If securing a future made in Australia and becoming a green energy superpower are universally acknowledged as moonshot ambitions, then skilling the Australian workforce to achieving these goals must be recognised as nothing less than an interstellar challenge.
In fact, if you dwell on the magnitude of the skills gap that the nation needs to close now and in the next decade and beyond, the image that pops up is a black hole of despair.
The old punchline, We can’t get there from here, may sound glibly defeatist. But it’s the sanest conclusion to make if we are being real about reversing the scale of the nation’s skills deficit, the collapse in labour productivity and the decline in business dynamism we have allowed to fester.
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A great article. Thank you.
Our traditional education and training system is not able to keep up with the rapid changes in technology. The requirement for lifelong learning and the delivery of information as micro-credentials—quick to produce and deliver—calls for a more flexible approach.
Despite the widening digital skills gap, companies still go to universities for talent. It’s necessary to open up alternate learning pathways.