Introduction
For any parent, educational financier, employer, and government sponsor who invests money in the students' education, the essence of excellent education is to create highly qualified and competitive graduates who fit well in the job market. Similar to this, important parties and institutions of higher learning want to make sure that students receive the best education possible and that it is in line with what is needed for jobs in the real world (López-Bazo, Enrique, and Motellón 383).
Addressing the Inherent Problems
Additionally, the skilled labor market's dynamic technological developments foretell a serious threat as more businesses turn to automation and robotics. The hard economic times have also made several companies cut costs by laying off a substantial portion of their workforce to mitigate losses. Therefore, the paper will attempt to investigate whether the current education system today addresses the inherent problems of possible jobless future.
Potential Employment Boom
Imperatively, the proponents of education as the solution for the future joblessness opine that the current persistent unemployment and the weak economy undergoing slow recovery will eventually stabilize and initiate the demand for skilled labor. Similarly, some policymakers espouse that since the lingering unemployment is not about job unavailability but because of mismatched skills, hence a potential employment boom when the economy stabilizes (López−Bazo et al. 385). Such ideologists posit that skills mismatch will get sorted shortly as the economies grow to initiate the demand for skilled labor which at the time will be undergoing massive competition from rival firms. Thence, the impending skills shortage exacerbated by the shortfall of college students will inadvertently force more employment of graduates once the economy gets to full employment cycle.
The Role of Education in Overcoming Unemployment
Additionally, the overemphasis placed on education from a young age has made the students perceive that being successful is almost certainly guaranteed by better grades and the society continues to promote a similar understanding. Lucrative jobs in the professional environment such as medicine, engineering, and laws are all attributed to better and quality education (Buffel, Veerle, Missinne, and Bracke 503). Invariably, it becomes plausible to appreciate the role of schooling towards eradicating poverty and ensuring stable forms of employment based on core competencies and matching skills. Therefore, education remains the surest way to overcome unemployment in the foreseeable future. Hence, delivering the appropriate education and training enables one to secure the much-coveted future success.
Challenges to Education as a Solution
However, the current rates of unemployment in the US which stands at 4.1% shows a significant drop though still representing a more substantial portion of the general population (Glavin et al. 232). Most of those unemployed went through various colleges but have not found a relevant job that matches their skills. As such, the opponents of education as the future solution to unemployment refute such a notion based on several aspects of the economy that dictates and influence the absorption rate of new graduates (Caliendo et al. 166). Central to the skeptical ideologies is the fact that the number of job openings in the current recession remains far too few to meaningfully accommodate the fresh graduates produced by the university on a yearly basis across all sectors. The other apparent challenge is the reality that the country faces a high unemployment rate which persists not because the education system is inadequate but because there are no jobs to cater for the fresh graduates. Also, the ever-increasing wage and income inequalities experienced in the US over the past 30 years do not reflect a shortfall in the skills and education of the workforce. Instead, it is believed that the workers are met with wage deficits and not skills deficit (Farber and Valletta 878). It becomes difficult therefore to imagine that the situation might change in the foreseeable future.
The Skills Crisis
The quality and relevance of education appear as the cause of the unprecedented youth unemployment with high numbers of graduates spending a lot of years on the sidelines without proper work (Caggiano et al. 81). Imperatively, higher education levels do not necessarily guarantee a decent job. Thus, beyond the necessity to ensure access to quality and affordable education, it becomes plausible to take cognizance of the realities that most new graduates do not meet the highly competitive needs of the labor market. Thus, the situation inherently leads to two scenarios; the inability of new graduates to find jobs that match their skillsets and the difficulty of employers in hiring the skills that meet their job requirements (Cutler et al. 65). Ultimately, the combination of the economic crisis and the lack of sufficient jobs in many parts of the US will only further escalate the unemployment rates leading to the development of a skills crisis. Current surveys tend to support the general postulations by suggesting that just up to half of the operational businesses have open vacancies for which they are struggling to get competent people to fit.
Conclusion
Imperatively, for graduates, the high expectations of gaining employability skills and the essential attributes become a necessity as they prepare to face their prospective employers. However, the rising number of unemployed graduates continues to increase exponentially at an alarming rate because of the global dynamics that have influenced demand on skilled (López−Bazo et al. 394). Since the current education system has failed to address the pertinent issues bedeviling employability of graduates, there exists a clarion call for the prioritization of educational reforms at the university level. A more practical educational system will invariably provide students with the ability to adapt to market demands through the diversity of courses pursued and skills acquired (Glavin et al. 234). Hence, the universities need to adopt a more business-oriented approach that empowers graduates to not only start their businesses but also become dependent and self-reliant for sustainability without necessarily bothering several employers that will never consider their curriculum vitae. The overemphasis placed on paper education has often resulted in the production of half-baked graduates that do not match the skills required by their employers. Hence, a more practical approach that appreciates creativity and innovativeness will go a long way in producing academically competent and hands-on graduates. Consequently, a multisectoral collaboration between the colleges and the private sector will provide graduates with incubation and apprenticeship opportunities to sharpen their skills for the job market.
Works Cited
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Caggiano, Giovanni, Efrem Castelnuovo, and Nicolas Groshenny. "Uncertainty shocks and unemployment dynamics in US recessions." Journal of Monetary Economics 67 (2014): 78-92.
Caliendo, Marco, et al. "Subsidized start-ups out of unemployment: a comparison to regular business start-ups." Small Business Economics 45.1 (2015): 165-190.
Cutler, David M., Wei Huang, and Adriana Lleras-Muney. "When does education matter? The protective effect of education for cohorts graduating in bad times." Social Science & Medicine 127 (2015): 63-73.
Farber, Henry S., and Robert G. Valletta. "Do extended unemployment benefits lengthen unemployment spells? Evidence from recent cycles in the US labor market." Journal of Human Resources 50.4 (2015): 873-909.
Glavin, Paul, and Marisa Young. "Insecure People in Insecure Places: The Influence of Regional Unemployment on Workers’ Reactions to the Threat of Job Loss." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 58.2 (2017): 232-251.
López‐Bazo, Enrique, and Elisabet Motellón. "The regional distribution of unemployment: What do micro‐data tell us?." Papers in Regional Science 92.2 (2013): 383-405.
