The Skills Gap Illusion

Title: The Communication and Development Studies Curriculum at Papua New Guinea University of Technology: is it meeting industry requirements?

Lecture delivered at the Second Community Affairs and Business Development Workshop, 10-12 August 2015, Lae International Hotel.

The skills gap illusion

For a long time now, business leaders have been saying that the workforce lacks sufficient skills to fill 21st century jobs. Allegedly, this "skills gap" is holding back not just workers but businesses and the development of the economy.

In our view, there will always some problems finding people for specific jobs in specific industries. For those businesses that are having these problems, to a large degree the solutions are in their own hands. Specifically, they can start training programs, pay competitive wages, work with governments and universities to align programs to their needs, and step in with some extra investment in the educational institutions, where required.

Leadership

A few months ago, I received a letter from a large superanuation fund. It contained a number of complaints about the program our University offers, while not a single solution was proposed. The complaints ranged from our University not preparing people for C level positions, to not training accountants who could start on an entry level job.

Regarding the first complaint, it reveals a profound ignorance about what Universities can do. No University in the world trains people for a C-level position. One gets recruited for a similar position because of a mixture of education and training, and a track record of success.

The combination of education and good track record is critical. Career success depends as much on hard technical skills as on people and leadership skills. All universities can do, is to provide life-long learning opportunities through for example through our Executive MBA program in Lae.

All leadership is necessarily value-based leadership. If a leader does not show integrity, credibility goes down the drain and consequently any capability to influence or lead others. If there is a shortage of C level candidate in the country, that may have more to do with lack of sustained career success and leadership readiness than with hard, technical skills. It is evident the letter writer from the superannuation fund lacked leadership skills, since people who are successful leaders, seldom complain about problems without offering a number of solutions.

In the past, public Universities have not been very effective in addressing leadership issues, but we are trying to remedy this early on in the educational process. Following our vision statement, we are striving to be a student-centred, innovative and entrepreneurial university. We are introducing now project, case or problem based learning in all of our courses as part of our efforts to achieve provisional accreditation according to the Washington Accords.

Over the past few years, our Academic Board has approved several measures to change and update our courses. The Communication and Development Studies and the Business Studies departments addresses leadership skills in their undergraduate and their Masters programs. Personally, for example, with other colleagues I am offering a short course on "Leadership and Transparency" for young undergraduate students.

Basic Skills

Concerning the second complaint of our graduates not having the necessary skills for entry level jobs in their chosen professions, this has a more solid basis. We believe our accountants, scientists and engineers, for example, should have both general understanding relevant for their profession, as well as some basic skills.

A university, however, is not a skills training centre. If you look at our graduate profiles and learning outcomes descriptions, for example, they are general in nature. Our graduate accountants, social scientist and engineers, therefore, will require some specific, in-house training before they can do the job, and most reputable firms offer this type of training.

The major problems regarding skills seems to not to be the hard skills, but rather the soft people, organizational and leadership skills. In the USA the National Association of Colleges and Employers surveyed more than 200 employers about their top 10 priorities in new hires. Overwhelmingly, they wanted candidates who are team players, problem solvers and who can plan, organize and prioritize their work. Technical and computer-related know-how placed much further down the list

We are working to address the soft skills issue by introducing more student-centred pedagogical approaches such as problem, case and project-based teaching. In fact, as an accreditation requirement all our engineering courses need to have a project as part of the course.

The underlying issue, however, is that employers’ expectations for the skills of new graduates, for what they must invest in training, and for how much they need to pay their employees have grown increasingly out of step with reality.

If the skills gap were a real thing, the companies would train employees. Their cries of "there are not enough trained people" is a political cry, intended to prolong an arm-length attitude towards higher education, hoping to continue to externalize the costs for training and their practice to hire dirt cheap labour abroad.

Apart from this public posturing, when business are asked for their real opinions, they answer quite differently. According to a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, for example, 80 percent of employers agree that, regardless of the major, every college student should acquire a foundation in the liberal arts and sciences, which offer the best preparation for leadership roles later on in life.

Skills Gap

Why do employers complain about this illusionary skills gap or graduates not meeting industry requirements? A malicious explanation is that they just are trying to minimize their own training costs.

There might be something else however. Maybe very few business have a good idea of how to train or education employees. Interestingly, companies that have strong in-house training programs, such as ExxonMobil, for example, do not complain so much about the skills gap, and engage actively with universities. Exxon Mobil is now chairing our Industrial Advisory Board which is guiding the curriculum revision in all our science and engineering programs, have invested in our general infrastructure, our labs and in our quality management systems.

If businesses were really serious about securing a stable pool of future employees, they are going to have to invest in young adults more comprehensively and earlier, and engage actively with universities like ours. Universities together with industry should set up comprehensive employment programs. Research shows that successful employment programs provide not just technical training and job opportunities but also mentoring, feedback, and real-life skills training. Young people do best when they receive behavioural coaching, training in workplace communication, scheduling, planning and time management, and counseling and monetary bonuses to reward good performance. A pedagogical approach that trains communication and people skills, rather than root learning and lecturing can do much to enhance the chances of career success for the graduates.

Our University has good experiences with the mining industry. With AusAid/DFAT funds, for example, the Chamber of Mines and Petroleum has been supporting our Mining Engineering Dept. sponsoring their library, conference and research activities, workshops, etc.

Regarding our Communication and Development Studies department, we are confident their curriculum is tailored to produce the graduate outcomes. It has been revised continuously over the last 5 years with the support of AusAid/DFAT and anthropology faculty of Australian National University. Our graduates not only work in the extractive industries like mining or other resource development sectors but all range of areas like NGO organization (eg. World vision, Exodus and others), government organizations, and private industries.

Although the Communication for Development program was established in partnership with the PNG Chamber Mines and Petroleum to educate people to work in the resource development sector (extractive industries), subjects have been added so that graduate can also work in different areas like Government, NGOs, and other private sector organizations. We must not limit the options of our graduates, who won't want to put all their eggs in one basket. The program is therefore a general humanities and social science based program with emphasis to the extractive industries.

Final Remarks

To sum up, the question "whether it meets industry requirements?" needs to be answered by a question: to what extent should it meet industry requirements?

Apart from those industries which employ our graduates, any curriculum needs to meet the higher education industry requirements, which are general in nature. Through our Academic Board we implement an elaborate quality management system, which is continuously being improved. Recently, for example, we instituted a Quality Assurance Team, which is making sure all quality measures are being followed through. ExxonMobil is sponsoring our system of external assessors who evaluate the integrity of our assessment procedures. The final test for our own quality as a higher education institution will be an external certification by an independent third party, and whether our graduates will be highly employable.

Companies that do not invest in employee training and career development should not complain about a skills gap or graduates not meeting industry requirements. We invite all companies to be part of the solution as partners, rather than complain as bystanders.

Therefore, contrary to my habit, I did not answer the letter from the superannuation fund, but I did step up our engagement with companies that put some time and resources towards helping us produce improve quality, and better alignments of our programs to their needs. Much good can come from listening to industry, though our responsibility is to ensure the right balance of fundamental people and leadership skills on the one hand, and technical skills on the other hand.

In order to facilitate industry engagement with our University, we created many opportunities during our academic year for companies to interact with the University community. This month we will hold the Career Fair on 27 and 28 August, where you can interact directly with our students. Meanwhile, by focusing on our graduate profiles we ensure that our graduates are not trained only for a single industry or company, but acquire the life-long learning skills that make the versatile and resilient employees and entrepreneurs.