Modern Education Changing For The Future Essays - Education

Modern Education: Changing for the Future Matchmaker.com: Sign up now for a free trial. Date Smarter! Modern Education: Changing for the Future During the past few decades we have seen a shift from Industrial work to Information technology work. Recently our country has just recovered from an economic depression. This depression was a "wake up call" for many people, as they saw highly educated professionals loosing their jobs. Why, were these educated people loosing their jobs?-Did they break the rules, not get along with their bosses, or loose their cool? No, they did not have the flexibility, versatility, and cooperative skills that are needed in business for a changing economy. They were educated in a time when liberal art educations, and individualized work skills were taught at colleges. Layoffs were also due in part to the globilization of the economy. Cheaper labor can be found in other countries, which results in the closing of American factories or a drastic cut in pay for workers. Corporate downsizing, atomization, and an aging population have also contributed to this change in the type of work available (Rifkin 177). As most Americans used to be in the same economic bracket regardless of their line of work, today a worker's real competitive position in the world economy depends on what kind of job they have (Jacobus 253). Education is the key to creating the worker's demanded from businesses today. In aviation and other workplaces today, employers are not only looking for highly skilled workers, but for people who are flexible, work well with others and have good problem solving skills. Colleges must implement new teaching approaches and offer specialized degrees now, to prepare students for the needs of employers in the information-technology age. A workers must be flexible to be able to change and grow with the economy and the needs of employers is very important in today's job market. "With corporate downsizing and restructuring so prevalent, employers are demanding more of their employees. They must be more versatile and multi-task oriented (Schmiedl 29)." Employees must be able to move from one job to another, and learn new tasks quickly. The more education they have the easier it is to adapt to these changes (Carnoy 123). Continuing education is also becoming more prevalent for today's workers. To stay at the top of their fields in knowledge and technology, employees must constantly be up-dating their education (Schmiedl 29). Flexibility also ties in with the skill of working well with other people. To listen and interact with others in your profession, you must be flexible or open minded to their opinions, ideas and insights. Interaction with other employees and being a "people person" enforces cooperative skills. These cooperative skills can benefit the company as a whole, just as the Nobel Prize winner James Watson said "Nothing new that is really interesting comes with out collaboration (qtd. in Johnson 26)." These cooperative skills once taught only to management, now must be integrated to the employees, as many management positions have been eliminated. Workers must now possess a "management mentality," so that they can co-exist and work beneficially together (Carnoy 123). Problem solving skills are a necessity for even the simplest of jobs. A high order of problem solving skills are needed for more advanced positions jobs such as in aviation (pilots), and in computers and other technical jobs. Having the ability to work through problems to come up with a positive end result can be a long and arduous task. The people who have these problems solving skills can organize more learning, and help others to succeed in solving problems (Carnoy 123). Group cooperation heightens and speeds up the time in which it takes to solve problems. It makes for an easier and more efficient approach to problem solving. As you can see the three main qualities of flexibility, working well with others and problem solving are very closely linked. Workers must be flexible to work well with others, which is important in having better problems solving skills. Missing just one of these qualities dampens the ability of a worker to be the productive employee, which employers are looking for. These skills are not inherent and are difficult to learn. That is why they must be implemented early on in college. For years colleges have been ignoring the power of teamwork and the achievements that could not have been made with out it (Johnson 26). The problem lies itself within the faculty. It is their job to implement cooperative learning into classes, and make it work. This is not an easy task, which is why many professors