By Aisha Labi

London

Equipping graduates with the skills that employers want is one of the central roles of higher education, but how effectively universities around the world are meeting that challenge is a matter of strenuous debate.

Several of the sessions here at Going Global, a two-day higher-education conference organized by the British Council, Britain's international organization for educational and cultural relations, were devoted to subjects related to the role of international universities in educating and training the work force of the future.

The demands of the global economy have forced governments and institutions to "contemplate education that goes beyond merely knowledge, through the lens of relevance, applicability, and employability," Charles Fadel, global leader for education at Cisco Systems, said at a panel on "Gearing Up for the Future: Skills and Knowledge Under the Microscope."

Greater Expectations

Employers now expect graduates not just to have knowledge of subjects like English, mathematics, and science, but to be fully equipped with skills in areas such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation, said Mr. Fadel, who is also a board member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an organization that works to provide American schools with the tools and resources to teach such skills. The traditional higher-education curriculum is so full of "knowledge bits that it crowds out any possibility to deliver deep dives into project learning" that would develop these skills, Mr. Fadel said.

An audience member noted that the skills Mr. Fadel enumerated have long been embedded into the curricula of universities and asked whether the failure to impart them to graduates to the satisfaction of employers meant that the higher-education system had failed. Mr. Fadel replied that, "to a large extent," it has.

Other participants on the panel agreed with that assessment. Martin Green, director general of workplace partnerships in Canada's Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, said that Canadian employers are increasingly reporting that graduates, both of the vocational sector and universities, are simply "not hitting the ground running."

Higher-education providers need to rethink both the depth and breadth of their curricula, a process that could be accomplished in just a few years, Mr. Fadel said.

Another panelist provided an example of a system that is moving swiftly to respond to employer demands. Warren Fox, executive director of higher education at an agency to assure educational quality in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said the emirate's pressing economic needs had forced universities to realign their curricula. "They've got open jobs and need to train people quickly," said Mr. Fox, a former visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education.

Setting Vocational-Education Standards

In another session, "Skills Development: Lessons from the European Experience," Tom Leney, head of the international unit of the British government's Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, noted that vocational education has played an especially important role in Europe over the past decade.

Vocational education has focused on three main themes: improving quality, improving access, and improving mobility, not just between countries and within countries, but also within subsectors of the education system, he said.

Manfred Tessaring, head of area research and policy analysis at the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, said Europe's education systems have been modernized by measures adopted throughout the continent, such as the establishment of a framework for validating educational credits across borders and improvements in lifelong learning. But much remains to be accomplished, he added, including identifying the skills needed for green jobs, providing more continuing training for older workers, and improving communication between educational systems and the labor market regarding the competencies, skills, and knowledge that workers need.

While much of the discussion of the perceived skills gap centered on the supposed shortcomings of higher-education systems, Philip Garrahan, a fellow of Britain's Higher Education Academy and an emeritus professor at Sheffield Hallam University, in England, offered a robust defense of universities in another session, "What Do Employers Seek and How Can We Deliver?"

Higher education is far more than just "a step to be taken, after which you go straight into employment," he said, noting that the very concept of "employability" can be difficult to define.

Higher-education institutions are being asked to serve the needs of diverse employers, representing all reaches of the economy, and all of which require specific skills. In Britain, he said, "universities have been putting a lot of effort into making the connection between what you do as a student and what you will do when you leave university," he said. They have made progress in areas such as learner autonomy, self-motivated learning, and lifelong learning, he said. Nonetheless, "the idea of a ready-cooked graduate, fully skilled up and ready to be produced out of the oven, is a pipe dream," he said.