Will Qualifications Ever Stop Being our Primary Measure of Ability?

"learning" (CC BY 2.0) by  michael pollak

Can you imagine if one day qualifications stopped being the primary consideration for every job in the world? It is not actually as far fetched as you might think.

As thought experiments go it is worth expanding on for a moment or two.

You see a job you really like the look of and you download the personal specification. To your surprise, your initial concern over your “lack of qualifications” appears unjustified. You are looking at it because you know you have the experience and ability to transform the workplace and make a real difference.

The company are asking for a range of skills and abilities that make your eyes light up. You possess these! You have picked them up and developed them outside of school and college. You have taught yourself to see connections between domains and have insight into how people connect with each other.

You rise to the top of the pecking order for jobs like this as you are now recognised as being “more qualified” than those with college courses under their belts. You know it isn't because university courses aren’t providing opportunities for young people to learn really important skills such as law, engineering or medicine. But what you do know is that an ever changing and increasingly diverse job market has now made it clear that it requires skills and abilities that university courses on their own cannot hope to provide and businesses have made that abundantly clear.

Meanwhile (our thought experiment continues) the education system sees its importance rapidly declining and its monopoly ending. In order to survive it starts listening to its clients (business etc) and begins to rethink how and what it provides. It finally recognises the divide between its finished product (young people) and those that "buy" it has become untenable and that the buyer no longer wants this product and is seeking alternatives. They begin to innovate and make bold connections with other organisations to support the growth of their workforce and in the midst of that they start listening to them.

Blue sky thinking is great but back to the real world?

It is highly likely we are closer to this than we think. Businesses all over the world appear to be heading in this direction. It is not as joined up as it could be but we are living in an increasingly connected world and people talk. Do you think you can see this happening? Just a thought...

John Hassall