A landmark moment in our approach to skills – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

I’m super excited, in a nerdy sort of way.

In less than a week, I get to meet again my Skills Idol – Professor David Finegold. David is one of the keynote speakers at the Congress of the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics that TDA is hosting in Melbourne from 8 to 10 October.

Professor Finegold has recently been appointed as President of Chatham University. His career has been dedicated to education reform and extensive research on education and skill-creation systems around the world. He graduated from Harvard in 1985, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he received his doctorate in Politics in 1992.

Testament to David’s knowledge in this area is his contributing editorship of The Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training (with others, including John Buchanan who is also speaking at the Congress). It’s essential reading for anyone serious about skills.

The handbook charts the dimensions of skills formation systems from across the globe. Most countries have different approaches to ‘skill settlements’ reflecting their history on the role of labour in social life and in production. However, “these settlements are rarely static”[1].
The human capital framework, which has been so powerful in policy rationales over recent decades, now fails to accommodate the large range of issues facing skills development and utilisation.

While skills has been seen as a great leveller in society, many commentators, including the great Piketty (2014, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century) claim we put too much reliance on skills and that more direct response to inequality is required. Many who usually would be immune from the inequality trap are at risk. The over-supply of graduates across the globe is forcing wages down for those workers expecting a high wage return from their education. And as commodification of thinking work allows more of it to shift to equally skilled workers in low wage economies, governments will be faced with more disaffected workers.

Finegold’s conclusion is chilling…

Arguably, the greatest change emerging is that affecting demand, especially the character (and not just the level) of labour required for productive activity. Perhaps top of this list is the likely disruption posed by technological change, as the integration of advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, robotics, and other fields have the potential to fully automate 60% or more of all jobs by 2030 …. At the same time that technology is eliminating many good jobs, it is also intensifying competition for those jobs that remain by facilitating the process of globalization.[2]

The book has answers though, and ones that are relevant to Australia, including recasting skills regimes. In response to the narrow vision of work-related skills training currently prevailing in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries, Leesa Wheelahan highlights the importance of redefining skills on the basis of Sen’s (1999) and Nussbaum’s (2000) notions of capability and argues for nurturing a modern notion of vocation and vocational streams. Finegold concludes that “Recasting skill regimes along these lines has the potential for providing both rewarding careers for individuals and adaptive capacity for organizations and sectors facing increasingly uncertain futures”[3].

Speaking of Skills Idol – I have an idea. Why don’t we run a TV show here in Australia where we ask the best of talent on skills to show us what they’ve got! I wonder who’d audition? Let me know if you would.  I’d love to hear from you, we need something to trigger some action here in Australia.

By the way, Leesa Wheelahan is also speaking at the Congress.