![]() ![]() Today’s students face a job market that increasingly clamors for real technology skills, not just the ability to post party pictures on Facebook. Codecademy runs free classes on Web fundamentals and Javascript, among other topics. Treehouse offers low-cost access to courses on Web programming and design, as well as iOS development. Udacity offers free online courses in computer science, physics and artificial intelligence. The private sector, sensing the widening chasm between technology use versus real skill, is stepping in to fill this gap. So many schools end up teaching outmoded courses based on products and technologies no longer in wide use. As technology continues to advance, slow-moving educational institutions can’t keep up. And when skills are taught, they’re mostly limited to productivity-level tools, not more technically challenging Web development and programming. Why is there such a gap in serious technology skills? Schools are hard-pressed to provide the required equipment and software for computer training, not to mention adequately trained teachers and staff to deliver effective courses. ![]() That same survey revealed that 94.8% of the freshmen were on online networks like Facebook for some duration during their last year of high school. Instead, most Millennials use technology for fun and games. A paltry 3.2% of students identified a computer-related planned field of study. But there are surprisingly few of them.Īccording to the fall 2011 release of UCLA’s annual Freshman Survey, only 38.1% of incoming college freshmen self-identified themselves as above average in computer skills, compared to people their age. Some students, of course, like to figure out such skills on their own or attend schools that make computer productivity part of the curriculum. And Web skills – including basic HTML coding techniques – are even more rare. high schools, students usually get some exposure to word processing and presentation applications, but spreadsheet skills often go untaught. One professor at the University of Notre Dame, for example, reports that many of his students don’t even know how to navigate menus in productivity applications. The truth may not be so rosy.Įven as millennials (those born and raised around the turn of the century) enter college with far more exposure to computer and mobile technology than their parents ever did, professors are increasingly finding that their students’ comfort zone is often limited to social media and Internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity. ![]() Conventional wisdom has it that kids and young adults now coming of age have been so steeped in everything from video games to social networking that they bring amazing new technology skills to the workforce. ![]()
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