Every post-secondary institution carries a stigma.
Many believe that university prioritizes theory and neglects specialities and job-ready skills. Another common critique is that if you’re not attending to become a doctor or lawyer, you’re going into debt for a four-year degree to graduate with general knowledge.
College suffers from a misconception of being “less” than university. It’s “easier to get into.” You don’t need to take academic courses in high school to apply to college. And it’s where our “future hairdressers and firefighters go.”
The third post-secondary option that suffers from a stigma is micro-credentialing. You might be surprised that this option is included as it’s not as popular as traditional routes—our point exactly.
Up until the last couple of years, micro-credentialing has received minimal federal or provincial support. The benefits of upskilling and reskilling institutions remained unrecognized. And students continued to apply to colleges and universities because those were the two options they knew. But just like the false narrative that university is meant for doctors and lawyers and college is easy, micro-credentialing isn’t an option to glance over.
Canada is suffering from a critical skills gap. According to the Survey of Employers on Workers’ Skills 2021, more than half (56.1%) of businesses reported having employees who weren’t fully proficient in the ability to perform their job at their required level. And of those participants, more than half (57.5%) reported that the in-demand skills were technical, practical or job-specific, and problem-solving.
There is an increasing need for education and training providers to put effort towards future-ready training and education. And micro-credentialing is the poster child of offering job-ready skills. Upskilling institutions in B.C. are actively fighting to diversify the province’s talent pool—and many of these institutions are also nonprofits, fighting for funding to stay afloat. If micro-credentialing continues to get put on the back burner, B.C.’s skills gap will only widen.
B.C.’s leading future-ready educational programs:
- Lighthouse Labs: Tech education company that offers 12-week boot camps for web development and data science, as well as part-time up-skilling courses. All of their programs are online so they are accessible to all and prepare students for the work-from-home culture that is growing in demand.
- Jelly Academy: Focused on helping students upskill, reskill, and gain the necessary micro-credentials to thrive in the world of digital marketing. Its core course is its Digital Marketing Bootcamp, which covers the fundamentals of Social Media, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Google Analytics, Public Relations and Email Marketing. The company provides an online or in-person learning environment with both live and self-paced learning.
So it’s safe to say that stigmas around university and college are often misinformed. Many successful CEOs went to university and many incredibly intelligent nurses went to college. University isn’t just for lawyers and doctors. College isn’t easy.
As for the stigma that micro-credentialing isn’t as important as university or college, we think the province’s skills gap speaks for itself. And without action, who knows how much wider this gap will get? The World Economic Forum has forecasted that by 2026, nine out of ten jobs will require digital literacy.
Those who don’t leverage B.C.’s future-ready education programs run the risk of falling behind.
Darian Kovacs is the Indigenous founder of Jelly Digital Marketing & PR and Jelly Academy. Jelly Academy is a B.C.-based upskilling institution that provides students with digital marketing skills-based learning. These short-length, low-cost courses are open to anyone in North America wanting to grow their digital skills and improve their business.
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