CORRUPTION IS A MOST PROBLEM
as I was growing up I always knew that
education could catapult people through
social and economic adversity my belief
wasn' t just rooted in a philosophy it
was rooted in experience my father' s he
grew up in a poor part of Cairo and his
family couldn' t afford the basics like
electricity so he had to study at night
underneath a street lamp he studied so
hard that he did really well on his
secondary school finishing exam and then
he won a place at a very prominent
public university and he graduated in
the top 1% of his class from there he
won an Egyptian national scholarship to
do his graduate studies in the US his
real dream was to be a writer but he had
a large family to support he had eight
brothers and sisters so instead he
became a dentist for its more reliable
income his experience inspired me that
education can dramatically change life
opportunities and that has been a very
central belief for me throughout my life
except until the last three years in the
last three years what I' ve seen is that
although my belief holds true for many
people around the world it also
definitely does not hold true for the
hundreds of millions of young people who
are unemployed or underemployed I' ve
spent the last 10 years working in
education to improve system outcomes and
I was initially really excited about
getting more students in school and
raising literacy and numeracy
levels and getting students graduated
but over time what I realized is that
education is not enough to be able to
prepare young people for a better future
I' ve seen now too many cases of young
people who go to school study hard
graduate do all the things that people
ask them to do only to find out too late
that what they' re left with is a degree
that' s a piece of paper rather than
skills and they' re left with financial
debt rather than promise young people
today are graduating and they want to
succeed but they' re not finding jobs
they want to be financially independent
and they want to make a positive
contribution to society but they cannot
this phenomena has led me to spend time
over the last few years with employers
to try to understand what is it exactly
that they' re looking for what are the
skills that they seek given the high
levels of youth unemployment you think
the last thing that an employer has to
worry about is finding talent that it
must be like fishing in a vast ocean but
the reality is that' s not the case
four out of ten employers say to me that
they cannot find the skills they need
for even entry-level positions this gap
this gulf that we have in throat between
the skills that students have and those
that employers seek is truly making us
ask the question of what is the purpose
of Education what are the skills that we
should be teaching young people and what
are the roles of educators employers and
eat and young people themselves to be
able to achieve these skills these are
the questions that have been whirling
around in my mind and I' ve now done
surveys
spoken with over 10, 000 employers
educators and young people around the
world to try to get at the heart of that
the more that I speak with them the more
that I realize that they' re living in
parallel universes
they each have a very different view of
what's happening and it' s not that one
is right and the other is wrong they' re
just very-very different I' d like to
play a role in bringing these three
universes together and that begins by
sharing their voices with you I' m going
to start with a young person
her name is Yasmine she' s 24 years old
and she has five siblings and lives in a
two-bedroom home in Jordan
she was an above-average student in
school and her exam results tracked her
into the economics program of a public
university no one ever asked her what
her interests were or tested her
aptitude or counseled her on the kind of
impact that she could have in the world
and so she never asked herself these
questions she was just on a treadmill
that went from school to university to
lectures and then she graduated and it
wasn' t until after she graduated that
she began applying to jobs by the time
I' d met her yes mean had applied to 30
positions in most cases she never heard
back and when she did it was always some
variation of her English skills weren' t
good enough or she didn' t have enough
applied experience or she didn' t have
enough work experience in all of these
cases she always wasn' t something enough
she sat at home for the last two years
she struggles every morning to wake up
because she feels she has nothing to
look forward to at the tender age of 24
she feels that her life is wasted she' s
angry she' s frustrated and she
doesn' t know what to do now let me
introduce you to an employer his name is
Mark and he is the HR head of a
manufacturing company in the US his
company has been increasingly automating
its facilities and so they have a need
for mechatronics-mechatronics is a
combination of computer science
mechanical engineering Electrical
Engineering control engineering it' s a
scarce breed of person and not many
education institutions create them today
on top of their technical skills they
also have to be very strong problem
solvers Troubleshooters they have to
work effectively in teams so mark has
approached community colleges and
universities in his region to try to
open this program his conversations
though haven' t had much traction and so
after a while he stopped trying
he still faithfully shows up at the
career fairs but he' s always
disappointed with the caliber of the
talent that he sees in the engineers and
so he' s resigned himself now to getting
the talent he needs by poaching from
competitors that' s mark now let me
introduce you to an educator his name is
Eduardo and he' s a senior administrator
at a university in Mexico he and his
faculty want their students to graduate
and get good jobs but they also want
them to be people who are effective in
and positive.
(written by:- BalotraHeadNews)
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