Abstract
Scholars and practitioners in the United States, other nations, and regions, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean, cited the elementary through to grade 12 public education system as the source of the ever-widening rift between skills and education. Being the world's most unequal region with sparse accessibility to disruptive technology, the COVID-19 pandemic affected Latin America and the Caribbean region more adversely than all other regions. The asymmetry associated with Latin America and the Caribbean region permeates the education system as the student pass rates for a specific subject at the same grade level are highly dissimilar across countries forming the region. Additionally, the school curriculum exerts low importance on the absorption of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects, and the education system was and is still structured to prepare students for college rather than equipping them with the skills required to keep up with the ever-evolving global workplace.
TopIntroduction
The concern regarding the growing skills gap remains ongoing for decades (Christiansen & Sezerel, 2013; Tan et al., 2021). A skills gap refers to a dearth or deficits between the skills necessary for a role and the employee occupying said role (Indeed Editorial Team, 2022). An unsuitable employee’s performance or ability to carry out their duties effectively subsequently affects departmental and organizational (costs versus revenues) performance (Amazon Staff, 2023; Indeed Editorial Team, 2022; Paves, 2020; Sriganthan, 2023). Scholars and practitioners in the United States indicated that the source of the ever-widening rift between skills and education is grounded in the K-12 public education system (Cappelli, 2014; Jackman et al., 2021). The issue regarding the growing skills gap, with its foundation (apparently) rooted in inadequate education delivery, is not just a problem localized to the United States. Instead, the matter metastasized and mushroomed into a growing global skills gap before and after the COVID-19 pandemic (Paves, 2020; Tan et al., 2021; Valenzuela & Yáñez, 2022; Zaidi, 2022).
Christian and Sezerel (2013) highlighted several nations and their associated skills gap or mismatch complications. For example, about 44% of Canadian corporations reported challenges attracting qualified labor; India has a deficit of 500,000 professionals required to fulfill available vacancies. In validating and updating Christian and Sezerel’s concerns, in 2021, 56.1% of Canadian businesses indicated that the workforce lacked the requisite proficiencies to perform jobs at the required level (Zaidi, 2022). Regarding India, with a population of 1.42 billion, more than 75% of the country’s graduates were unemployed, as they were qualified for the job (by having a college or university degree) but insufficiently skilled to do the job (IMS Proschool, 2019). In the United Kingdom (classified as a developed nation), employers cannot secure workers for high skills jobs, as there are only approximately 14.8 million high-skilled workers for the available 17.4 million high-skilled jobs (Paves, 2020). Employers declared that at all job levels, factors such as basic literacy, numeracy, and IT punctuated the growing global skills gap in the United Kingdom.
Despite evolving global business processes and disruptive technologies dictating the hiring requisites for prospective recruits, the global K-12 public education system was and is still organized to prepare students for college rather than equipping them with the skills required to amalgamate themselves with the ever-evolving global workplace (Daggett, 2005; Paves, 2020; Sriganthan, 2023; Valenzuela & Yáñez, 2022). While some employers may be willing to train new (and incumbent hires), the fear remains that once introduced, new hires will depart the organization to join the competitors (IMS Proschool, 2019), reflecting further loss for the organization. Additionally, re-skilling (upskilling) of incumbent employees becomes inevitable as the extent of disruption and job displacement due to artificial intelligence and automation (Harney & Collings, 2021) though inevitable, remains unpredictable.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Graduate Employability: The requisite skills, knowledge, and attitudes acquired through undergraduate/postgraduate studies to enable graduates, now prospective recruits to attain success in the global labor biosphere.
Artificial Intelligence: The simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think and act like humans.
Latin America and the Caribbean: A world region comprising 33 countries. The region’s countries are the Caribbean territories, Bahamas, Mexico, and most of Central and South America.
Re-Skilling: The process of training an employee to acquire a new skill outside the employee’s present skill set.
Upskilling: The process of training an employee to learn and expand their existing skill set.
Skills Gap: The deficiencies or discrepancies between the skills necessary for a role and the employee’s skills.
STEM: The combination of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects forming a composite discipline of studies.
Fourth Industrial Revolution: The initiation or dawn of intelligent and connected production systems designed to sense, predict, and interact with the physical world. These intelligent and connected systems allow for making decisions that support real-time production.