I heard a fascinating statistic the other day that really should give all of us pause. It seems that 2/3 of all jobs in America require a college education, yet only 1/3 of the potentially eligible population goes to college in this country. Either we are going to have to drastically ramp up our numbers enrolled, or we will face an even more serious skills crunch than we already have for employees with sufficient skills to work in our new economy. That was really interesting.
Another issue that I don’t think we have grappled with very well is the fact that as the economic basis of our businesses change, the skills we need to deploy change as well — and yet we make few provisions for upgrading skills throughout the life of an employee, consistently and on a planned basis.