Is University the best answer for those looking at the job market?

The rapidly evolving job market is shaped by technological advancements, remote and hybrid world, demographic shifts.

Transcript

00:00Although the jobs market forecast shows we need more graduates, it's somewhat unclear

00:07as to what the graduates are necessarily going to do. And I think that's partly because of

00:11technology and AI. So there's no doubt that the world of work is changing for graduates.

00:16A lot of graduate jobs are actually going away that used to exist and new ones are being

00:20created. So if you get an apprenticeship, you're going to get very specific skills that

00:24are very specific to that job that you want to do. So that's definitely, they're definitely

00:27useful and you're definitely getting skills. The thing to think about is, will that job

00:31endure? Will those skills still be useful in 10 years? And that can be quite a difficult

00:35question to answer when technology is moving this quickly. My view on universities is a

00:39little controversial. We founded a new university, LIS here, because we think that actually universities

00:43aren't doing a great job of providing the skills that you need. Universities are very

00:47good at giving you a credential about demonstrating how good you are at sort of a certain kind

00:53of intelligence, academic intelligence, but they're not necessarily great at preparing

00:58you for the skills you actually need in the real world. In our view, they're quite narrow

01:01skills, quite academic and quite narrow. But they are useful for getting you that badge

01:06that can sometimes help you get a job and a well-paid job. And employers are often still

01:10looking for degrees. And then the third thing you mentioned, which is going straight into

01:13the workforce. I mean, that can work for you really well. The only thing to think about

01:16is we do get some students coming to us aged 21, 22 saying, I didn't do that bachelor's,

01:20but to get the next level of job, I'm going to have to go and get a degree, I think. So,

01:25you know, the workforce does tend to still recognise degrees as important.

01:29At the moment, those looking for a job in the UK may struggle with the current job market

01:33due to a combination of factors. These factors include the increasingly competitive job market,

01:40skills shortages, economic pressures, and even the rising cost of living.

01:45Yeah, I think the job market at the minute is particularly tough. And I think it's a

01:48combination of two big reasons, right? So, one is a cyclical reason where the economy is

01:53struggling. So, this always happens every sort of seven or eight, nine years, you get the economy

01:57going down, and then the economy will boom again, and there'll be lots of jobs. If you think only

02:00pre-COVID, it was doing much better. And we were struggling to recruit people because there was,

02:06you know, a thriving jobs market for graduates, so lots of jobs. But now we're in a downturn

02:10and a bit of a kind of not quite a recession, but that's always tricky. I think there's a

02:14structural change, which is the AI change I mentioned, where I think big firms, particularly

02:19the knowledge economy type jobs, right, so jobs where computers are now starting to threaten,

02:26those kinds of companies are saying, do we really need as many graduates?