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To build the nation's skilled technical workforce, the demand for entry and middle-skill professionals in technical fields in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is increasing. The alignment between educational programming and job requirements for STEM-oriented technicians is essential for establishing career pathways that produce high-quality middle skills professionals for technology-rich fields. Building on prior research on rural Florida’s information technologies career pathways, in this National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technician Education (ATE) targeted research project, FSU researchers are investigating alignment among educational opportunities, employer needs, student readiness and new employee experiences in Advanced Manufacturing (AM) and test the usefulness of tools and processes developed to assess such alignment, focusing on the opportunities and challenges in Florida’s rural areas. Researchers constructed and are iteratively refining an AM Body of Knowledge (BOK) for analysis and community engagement. The quantitative and qualitative mixed methods research design combines content analysis and text mining using the BOK with surveys, and interviews/focus groups. The research team is applying text mining approaches to identify the match between syllabi learning outcomes, industry certification requirements, state curriculum frameworks, and job postings. In interviews and focus groups, researchers are qualitatively assessing the employers’ competency expectations and new professionals’ job experiences. These analyses will build capacity among rural stakeholders to strengthen and expand their technical workforce.
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Skill discrepancies between research, education, and jobs reveal the critical need to supply soft skills for the data economy
Rapid research progress in science and technology (S&T) and continuously shifting workforce needs exert pressure on each other and on the educational and training systems that link them. Higher education institutions aim to equip new generations of students with skills and expertise relevant to workforce participation for decades to come, but their offerings sometimes misalign with commercial needs and new techniques forged at the frontiers of research. Here, we analyze and visualize the dynamic skill (mis-)alignment between academic push, industry pull, and educational offerings, paying special attention to the rapidly emerging areas of data science and data engineering (DS/DE). The visualizations and computational models presented here can help key decision makers understand the evolving structure of skills so that they can craft educational programs that serve workforce needs. Our study uses millions of publications, course syllabi, and job advertisements published between 2010 and 2016. We show how courses mediate between research and jobs. We also discover responsiveness in the academic, educational, and industrial system in how skill demands from industry are as likely to drive skill attention in research as the converse. Finally, we reveal the increasing importance of uniquely human skills, such as communication, negotiation, and persuasion. These skills are currently underexamined in research and undersupplied through education for the labor market. In an increasingly data-driven economy, the demand for “soft” social skills, like teamwork and communication, increase with greater demand for “hard” technical skills and tools.
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- PAR ID:
- 10101228
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 115
- Issue:
- 50
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 12630 to 12637
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804247115
