Although such efforts are helpful, we need more—much more—if we are to provide an adequate pipeline of qualified STEM graduates, through all steps of the educational system, into STEM jobs. The first steps are to understand:

  • Why declining percentages of American students graduate with STEM degrees; and
  • Why so many of those that do graduate do not end up in STEM professions.

Leakage in the STEM Education Pipeline

As discussed in my July 31 blog, The United States’ Clogged Technology Education-to-Employment Pipeline, our shortage of STEM professionals begins in primary and secondary school and gets worse in every stage of the education pipeline.

According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam, less than one-third of elementary school students are considered to be either proficient or advanced in science. This percentage declines steadily, to 21%, by the time they reach 12th grade. These declines are highlighted in international comparisons, with the OECD’s 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings placing U.S. 15-year-olds below the median ranking among 30 OECD countries in each of the three tested areas. They rank 16th in reading, 21st in science and 29th in math.

These deficiencies, however, have not discouraged college-bound students from pursuing STEM majors. Despite the fact that the 2011 ACT test found only 45% of graduates prepared for college-level math courses, and only 30% prepared for science courses, the percentage of incoming freshman who initially plan to major in STEM fields has increased dramatically (to 34% in 2009) from their lows in the 1980s and 1990s.

These plans, however, don’t last long. After getting a sampling of the rigors of college-level STEM classes, many switch majors to less demanding disciplines. In fact, while the number of college graduates has increased by 29% from 2001 through 2009, the number of engineering graduates grew by only 19% and the number of computer and information science grads actually fell (by 14%). A 2011 study by McKinsey Global Institute, “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future,” generally confirms these trends, citing a meager 0.8% per year growth in the number of STEM graduates—significantly less than fields such as business, social science, humanities and arts.

Worse still, many of those that do graduate do not end up in STEM careers. According to one of the most comprehensive U.S. studies to date, only one-third of STEM graduates actually end up with jobs in these fields (see the below cited Lowell and Salzman study).

Causes of STEM Pipeline Leakage—Follow the Money

A preponderance of industry experts, analysts and educators, as discussed in the above-referenced “Pipeline” report, place the primary blame on a range of factors. These include:

  • A culture that does not sufficiently value technical skills;
  • A student body that shuns hard work and study required of STEM disciplines; and
  • Big gaps in all levels of the educational system—from a lack of qualified teachers and mentors in primary and secondary schools, a disconnect between colleges that educate future professionals and the companies that hope to employ them and a large pool of STEM graduates that lack the skills required for the jobs companies are looking to fill; and
  • Corporate training and educational systems that are ill-suited to the continual education, skills refresh and new skills training requirements of a dynamic jobs market.

This skills mismatch, or skills gap, is becoming severe. According to McKinsey’s “An economy that works” study, 40% of companies with plans to hire in the next 12 months have had positions open for six months or longer, because they couldn’t find the right candidate—candidates with degrees in the appropriate field and/or relevant work experience. Although these needs span all types of jobs, the most difficult occupations to fill are in management, science and engineering, followed by computer programming and IT. The study also highlights a big emerging gap in statisticians and mathematicians who can handle “big data” and, in the future, fill the rapidly growing need for health care professionals.

There is, however, an alternate school of thought, not only as to the causes and remedies of a STEM skills gap, but also as to whether such a gap even exists. For example, a 2007 and a 2009 follow-up study by B. Lindsay Lowell and Hal Salzman, Steady as She Goes? Three Generations of Students through the Science and Engineering Pipeline, claim:

  • There has been no decline in the total number of STEM graduates;
  • The number of graduates is sufficient to meet demand; and that
  • Many of these graduates are adequately qualified and prepared for available jobs.

According to their research, the primary problem is that only one-third of these graduates end up taking jobs in the fields in which they graduate. This drop-off, which began in the 1990s, spans all levels of students, from lower through upper quintiles. The drop, however, is particularly steep among those with the highest SAT/ACT scores and GPA averages—i.e., the best and the brightest of STEM graduates. Although their research does not show the reasons for this leakage from STEM careers, the authors see two possible reasons:

  1. Growing numbers of graduates are going into jobs that, while not specifically categorized as STEM, entail STEM skills—jobs such as patent law, medical sales and management in technology firms; and
  2. Growing numbers of the most qualified graduates end up taking jobs in fields that offer higher salaries (such as finance), more prestige and more varied experiences (such as consulting) or more flexible career paths (such as management).

In their view, the conclusion that today’s graduates are not qualified for STEM careers is “not supported by this data.” They believe that the primary problem is that the rewards of STEM careers are not sufficiently attractive to retain the best and the brightest graduates. Their primary recipe for attracting these graduates to STEM careers: increase pay.

Lowell and Salzman’s diagnosis of the problem and prescription for the solution are shared by others. Vivek Wadhwa of Duke and Berkeley Universities, in particular, has long argued that there is no shortage in STEM talent. The problems, as he lays them out in a TechCrunch face-off with ex-Intel chief Craig Barrett, are three-fold:

  1. Much of the nation’s talent is “bottled-up” in the form of postdocs (post-doctoral fellows hoping to get a faculty appointments) who are locked into a broken university technology education system;
  2. U.S. government policy makes it increasingly difficult and unattractive for foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities—who account for half of all U.S. STEM Masters and PhD graduates—to remain in the U.S.; and
  3. Technology firms do not pay top graduates what they are worth, particularly relative to finance and consulting companies.

Causes of the STEM Pipeline Leakage—A Skills Gap

Not all studies come to the same conclusions. The U.K., which faces a similar issue in which half of its STEM graduates take jobs in other fields, launched a series of studies into the reasons. Although these studies certainly admit a loss to higher-paying career paths, they, as concluded in a 2010 study, Shaping Up for Innovation: Are we delivering the right skills for the 2020 knowledge economy, also find some evidence for the possibility that some STEM graduates do not have the skills required to meet employer needs.

The authors cite a 2008 CBI (Confederation of British Industry) study finding that 42% of employers see the quality of graduates as a major barrier to STEM recruitment. A 2009 study that examined The Demand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Skills, meanwhile, found that the occupations in which many of these STEM graduates actually end up, pay significantly less than jobs in STEM and finance. (A Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce compilation of U.S. salaries and unemployment rates by college major shows that STEM and finance jobs also tend to pay significantly better than, and have lower unemployment rates than, do jobs in most other fields.)

So, if STEM and finance pay better, and offer better employment prospects than do other fields, why would so many STEM grads shun these higher-paying fields to take jobs outside of the areas they had studied? According to the Demand for STEM Skills and the Shaping up for Innovation studies’ authors, there must be “some kind of mismatch between the type of skills STEM graduates have, and the type of skills sought in science occupations.” They do, however, plan to commission additional research to determine the extent to which these patterns are attributable to a skills mismatch, rather than individual choice.

What are these mismatches? Although they vary by sector, the CBI survey shows that employers’ primary concerns relate to candidates’ technical and practical skills. There is, however, a broad overarching concern that STEM candidates lack a number of softer skills in areas including problem solving, commercial awareness, team working, communication, interdisciplinary perspective and empathy for different points of view. (Note that this list is quite similar to that posed in my October 30th blog, Core skills Required in a Knowledge Economy.)

This all leads to a number of questions that I will address in subsequent blogs and in my planned book—what can be done do address these skills gaps and mismatches? What should students do today to ensure that they are best equipped to capture the jobs and build the careers of the future?

Posted in Creating the 21st Century Workforce, STEM Careers, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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Helping Colleges and Universities Educate Tomorrow’s Knowledge Workers

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

My last blog reviewed some of the IBM Almaden Co-Evolution conference’s primary conclusions around the shape of the American job market, especially:

  • The state of today’s jobs market;
  • Where the new generation of jobs will come from; and
  • The types of skills these jobs will require.

This blog examines some of the conference’s follow-on conclusions, particularly around:

  • The capabilities and limitations of colleges and universities in helping students learn these skills;
  • How they will have to evolve to accomplish these goals; and
  • The type of cooperation—with primary and secondary schools, businesses, non-profits and governments—that will be required for colleges and universities to prepare knowledge workers for jobs that will be increasingly defined by the combination of globalization, technology and the growth of self-employment.

The Changing Role of Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities are generally viewed as the primary, although certainly not exclusive source of many of the skills—both functional and foundational—that will be required for tomorrow’s jobs. True, the foundations for these skills must certainly be laid in secondary and even primary schools. Businesses, meanwhile, must help employees hone and refresh these skills. Most importantly, individuals will have to take primary responsibility for attending the schools, selecting the classes, choosing an employer and selecting the combination of extra-curricular activities that will help them develop these skills. For most, however, post-secondary institutions will remain as the single most important linchpin in the individual’s education-to-employment pipeline.

Many conference participants, including a number of university professors and administrators, concluded that few schools were currently fulfilling their missions. Their indictments and recommendations were generally in line with those of Clayton Christensen’s team’s February 2011 Disrupting College report.

Thousands of colleges, suffering from a type of “Harvard-envy”, short-change students by trying to simultaneously accomplish three primary missions: knowledge creation (research); knowledge proliferation (teaching); and helping prepare students for careers. While Harvard and perhaps one or two dozen other universities have the endowments and the cash flow to fund quality required for each, the vast majority of schools lack the resources and the skills to perform each of these tasks well.

Rather than trying to do all, most schools should focus on their core missions of knowledge proliferation (teaching) and preparing students for careers. They must also do so more cost-effectively, delivering quality education in a way that students and their families can afford without going deeply into debt. This will require the use of additional, more leverageable sources of learning, such as that from peers and tutors, and especially from learning technologies—including the potentially disruptive enabling technology of online learning. This will help free instructors from creating and even delivering lectures, provide them with insight into individual student needs and allow them to focus more time on addressing each student’s unique needs.

These schools, however, must also do much more—not only to prepare students for careers, but also to make them more “employment-ready” upon graduation. This requires deeper coordination with the private sector, not only in identifying the skills that are required for success in their companies, but also in providing more opportunities for “experiential learning” in which students have the opportunity to combine classroom, book and online education with experience in working on real-world problems, both in school (as in inter-disciplinary research centers) and in companies (as through apprenticeships and internships). Schools must determine how to give credit for these real-world experiences and also to apply (once they are developed and generally agreed upon) quantifiable metrics that assess educational outcomes. They should also, according to the Institute for the Future and my own research, specifically integrate the teaching—and especially the learning and reinforcement—of variants of the Institute for the Future’s ten foundational skills specifically into college curricula.

Cross Domain Educational Collaboration

Although colleges and universities are certainly critical links in the education to employment pipeline, they are not the only contributors. Primary and secondary schools must teach basic skills and provide a solid foundation for and passion for lifelong learning. They should also extend their current missions to provide solid groundings in the types of foundational skills that all employees—especially knowledge workers—will require in the new economy.

The private sector also plays a critical, but unfortunately diminishing role in educating their workforces. But although overall private sector investment in employee education rose slightly in 2010 to $52.8 billion, or $1,041 per learner, it has generally been falling since a high of more than $60 billion in 1999. Even so, a number of companies including Boeing and IBM (both of whom presented on their employee development efforts at the conference) continue to invest heavily (see, for example, my 2009 report in IBM’s Role in Creating the Workforce of the Future).

These and a number of other companies also work closely with schools, and invest in them—from primary to post-secondary—to help them develop curricula, fund teacher and instructor training, and develop workshops and internships to provide students with real-world learning experiences. Many companies, as discussed extensively in my blog, have partnered with secondary schools to improve IT education and train teachers on effective use of technology, with community colleges to prepare prospective employees for specific jobs and with universities to develop courses, curricula and entire degree programs.

Although such bilateral partnerships are certainly important, the conference concluded these are just the start. Corporations and schools must also partner with:

  • Foundations, such as Gates and Illuminata, to define desired course outcomes and develop metrics;
  • Non-profits, such as the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (both of which presented at the conference) to create pathways to help individuals create the educational experiences required to prepare for and advance their careers; and
  • State and local governments to identify the types of businesses they wish to attract, identify the resources and skills that will be required to attract employers, encourage and help local schools provide the required education and training and ideally, create online databases that help students and workers identify jobs and careers that will be available, the types of skills that will be required, and how these skills can best be learned and developed.

Although the Federal Government could, at least in theory, play an important role in identifying, mapping resources and coordinating efforts, the reality is that most economic development and education policy is done at a state and especially a local, rather than a national level. The most effective education-to-employment pipelines will probably require close cooperation by and deep commitments from mayors, university presidents, local business executives and local Chambers of Commerce.

 

Summary

U.S. colleges and universities must undergo huge changes if
they are to prepare graduate for tomorrow’s jobs—and do so at a cost that both
the students and the county can afford. For many, it will require a fundamental
rethink of their missions and their established practices. It will also require
much closer collaboration with the businesses that are likely to hire these
graduates.

 

 

Posted in Community/Other Colleges, Job and Career Opportunities, Other Schools, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers, Universities and Grad Schools | 1 Response »
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Tomorrow’s Jobs Require Tomorrow’s Skills

Monday, November 14th, 2011

 

At the end of September, IBM’s Almaden Research Center sponsored a conference on the future of jobs, the skills required for these jobs and how colleges, private sector companies and governments can individually, and in partnership, prepare people for these jobs.

The conference, titled Regional Upward Spirals: The Co-Elevation of Future Technologies, Skills, Jobs and Quality-of-Life, attracted participants from each of these sectors and from a number of think tanks. All focused on themes surrounding:

  • The growing shortage of educated workers;
  • How technology is transforming jobs;
  • Skills required for the jobs of today and tomorrow;
  • The role and challenges of colleges and universities in preparing a new generation of knowledge workers;
  • The role of the private sector in educating, training and helping employees refresh existing and develop new skills;
  • The need for partnerships among private and public sectors, academia and non-profits in closing the nation’s “skills gap;” and
  • The need to equip policymakers with better tools to model quality-of-life improvements generation over generation in regions, as infrastructure, skills, jobs change together.

The U.S.’s Growing Skills Gap

IBM’s Chief Economist, Martin Flemming, kicked off the conference by putting the current recession into historical perspective and aligning it with economist Carlotta Perez’s Waves of Technology Change, postulating that the economy is now in the transition between the installation and deployment phases of telecommunications and IT—between the initial implementation of these technologies, toward their use in fundamentally transforming business processes and societal institutions. Although such transitions typically result in slower investment and growth, this effect is now being compounded by our attempt to emerge from the financial recession.

A representative from McKinsey Global Institute then honed into our current employment problems by outlining some of the key findings of the group’s recently published report, An Economy that Works, explaining, for example, the unprecedented toll this recession has taken on jobs. This toll is particularly steep among those in low-skill/low-pay and mid-skill/mid-pay jobs. However, the unemployment rate among college graduates is still relatively low (4.2% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report) and the number of college graduates with jobs has actually grown by more than 1 million over the last two years.

In fact, many companies are unable to find all the educated workers they need—at least those with the skills they require. Forty percent of companies have had job openings for six months that they have been unable to fill due to lack of the proper skills. This is particularly true for specialized technical skills in science, engineering, computer programming and other areas of IT.

This skills mismatch, is likely to get worse before it gets better. McKinsey estimates that if the economy does improve, employers will face a shortage of about 1.5 million workers with college degrees (especially STEM degrees) by 2020. At the other end of the education spectrum, there will be a surplus of almost 6 million workers without high school degrees.

Skills Requirements

Just what skills are employers looking for? Clearly, as has been discussed endlessly over the last decade, employers have a deep, apparently endless need for STEM skills. Silicon Valley, as we always hear, has been continually ratcheting up the salaries (not to speak of the benefits) it provides the most promising computer science graduates.

Companies including Dow Chemical and IBM are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing curricula, funding courses and sponsoring research projects and fellowships in areas including chemical engineering and business analysis, respectively. At the conference, McKinsey highlighted the need for math and analysis skills by projecting a need for almost 3 million people (including more than 150,000 highly-trained “data scientists”) to extract business insight from “big data”.

In its An Economy that Works report, McKinsey groups these and hundreds of other job opportunities into six primary segments of the U.S. economy that it claims, will account for 70-85 percent of the up to 22.5 million new jobs (assuming strong growth) the country will create over the rest of the decade: healthcare (by far the largest), business services, leisure and hospitality, construction, manufacturing and retail.

There is, however, a caveat to even these projections. As Irving Wladawsky-Berger discuses in his blog on the conference, University of California Berkeley professor John Zysman discussed the ways in which “the algorithmic revolution” (the ability to codify activities underlying services and embed them into software) is fundamentally transforming the nature of mid-skill services jobs. The componentization of continually higher-level services functions, for example, is already making it easier to automate and offshore these functions.

Meanwhile, new innovations, such as IBM’s “Watson” has the potential of bringing this algorithmic revolution up into specialized realms of qualitative research and even expert knowledge. One of its first uses, for example, is likely to be in medical diagnostics, such as where a doctor can input lists of symptoms, medical histories, and a broad range of other relevant information to identify possible illnesses and recommended treatments. This, as I discussed in a previous blog on Watson, is only the first step in transforming medicine and the nature of knowledge jobs across all domains, and in changing and upgrading the types of skills tomorrow’s knowledge workers will require to ensure long, engaging and rewarding careers.

Just what skills will be required? Although each industry, and each job within it will certainly require specific combinations of functional skills, another presenter, from the Institute for the Future, cited its report, Future Work Skills 2020 to posit ten more generalized, foundational skills that will be required of most knowledge workers:

  1. Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed;
  2. Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions;
  3. Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based;
  4. Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings;
  5. Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning;
  6. New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication;
  7. Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
  8. Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes;
  9. Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques; and
  10. Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence.

Meanwhile, in another IBM conference on Leadership being held the same week in New York, Tom Friedman set the skills bar even higher, claiming that “Everyone has to bring something extra, being average is no longer enough. . . Everyone is looking for employees that can do critical thinking and problem solving . . . just to get an interview.  What they are really looking for are people who can invent, re-invent and re-engineer their jobs while doing them.”

This leads to yet another change in the job market that will require even more skills of tomorrow’s knowledge workers—companies’ growing reliance on part-time, contract and freelance employees as an alternative to hiring full-time employees. This means that more and more of tomorrow’s knowledge workers will, whether they want to or not, have to run their own companies or partner with others to create small business services companies. Not only will they need the skills required to manage a business, they must also have the skills required to work independently. Most importantly, they will need the sills to continually market and sell themselves, their ideas and their unique skill sets.

This is a very tall order. What must schools do to help students develop these skills—both functional and foundational? Are today’s schools really capable of doing so? How can other institutions, including companies, foundations, non-profits and governments help? These and a number of related issues will be discussed in my November 27th blog.

Posted in IBM, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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Scaling Infosys’ Educational Programs

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

Infosys, as discussed in my September 11 blog, has developed one of the IT industry’s largest and most comprehensive talent development programs. Although the program was created I India, and is by far the most mature, multifaceted and far-reaching in India, the company is now bringing parts of the program to other countries in which it operates.

From India to the World

Infosys has, for example, implemented versions of its CampusConnect program (which help colleges develop and launch business-relevant curricula and courses) in other countries in which it has Delivery Centers. It is, for example, working with Malaysian university faculties to improve IT education and with Mexican faculties to develop an IT curriculum to make programs more industry-relevant.

Just this month, it entered into an agreement with Singapore Management University (SMU) to jointly develop content, case studies and learning labs for both Infosys employees and SMU undergraduate and graduate students. They also plan to conduct joint seminars and tutorials and collaborate on currently unspecified research and pedagogy projects.

Infosys, however, is focusing the vast majority of its Out-of-India efforts on China, the county in which it has already hired 3,500 employees, with plans for another 8,500 in three years. For example,it  opened a Development Center in Shanghai and an Education Center in Jiaxing. This new Education Center, which will eventually accommodate 3,000 students at a time, will generally replicate the company’s Mysore curricula and courses, but tailor them to the specific needs of Chinese recruits. More than 650 recruits have already completed the Center’s foundation training program and another 350 in process.

The company is also beginning to work with Chinese universities. It has, for example, launched a Chinese version of CampusConnect and is working closely with local governments to extend the program to more schools in other regions of the country.

Multi-Lateral in India

Infosys is also working to scale its education programs by partnering with third parties. These partners include:

  • Individual companies, such as Microsoft, which is now participating in SPARK; and
  • Non-profits, such as NASSCOM, where it is sharing best practices with the group’s Education Council, for deployment across India; and
  • Pan-national organizations, like UNESCO, to share learnings and identify best practices that can be applied across many different countries.

The company also forges more informal cross-border relationships. For example, it regularly invites industry bodies and faculty from other countries to visit Mysore. They have hosted a range of countries, from barely emerging (like Bhutan and Rwanda) and solidly industrializing countries (such as Thailand and Colombia) to learn and deploy capabilities in their own countries.

Applying Indian Learnings to Developed Countries

Cross-border learnings on employee development and most other business processes typically flow from more developed countries (which typically have the educational institutions to create and the corporations to test and develop best practices around these processes) to less developed countries.

Perhaps, however, it is about time for more such learnings to migrate in the other direction. Companies ranging from Proctor and Gamble and General Electric Medical Systems have developed products specifically for emerging countries that have since been migrated to developed countries. There are similar opportunities for migrating business models, such as Li & Fung’s supply chain practices and Bharti Airtel’s use of variable cost, virtual infrastructures.

On one hand, it may seem strange to suggest that countries like the U.S. and England—countries that virtually invented and still have some of the best colleges and corporate talent development and management practices in the world—could learn much from India. That country’s IT services sector, for example, is prospering only because the private sector was forced to develop capabilities that the public sector was not capable of providing.

But in many senses, developed countries are now facing some of the same challenges as developing countries. These include a sclerotic education-to-employment pipeline that does not seem capable either of:

  • Preparing students with the skills that will be required in an increasingly global knowledge economy, or of
  • Reskilling current workers who must learn totally new skills to qualify for new jobs in their current industries, much less those in new growth industries.

This is certainly not to suggest that emerging country companies have some type of inherent advantage over developed country companies, either in helping schools to graduate more employment-ready students or in proactively developing the skills that current workers will need for tomorrow’s jobs. After all, Western IT services companies such as IBM, HP and Accenture, were faced with many of the same challenges as their Indian counterparts in growing the Indian talent pool. These companies addressed their Indian needs in much the same way as did the Indian IT services firms. All of these companies–both Indian and Western–are now applying similar practices to develop their Chinese labor forces.

Some Western companies–especially IBM in universities and Microsoft in secondary schools—are at least as active in partnering with U.S. schools as Infosys is in partnering with Indian schools. It is, however, a shame that such actions are not ubiquitous, across not just the technology industry, but all industries.

Given the seemingly intractable challenges faced in reforming our education system and in addressing the worsening mismatch in the skills that students graduate with, versus those needed by employers, this country’s education system seems to need at least as much help from the private sector as do those in China and India. In fact, in some ways it needs even more, since U.S. and European students are increasingly turning away from the type of STEM educations that Indian and Chinese students crave.

Perhaps many more companies, across all industries and countries, have something to learn from the Indian IT services industry’s experience in educating, developing and managing talent.

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Infosys, IT Industry Role in Education, STEM Careers, Universities and Grad Schools | No Responses »
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The ACM Computer Programming Competition: Lessons for America and from IBM

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

My previous blog, The United States’ Clogged Technology Education-to-Employment Pipeline, provided a number of examples of how U.S. students, from K-12, to college to grad schools), are falling behind their counterparts in other countries across virtually all segments of STEM education. Although these deficiencies are troubling in their own right, they only begin to suggest a much bigger, much more troubling problem for the U.S. economy.

The educational system is, after all, the primary pipeline through which corporations receive the steady flow of talent they need to keep America competitive in a global economy. And since this competitiveness will be based on innovation, this talent must be fluent in the language of innovation. STEM is that language.

Although I have spoken with many people and have read and written much on the challenges facing U.S. STEM education, I never really had a chance to see the manifestation of these challenges for myself. Therefore, I was happy to travel to Orlando Florida to learn about and see the world finals round of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).

This blog briefly describes the contest and its outcome, and provides my view of the implications for the U.S. Its primary focus, however, is on corporate support of these competitions and on their role in supporting the recruitment activities of their sponsors—in this case, IBM:

  • Why, for example, has IBM sponsored and funded this competition for the last 15 years, and why it has committed to continuing to do so for at least the next 5 years;
  • What value does IBM get from this generosity and what is it doing to maximize the value it derives from it; and
  • What are the implications and opportunities for other tech vendors that hope to promote STEM education and improve their own chances of recruiting the most promising graduates?

The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

The contest is a multi-stage competition that started with more than 300,000 students. It begins with dozens of local competitions, and progresses through six geographically-aligned regional competitions (this year, with 24,915 contestants from 2,070 universities and 88 countries). It culminates in a final competition that, this year, consisted of 315 students on 105 teams.

These teams compete not only with each other, but also against tight time constraints and limited resources (one computer and three calculators per team) in an attempt to solve eleven real-world problems. They must often deal with ambiguity, exercise judgment to assess when to submit an answer (to avoid penalties for incorrect submissions) and continually reassess their strategies to determine on which problems to focus their energies. Success, therefore, depends not only on speed and accuracy, but also on teamwork, resource prioritization and allocation, quick thinking, and adaptability.

The questions are designed with varying levels of difficulty, from a couple that require relatively moderate skills to a couple that would challenge many of the best, most experienced programmers in the world. In the end, after five hours of intense work, ten teams answered seven questions correctly, and two teams managed to answer eight, an impressive feat for college students, especially under the constraints imposed by the rules.

As has been the case in most years since the competition went international, this year’s winner’s circle was led by teams from Russia (four of the top ten teams) and China (two of the top ten, including 1st place Zhejiang University and 3rd place Tsinghua University). In fact, combined, these two countries represented half of the top 26 teams (7 for China and 6 for Russia), with two other perennially strong countries, Poland and the U.S., taking two spots apiece and another, Ukraine, capturing three.

U.S. schools, who typically make quite respectable showings, qualified 18 teams for the finals. One, North American regional champion University of Michigan Ann Arbor, took 2nd place in the world finals and three others (Carnegie-Mellon took 13th, MIT 32nd and Princeton 48th) in the top 58 (all of whom had at least 4 correct answers). The remaining 14, each correctly answering fewer than four questions, received Honorable Mentions.

As would be expected, men overwhelmingly dominated the competition, with women accounting for fewer than 10 of the 315 contestants. This year, however, a woman was part of the Zhejiang University championship team. (As I discussed in my previous blog, U.S. women, while expanding their inroads in science and especially medicine, are poorly represented in math, engineering and IT.)

Challenges for the U.S.

Although one must not try to read too much into the results of one competition, Russian and Chinese (and more broadly, Eastern European and East Asian) schools are traditionally among the winners. U.S. teams, meanwhile, typically do make quite respectable showings. Approximately 20 U.S. schools typically make it to the finals, and in eight of the last 15 years at least two U.S. universities have won medals (i.e., placed among the top 12). In fact, at least three U.S. teams medaled in four of the last 15 years, with one winning the championship and five placing second.

Respectable: yes. But as the results of this competition (not to speak of the educational statistics cited in my July 31 blog) make clear, companies that need access to the best talent must look well beyond U.S. citizens and U.S. schools. After all, non-U.S. universities, as is clear from the competition, already contain much of the world’s best programming talent. (Meanwhile, some of U.S. teams, including the Number 2 University of Michigan team, included students from other countries.) These non-U.S. students and schools promise to become even more competitive as Asian schools, in particular, continue to improve, attract more world-class professors and become more attractive destinations for the world’s most promising students.

Meanwhile, as discussed in my July 31 blog, U.S. students (with the notable exception of Asian-Americans) are moving away from STEM disciplines and U.S. universities now count on non-U.S. citizens for rapidly growing percentages of their undergraduate science and engineering classes–259,000 new undergraduate students in 2009/10 alone (not to speak of an absolute majority of their PhD candidates).

That creates a problem: The U.S. is producing fewer of its own world-class programmers and IT engineers. Meanwhile, U.S. companies are finding it increasingly difficult to bring world-class talent from other countries into the U.S. Where then will these companies find the talent they need to grow?

This brings us full-circle back to the ACM competitions, and specifically to IBM, which sponsors the competitions.

Opportunities for IBM

IBM has been sponsoring the ACM competition for the last 15 years and has just committed to extending this sponsorship for at least the next five years. Why does it devote so much money and so many of its people to this work? It hopes to:

  1. Recognize and spotlight STEM skills;
  2. Inspire more students to study and develop their problem-solving skills in these fields;
  3. Encourage and facilitate cross-cultural exchange among schools and students; and
  4. Identify some of the best STEM talent in the world, expose them to IBM and the types of problems they would work on at IBM and improve IBM’s ability to recruit these people.

IBM, as exemplified by its rapidly expanded focus on donating money, products and expertise to educational institutions, and as demonstrated by programs such as its Academic Initiative and its newly announced P-Tech high school partnership with New York City, is deeply committed to encouraging students and helping all levels of schools to improve STEM education.

But for all of its philanthropic efforts, IBM is also intent on reaping its fair share of the rewards from such efforts. It wants the best and brightest of these graduates to join IBM. This is more of a challenge than it may appear. True, IBM is clearly one of the leading and most diversified IT companies in the world. It is also consistently rated as one of the world’s top brands and one of the best companies for which to work. Still, it is generally less visible to students than are more consumer-facing brands, such as Microsoft and Google and does not offer the type of pre-IPO lure of companies such as Facebook and Twitter.

The ACM competition provides IBM with a unique opportunity to meet and to present itself to many of the most promising college-age programmers in the world. It is, therefore, no surprise that IBM leverages the competition to introduce itself to these students. It provides demonstrations of some of the company’s cutting-edge technologies and research, and populates the conference with a number of IBM employees who are alumni of the ACM competition and of some of the schools represented in the contest.

It has also set up a separate recruiting process, separate from but coordinated with the company’s primary recruiting efforts, to learn what interested contestants are looking for in their careers and to help identify how they can accomplish their goals at IBM. This year, the company went a big step beyond recruiting. In addition to monetary rewards (of up to $12,000 per team) from ACM, IBM, this year, made open job offers to the top 12 placing students—three members from each of the Top Four teams in the competition. The company will offer them jobs or internships in whichever IBM group (IBM Research, Software Group, etc.) and whichever country (subject to IBM operations in and government permissions) they choose.

IBM’s partnership with ACM provides yet another example of how a company can do well by doing good.

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM, IT Industry Role in Education, STEM Careers | No Responses »
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The United States’ Clogged Technology Education-to-Employment Pipeline

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

We are being continually bombarded with news of the failures of the U.S. educational system. Although concerns span virtually all subjects, they are particularly severe in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—the language of technological innovation and the foundation of most of the country’s competitiveness in global markets.

The problems, particularly for U.S.-born students (with the sole exception of Asian-American males), seem to compound at every step of the educational ladder and are now beginning to profoundly affect the workplace

Primary and Secondary Education Shortfalls

These shortfalls begin in our elementary and high schools. Consider, for example, that:

  • The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam found that fewer than one-third of elementary and high school students have a solid grasp of science. Worse still, students are falling further behind each year of study, with only 34% of 4th-graders, 30% of 8th-graders and 21% of 12th-graders being proficient or advanced;
  • The OECD’s 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found U.S. 15-year-olds near the mean for test scores and below the median ranking for each of the three tested areas, ranking 16th of 30 in reading, 21st in science and 29th in math;
  • The New York State Education Department found that only 37% of all students who entered high school in 2006 graduated with math and English scores high enough to qualify them for college. The figure was worse in most cities, where 21% of New York City, 14.5% of Yonkers and 6% of Rochester students would qualify.

These primary and secondary education system shortfalls in science and math education flow inevitably upward, through all levels of college and university education. And this was all before the current slashing of public education budgets, teaching staffs, school hours and classes—cuts that span all levels of the education spectrum, from K-12, to community colleges, state colleges and even Tier-One public research institutions, like the University of California at Berkeley.

College STEM Challenges

Although the percentage of high-school freshman who actually graduate from high school is falling, there are indeed some positive trends among those who do graduate. First, the percentage of high-school graduates who go directly to college is steadily increasing (from 57% in 2000 to 63% in 2008). Even better, the percentage of incoming college freshman who plan to major in STEM-related fields has recovered from a decline in the 1980s and ‘90s, to approach Cold War levels, reaching 31% in 2004 and 34% in 2009. Amazingly, these percentages are almost identical among Whites, Asian-Americans, Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. In fact, the only major demographic group that is underrepresented in the “quantitative sciences” is women.

This is where the bad news begins. Among those freshman who initially aspire to a STEM degree, fewer than one-third actually graduate with these degrees within five years. Most of these entrants either drop out of school, change majors to less demanding disciplines, or take longer to graduate.

These are multiple reasons for this fall off. Many who did well in high-school classes (especially those who were not enrolled in AP classes) find themselves ill-prepared for the rigors of a STEM education. Many have to take remedial courses before ever getting to degree programs. Fewer still are prepared for the demanding workloads or are willing to accept the lower grades these courses typically produce. As we have seen in study after study, the U.S. educational system—from elementary schools through universities—is migrating to fewer classroom hours, less homework and easier grading. College students, in particular, increasingly view college at least as much of a social opportunity, as an educational opportunity.

It is in this period, between entering college and graduation, that demographic differences become pronounced. Although similar percentages of all racial groups initially aspire to a STEM degree, the differences in the percentages from each group that actually earn these degrees in five years are huge:

  • 42% for Asian-Americans;
  • 33% for Whites;
  • 22% for Latinos; and
  • 18% for African Americans.

Meanwhile, women, who now account for 58% of all U.S. college students, and an even larger percentage of honors degrees, are increasingly opting out of quantitative disciplines. True, they do (at least as of 2006) account for a majority of bachelor’s degrees in sciences including psychology (78%), agriculture (51%), biology (62%) and chemistry (52%) and are well-represented in some emergent engineering disciplines, such as environmental and biomedical. They, however, represent only small—and declining—minorities of quantitative degrees. As of 2006, for example, women earned only 20% of engineering, 21% of physics and 22% of computer science degrees. Their participation in computer science, in particular, plummeted from 37% to 22% over two decades (1985 to 2005).

And this does not even begin to assess the many problems that are plaguing the nation’s community college system—a system that is required to provide the skilled labor required to assist engineers and to produce and service innovative products. (See my series of blogs, beginning with The Community College Contribution.)

U.S. Graduate Schools as Magnets for Foreign-Born STEM Aspirants

These trends are further magnified in graduate STEM programs—but with another, big, new wrinkle.

U.S.-born racial/ethnic minorities and women have long accounted for small minorities of U.S. STEM graduate classes. Although U.S.-born minority students are gaining some ground (from 29% in 2000 to 34% in 2007), most races continue to be greatly under-represented as a percentage of all graduate students. For example, as of 2007, only 8% of all African American, 12% of Native American and 13% of Latino graduate students are enrolled in engineering, physical sciences, and biological sciences programs.

Whites are also increasingly under-represented in these programs, accounting for only 16% of total U.S.-born White graduate program enrollees. The big gainers, not surprisingly, are Asian Americans, with 29% of all of those enrolled in U.S. graduate programs studying in engineering, physical sciences, or biology.

Although women are also gaining some ground in quantitative graduate programs, their numbers and percentages remain small, accounting for fewer than 10% of all U.S. PhDs in electrical, mechanical and aeronautical engineering. (They do, however, represent more than 25% of chemical and industrial engineering doctorates and more than half of all social science and biology PhDs.)

Although U.S. born Asian-American males are rapidly ascending the STEM educational ladder, even they are being overwhelmed by Asian-born, naturalized U.S. citizens and especially by Asian citizens who chose to study in the U.S. In fact, while 90-95% of all STEM bachelor’s degrees are now awarded to U.S.-born students, 55% of all STEM PhDs now go to foreign-born students.

Although some of these foreign-born candidates are naturalized U.S. citizens, the number of foreign citizens studying in U.S. STEM graduate schools has exploded. The number of STEM doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders, for example, grew by 50% (compared with 18% in those to U.S. citizens and permanent visa holders) between 2003 and 2008 and now account for 38% of total degrees.

Even these totals, however, are dwarfed by numbers in specific fields. Visa holders, for example, now account for 45% of all physical science doctorates and 57% of all engineering doctorates awarded by U.S. universities. (A 2010 Congressional Research Service study suggests that even some of these percentages may be too low. By the time one combines those in the U.S. on permanent, as well as temporary visas, 67% of all engineering PhDs are granted to non-U.S. citizens.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This all sounds very ominous. It appears, from the numbers, that the U.S. is rapidly losing its ability to produce its own technical talent and that we will be forced to rely on “imports” for the scientists and engineers that will be required to rejuvenate our economy and compete in an increasingly technology-driven, global economy.

But is the situation really this bleak? What is the current state and the future of the U.S. technology workforce? What can U.S.-based technology companies do to address the nation’s and their own talent requirements? What role can non-U.S.-based companies play in addressing our talent shortages? Can the U.S. government help, or should it just get out of the way.

I will address these and a number of related issues in my next several blogs.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, STEM Careers, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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Accenture Contributes Its Professional Development Skills to Non-Employees

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

Accenture has always considered professional development to be one of its core competencies. It recruits tens of thousands of new employees each year, puts them through intense training programs and follows up with ongoing, career-spanning, personalized professional development and mentoring regimes. In 2009 alone, it dedicated nearly $800 million to these efforts.

The company is now extending its commitment to and skills in training and professional development beyond the walls of its own company to thousands of people—250,000 by 2015 to be exact—who do not, and probably never will work for Accenture. Its newly announced Skills to Succeed initiative is intended to help disadvantaged people from all around the world to develop the skills they will require to get good jobs or to start and build their own businesses (and thereby create jobs for themselves and others).

Accenture, both itself and through its foundations, is funding this initiative through a commitment of more than $100 million in cash, in-kind donations and employee time, over a three-year period. It considers this effort to be so important that it has developed a global operating model to align all aspects of the company and foundations’ corporate citizenship efforts around Skills to Succeed. In fact, it has established a goal that 80% of all the company’s corporate citizenship activities will be aligned around this initiative by the end of 2010.

However, while Accenture itself manages and delivers training to its own employees, Skills to Succeed training will be delivered almost exclusively through independent non-profit partners that have proven skills in and share Accenture’s commitment to skills training, and that can “drive change and achieve scale” across multiple countries and continents.

Building the Skills to Succeed Initiative

Accenture launched the first stages of this program in mid-2009, with a $48.3 million contribution—primarily of in-kind skills (such as consulting, hardware, software and office space), secondarily cash and, to a small extent, pro bono contributions of employees’ time (as in teaching, mentoring and so forth). It aligned its efforts around three primary objectives:

  • Employment Building, which is the initiative’s primary focus and is intended to train and prepare disadvantaged people for secure jobs that pay well above local average salaries. It begins by providing training in skills required for these jobs to employment-ready individuals (generally, from high-school juniors and community college students to unemployed workers who are looking to be retrained for new jobs and industries). While much of this training focuses on IT skills (an area in which many NGOs have current programs and skills), Accenture plans to address many types of skills that are “at the intersection of business and technology”. These may include IT operations, programming, engineering drafting and accounting/finance. The program also helps prepare these trainees for actual jobs (such as by placing them in part-time jobs or internships while they are still in school) and actually capture new jobs (as by helping them develop resumes, plan job-search campaigns and secure and prepare for interviews).
  • Business Building, which is intended to help entrepreneurs create new employment opportunities such as by helping them strengthen their leadership skills, develop business plans and strengthen capabilities including financial operations, hiring and customer service; and
  • Market Building, in which Accenture helps governments, NGOs and companies build access to markets where current market infrastructures are not sufficient. Examples include a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development to improve rural farmers’ access to information on agricultural and marketing practices.

One of the first and largest efforts was in Brazil, where Accenture partnered with two local agencies (Rede Cidada and the Committee for the Democratization of Information) to establish Conexão (the local membership organization of Youth Business International), which provides free technology training to unemployed people and free consulting to small, promising entrepreneurs. The program was a huge success, training 13,500 young people (3,500 of whom have already been hired) and supporting 124 entrepreneurs.

This success led to more than 80 additional programs so far, with more than 15 NGO partners in both developed and developing countries. Examples include:

  • United States, where Accenture is working with Genesys Works to train inner-city high school students in skills including IT, engineering drafting and accounting and is placing them in part-time jobs during their senior years. Accenture executives also teach business preparedness skills to students in community colleges;
  • United Kingdom, with Youth Business International, to help disadvantaged young people find and get appropriate educations or occupational training and mentor them on skills required to become successful entrepreneurs;
  • India, with the Dr. Reddy’s Foundation, to train disadvantaged young people in business process outsourcing and technology skills;
  • Philippines and Cambodia, partnering with Passerelles Numériques to help underprivileged students build the skills they need to obtain IT jobs; and
  • Several countries in Africa, where it is working with Enablis to build the skills of young entrepreneurs.

Accenture’s Objectives and Methods

The concept for Skills to Succeed was born about 18 months ago during a full-scale assessment of the company’s corporate philanthropy efforts. It was looking for a single unifying effort that addressed a critical, global societal need; that reflected the company’s values, culture and character; and in which Accenture had skills that would enable it to contribute unique skills and expertise, in addition to money.

Its initial efforts in partnering and launching the program, combined with the successes it achieved and the lessons it learned, validated its commitment to the initiative and prompted it to set an ambitious goal—that of training and preparing 250,000 disadvantaged people (anyone from high school juniors to older people who need retraining for or who hope to create their own sustainable, well-paying jobs). Although Accenture is open to all types of NGO partnerships and skills training programs, it assesses each opportunity in terms of its ability to:

  1. Cost-efficiently achieve significant, sustainable, demonstrable and measurable results;
  2. Harness the energies of Accenture and the enthusiasm of its people; and
  3. Be scaled to train large numbers of people and leveraged across multiple states and countries.

But while Accenture is open to examining many different types of programs and partnerships, one thing is not negotiable—its objective. Accenture and its executive committee are fully committed to Skills to Succeed. The company is wrapping virtually all of its corporate philanthropy programs and contributions into this program and is committing all levels of Accenture employees to actively contribute to these efforts. It is also beginning to engage customers and partners in this program, as by working with them to place interns and program graduates.

But for all of Accenture’s commitments and efforts, the company understands that that achieving its 250,000-person objective within five years is a big challenge. It is committed to investing $100 million or more of its resources and the capabilities of its people to the program and is rapidly scaling its efforts. It has, for example, already added 80 new initiatives and is actively evaluating others. The means of accomplishing its goals are flexible. The objective, of preparing a quarter of a million people for rewarding jobs, is not.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Accenture, Community/Other Colleges, Corporate Social Responsibility, Education System and Institutions, IT Company Strategies, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Role in Education, IT Industry's Role, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers | 2 Responses »
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Occupational Opportunities for the Next Decade

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

In my June 27 blog, Payoffs of a College Education, I discussed that the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2010 Occupational Outlook Handbook portrays particularly strong growth in jobs for college graduates. These jobs will grow at a faster rate (15% versus 10%) than those that typically require less education and yield higher weekly and lifetime earnings and greater job security. In fact, every step up the educational ladder, from high school diploma, through some college, bachelor degree and professional degree (with a small exception for PhDs), tends to improve virtually every aspect of a person’s career path.

But the level of educational obtainment is a pretty high-level view of the job market. Although it does emphasize the value of graduating from college, it does not, in and of itself, provide much guidance as to which occupations offer the best employment opportunities, the highest earnings potential and the best opportunities for advancement.

Tomorrow’s Largest Growth Occupations

In 2006 (the study’s benchmark year), about half of all jobs (see Chart 3 of the handbook) in college-level occupations were concentrated in three broad categories—education (21%), healthcare (14%) and computers (13%). Adding two others, management (12%) and business and financial operations (11%) covers more than 70% of all college-level jobs.

A nice start, but still too macro a view to provide meaningful help in career planning. Medical jobs, for example, run the gamut from physician assistants to surgeons. Management jobs run from education administrators to CEOs. Jobs within each category have very different educational requirements (from bachelor or below through post-graduate) and are likely to produce vastly differing numbers of total job openings through 2018 (from 66,000 physician assistants to 1 million registered nurses) and growth rates (2% for CEOs to 50% or more for some IT jobs).

The tables supporting the Bureau’s conclusions provide details for multiple occupations in each of these categories. As one would expect, the greatest number of projected openings are concentrated in the three largest college-level job categories: education, healthcare and computers. The first two categories share a few similarities.

Both, for example, are:

  • Being driven largely by population growth and demographic trends;
  • Characterized by especially strong growth in one very big class of occupations;
  • Consist of a large number of moderate and relatively low-paying jobs, and more modest numbers of higher-paying (especially in healthcare) jobs that typically require a minimum of four years of graduate school.

Health care growth, for example, is driven overwhelmingly by the growth in need for RNs, which is projected to grow at a 24% rate and account for almost two-thirds of all listed healthcare openings. Although there will be big needs for teachers at all levels, the demand for K-2 teachers is growing at only a 10.8% rate, while that for post-secondary teachers (and some small specialty teachers) is tracking at 23%.

IT Professions

IT-related job trends are very different. First, although the handbook profiles only five distinct occupations (out of ten that BLS specifically tracks), all four of the specialized, high-skill occupations (network systems and data communications analysts, computer software engineers, systems analysts, and network and systems administrators) are slated for hyper-growth through 2018, at rates ranging from 28% to 53%.

These jobs, most of which require “only” bachelor’s degrees, also provide some of the highest salaries—more than twice the median for all occupations. Many, even during the depths of the recession, are already characterized by strong levels of college hiring, rising salaries and shortages of qualified applicants at all levels of experience.

Moreover, the need for IT skills is being driven not by demographics, but by the rapid, increasingly critical need to incorporate IT into virtually every business, every process and every “machine” (from PDAs and televisions through office buildings and jumbo jets). And this is just the start. Business decisions increasingly require real-time analytics and seamless, real-time collaboration tools. The Internet, meanwhile, is creating new businesses and new job requirements every minute of every day.

This being said, not all IT jobs are created equal. As I mentioned, four of the five listed categories are growing at hyper-rates. The number of openings for the fifth—computer programmers—is actually declining. This is not at all surprising. The demand for the lowest skill IT occupation, data entry clerks, has been plummeting for years. BLS now anticipates similar (albeit slower) declines in the number of openings for computer programmers. These positions, as I’ve discussed in a number of previous blogs, will be increasingly replaced—and compensation reduced—by a combination of:

  • Technology, including more automated development and test processes, software reuse and tools that can be used by non-IT professionals; and by the
  • Rapid growth in the availability and use of lower-priced, offshore IT professionals.

Moreover, while these forces are initially felt in relatively low-skill IT professions, they are already beginning to be felt in ever more demanding occupations. Increasingly sophisticated, policy-based IT management software, remote diagnostic tools and a growing trend toward the delivery of IT as an outsourced service will slash the number of people required to maintain an application, manage a given number of servers or support a given number of users. Moreover, as I have discussed in previous blogs, the number of offshore IT professionals is exploding, their education and training is getting much better and they are moving rapidly up the IT value chain, providing increasingly sophisticated services—including services that integrate IT skills into other college-level occupations.

So, while highly demanding technical specialties may offer promising opportunities for the next decade, IT professionals, like sharks, must continually move forward—or they will die. They must continually evolve their skills to address the most promising career opportunities. Most importantly, they must learn to apply these skills in ways that deliver not just “IT value”, but true “business value” to their company’s line-of-business constituents and especially their customers.

But as the number of opportunities for dedicated IT professionals is large and rapidly growing, this does not even scratch the surface of the need for IT skills in tomorrow’s job market. Virtually every college-level job in America is becoming, to one extent or another, an IT job.

This is not to say they must develop, manage and maintain their company’s IT infrastructure or applications. They must, however, be able to integrate a broad range of increasingly sophisticated IT tools into every aspect of their work. And I don’t mean that people must use word processing and email. Those are yesterday’s skills. Today’s professionals must also be fluent in Internet search, in computer-based collaboration and in social networking. Tomorrow’s professionals must seamlessly incorporate sophisticated information access and analytics tools into their day-to-day tasks and learn dozens of new tools and techniques that most of us can barely identify.

Over the next decade, virtually every professional will have to be an IT professional, as well as a professional in his or her own specific field.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Community/Other Colleges, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Education System and Institutions, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, Societal Forces, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Universities and Grad Schools, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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