From Academics to Real World Work Skills Education

I believe there needs to be a shift in what kind of things we seek to learn in our educations.  Too much focus is made on academics, that bear little use in the world of making a living.  I recently have signed up for a job skills training program for a store chain which teaches about the various parts of the day to day functioning of working in a store.  Now, while academic education is great and all, for most people who are graduating with degrees from colleges, this type of education is almost worthless in terms of actually preparing one to work in an actual job.  We tell young people to go to college and get an academic degree far too much.  While this may be a good path for some, it probably is not the best path for the majority of people looking to learn real life job applicable skills and knowledge.

We need to take a hard look as a society and investigate what kind of businesses, institutions, companies, services, and ventures will be needed in the near future and create educational opportunities based on what those required tasks will need in terms of what sort of skills, knowledge, processes and concepts workers, managers, entrepreneurs, etc. will have to be equipped with.  We should gear our educational policies and institutions to providing education necessary for instilling work seeking people with these skill sets, etc.  There is too much focus on telling everyone to go to a 4 year college, possibly go to graduate school etc, in hopes it will lead to better job prospects.  There are so many jobs that not only do not require an academic traditional college degree, but are in fact utterly useless for performing the tasks of that job.  And why keep telling young people to go into massive debt for a degree that gives them no experience, skills, or knowledge that actually applies to getting a job, when they could get an education in a trade, or in a certain business field, etc?

We need more education in trades, more education in sales and business, in many other kinds of jobs that actually exist.  If a young person wants to work in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields, then going to a 4 year college or graduate school makes sense.  But for many other degrees, the academics are not really useful for any real jobs.  We need to create and organize more trade or practical job training programs, to teach the ins and outs of real job creating organizations, so that people actually have some experience and training that applies to actual aspects of real jobs.  Enough of the massive student debt bubble which is going to burst eventually when more and more students with four year degrees can't find actual jobs in order to pay of their debt.

I saw a video someone posted on Facebook regarding this subject, where Mike Rowe (I believe that was his name) was talking about the fact that most of the required jobs that will need to be created will be in the trades, and that instead of herding everyone into massive debt in order to go to academic colleges where they are not given any skills that will help them get and maintain a remunerative job, we should encourage more education in trades.  We need more trade schools, we need more educational programs and institutions which teach real job skills and give opportunities to practice those skills.

Another thing is we need more education in entrepreneurship.  This idea I get from reading the financial education books of the "Rich Dad" series by Robert Kiyosaki.  We need more people to create businesses which create lots of jobs.  There is little education about how money works, and how to create businesses which create jobs.  I recommend his books also.

But we need to educate people in skills and experience that actually will help them make livings at jobs that actually will exist.  Jobs in the trades need to be more emphasized, because a lot of the jobs that will be created are in these fields.  Not everyone needs or should pursue expensive 4 years or more college degrees which serve no useful purpose most of the time in actually preparing someone to work at a real job or in creating a business that creates work.  Except for STEM education, and certain other fields, going to traditional academic college makes no sense for a lot of people.

I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this subject.