This infographic reveals a shocking truth about America’s workforce:
That’s just latent opportunity –wasted, untapped and worst of all, stifled. We’ve written about the historic influx of high-skilled immigrants:
GOOD notes in the infographic that one of the major reasons for this unfilled potential is the failure to recognize foreign academic credentials. Often it’s just a matter of a few varying courses that determine the difference between degrees. Perhaps, then, there is an opportunity to utilize the growing online education platforms as a means for integrating immigrants’ credentials within the US system’s via online courses and programs such as the Khan Academy, iTunes University, Udemy and more.
The New York Times recently reported that the changing distribution channels of education are “particularly good for the vast number of people around the world whose job prospects are constrained by their skill levels and who lack the resources to upgrade them through conventional training.” And in the case of high-skilled immigrants, acquiring basic workplace skills is also important since it’s becoming increasingly clear that workers’ skills don’t meet the demands of the job market.
A company based in Ireland called ALISON (Advanced Learning Interactive Systems Online) is helping to solve this problem through its online interactive education program that teaches workplace skills. ALISON offers vocational courses and others such as project management, accounting, customer service, human resources, Microsoft Excel, operations management and psychology. The lesson to be learned here is that free and open education could help with solving this problem of wasted talent, especially if it’s directed at those, like high-skilled immigrants, who could benefit the most and contribute a 30 percent increase of skilled labor to our economy.
