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Letters

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Skills Gap Is Real

November 20, 2018

To the Editor:

Your recent interview, “Skills Gap ‘Is a Fiction’” (The Chronicle, November 11), represents the best of intellectual diversity. But we do all of higher education a real disservice if we believe the interview, or ignore the importance of middle-skills job.

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To the Editor:

Your recent interview, “Skills Gap ‘Is a Fiction’” (The Chronicle, November 11), represents the best of intellectual diversity. But we do all of higher education a real disservice if we believe the interview, or ignore the importance of middle-skills job.

Yes, most graduates of four-year colleges seek jobs requiring a higher level of skills. Good for them! That ignores data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; the National Skills Coalition; and Burning Glass that suggest otherwise.

The National Skills Coalition states that 48 percent of job openings between 2014 and 2024 will be middle-skill jobs. They go on to state that while currently 53 percent of the jobs require middle-level skills, only 43 percent of current workers have such skills. I’d call that a gap.

Burning Glass in partnership with Accenture and the Harvard Business School has produced a strategy to “Bridge the Gap: Rebuilding America’s Middle Skills.” They call for a focus on middle-skill jobs that: 1.) create a high value for U.S. businesses; 2.) provide both decent wages and a pathway to increased career value; and 3.) are persistently hard to fill.

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Our nation’s Career Education Colleges and Universities produced almost 630,000 new professionals in 2016. But this was almost 100,000 less than the projected demand for these middle-skill occupations based upon independent research.

My suggestion is that Boston University continue to focus on four-year degrees leading to higher skills. But don’t deny that a real demand exists for middle skills that is currently not being met.

Steve Gunderson
President & CEO
Career Education Colleges and Universities
Washington

Correction: (11/26/18, 5:20 p.m.): Ellen Ruppel Shell, the professor interviewed by
The Chronicle in “Skills Gap ‘Is a Fiction,’” is a faculty member at Boston University, not Boston College. The letter has been corrected to reflect that.

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