A Growing Need for Training

The economy is shifting and companies will need to retool and retrain their people to produce higher quality services and products. Companies will need to change and adjust to keep up with growing trends in technological advancement. Intellectual capital will become a bigger necessity over the next decade. Where higher education fails is where training starts-sometimes they both can work together.

Higher eduction provides critical thinking skills and general industry knowledge that helps employees adapt and master their environment. Some people may go decades without updating their skills. When this occurs employees fall behind the changes in industry trends and they become stale and their value suffers.

One way to avoid skill deficiencies is to invest more in corporate training. Higher education may provide general knowledge while training & develop offers specific information to that business or industry. Companies are likely to train employees more in an effort to ensure that they are competitive.

Consider a company that is trying to create greater efficiencies through the use of adapting and integrating new technology. Employees that are not capable of understanding this new technology will be increasingly disposable as the technology outstrips their capacity to adapt to it.  Helping them adapt incrementally through training makes sense.

Intellectual capital is one of the most important assets any company can have. Without the knowledge needed to meet modern changes in technology and skill it is unlikely that higher value products and services will be produced. Companies that invest in training will create greater labor input value while those who don't will move more toward low value products.

Hiring and Wages Up While Growth Slows

The government recently released data that says a slow growth 1.4% was realized in the last quarter of 2015 while payrolls expanded 1.5 million jobs over the last 6 months. On top of this was a sluggish GDP expansion of .5% and increasing wages of 2.3%. Investments appear to be slowing down and consumers are holding back on spending.

This creates a problem of pessimism influencing the economic engines while at the same time wages increasingly rise  against the investment trajectory. If the trend of low growth and slack investment continues wages will also begin to slow down. Considering that 2/3rds of the economy is driven off of consumer spending there will also be a greater impact on income in the future.

Unless big investors and consumers become more optimistic about the economy there will be a continual slowing of national growth. The economy is a much more global world and the U.S. was projected to be one of the fastest growing out of the industrialized nations but this has now changed. Even though the global risks have reduced the U.S. is not isolated from the slower growth in other countries.

The economy is impact more by global factors than it was in the past. Wages don't exist in a national vacuum and are impacted by international investment trends. It is likely that consumer spending will increase as wages increase disposable income but the long term impact is likely to be muted. The second quarter might be more reflective of what will actually happen over the year as quirks make their way out of the data.

Keeping Higher Education Funded

States are suffering from budget shortfalls that have improved over the past few years but have not returned to pre-recession levels. Higher education funding has declined and is making a slow comeback in budget allocations. As states wrestle with how to educate the next generation they will need to tackle important issues related funding and the need to keep up with economic shifts.

We know that the world is changing and the next 30 years there will be rapid shifts in the job skills need. Those with higher education are likely to do much better than those who do not have advanced degrees. As the market needs shift toward more technical work that requires higher levels of critical thinking there will be a need to reeducate the population.

Many jobs where people were left behind, laid off of work, and unable to find new work were because the fundamentals of the market changed. People who worked the same job in decades suddenly found themselves without prospects. They will need to go back to school and find new ways of making a living.

Ensuring that higher education is funded in a way that keeps people focused on adjusting when the market changes helps to keep the population up to date and the country competitive. It will be necessary to make sure that when jobs are being fazed out that people either enroll in school or find new training. Solving fundamental higher education issues will become an increasing need in a faster paced world.

The Impact of Mentoring in Higher Education

Higher education isn't known for having strong mentoring programs.  Mentors provide a valuable service to organizations by helping them develop talent that far exceeds the technicalities earned through training courses. Mentors can act as guides that encourage not only greater thinking but also proper socialization to the academic world. Research supports the idea that mentoring can help students and professors achieve higher levels of performance.

Performance is about perspective. People must see the value in the work they do as personally valuable to them. Mentors can help the employee get a grasp on defining what behaviors lead to the highest opportunities for personal success by tapping their natural inclinations toward certain goals. As a person works through issues they are likely to become more focused in their efforts.

Mentoring gets people to envision possibilities of success by finding paths that help them achieved desired outcomes. The relationship offers an opportunity for the participants to share their ideas and receive valuable feedback. As the connections between motivation, action, and outcome become solidified, performance behavior improves.

A study of young tenured professors found that mentoring led to improvements in obtaining grants, positive impression of the workplace, and the quality research (van der Weijden, Belder & van Arensbergen, 2015). The nature of higher education is complex and significant "thinking" work must be engaged in to fulfill the roles of the position. A mentor can help guide professors to navigate this complex field.

Students benefit from mentor relationships with advanced peers that can guide them in their academic pursuits. According to a study of peer matching between advanced students and entry level students performance on grades and the number of classes passed improved for those who were involved in the program (Leidenfrost, Strassnig, and Scutz, 2014).

Having a guide helps professors and students work through issues and stay focused on important tasks. What they might have eventually learned through trial and error can now bounced off of their mentors to come to new insights quickly. Learning curves speed up while wasted search behavior declines helping participants grow as quickly as possible.

As a person who seeks to understand the benefits of mentors I must wonder they have an impact on student and professor retention, Having someone to talk with and the benefits of reduced frustration could help universities retain high quality talent and lower drop out rates. Mentoring may hold promises as a more integrated and proactive form of management for professors and as a way of creating a sense of community among students.

Leindenfrost, B., Strassnig, B. & Barbara, S. (2014). The impact of peer mentoring on mentee academic performance: is any mentoring style better than no mentoring at all? International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 26 (1).

van der Weijden, I., Belder, R. & van Arensbergen, P. (2015). How do young tenured professors benefit from a mentor? Effects on management, motivation and performance. The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 62 (2).

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