Universities remain relevant in the digital age or not, it pops up from the employer mind, in particular for the new fresh graduate, they just simply do not possess what a modern workplace requires, even at a very entry position.
Let face it, we all know lot of the university is living in their own isolated world, teach what the syllabus the lecture learn from the past, you do not expect the person is not even running in the frontier of the said technology field, they can provide or can really told you what future potential employer will hire you based on certain skill set. They are not even in the first place being hired and working as professionals, leading the team of the people to get what the market wants. Maybe they have worked before, in the very historically past. Of course, we are not here to say all, but the majority of the sector operates like that.
As you can imagine, when the lecturer, who is required to transfer knowledge to the student and prepare them for the future, they themselves are not even knowing how the new emerging technologies are working, so what can you expect them to train the student? they will follow the textbook or even practice that in the market, is considered rare to be considered.
When the student graduates in the old fashion or traditional way, in the modern cloud computing world, a lot of things they simply do not possess. It is even worse than people who are less education qualified, but process real on the job working experience and capable of operating all the modern business facilities and applications to get assignments and jobs done.
If you are a functional level manager and act as the interviewer, you will be surprised for university graduates, not really ready for even an entry level position. It is required to take an additional internship or whatever, else for sure you will find it is counter productive or sudden drop in the company productivity due to new intake simply not possessing what needed to fill a certain class of the job. You will found surprise people apply for the DevSecOps, they simply just do not know what it is, or even being knowing how to setup and provision windows server or Linux virtual machine, container in the cloud, that is where the current reality for the gap for university copy each other syllabus and end up, all in the same situation. This is just a generalized statement, do not take it and apply to all. But this is an area where we think university or college should be focused on, to enable their students. It is not surprising employers focus on certification instead, because university graduates do not ensure they possess any skill needed to be successful in a certain position and job. We believe with the modern technology in place, university and education institutions should be and must make sure they are training new generations of workforce that can be used. For simply passing the fact information, Mr. Google, the search engine, wikipedia and even informative free or paid content can provide relevant direct to the point working related skills to get work assignment done. Free education is available widely in the internet, digital age requires the education sector to revamp their roles and provide what the market needs. Else, like all the historical events in place, the role of education institutions will shrink and the greater role of that part will be taken over by other forces who can provide what the market needs and wants.
E-SPIN Group in the business of enterprise ICT solution supply, consulting, project management, training and maintenance, for multinational corporations and government agencies across the region, E-SPIN did business since 2005. Feel free to contact E-SPIN for your inquiry and requirements.