Companies Must Take More Responsibility for Education

It's well known that there is a serious shortage of IT talent both of the type that is capable of developing new systems as well as the type that is capable of managing a digital organization. Companies that go through a digital transformation process, and a few have, find themselves in a world of new issues. Business models inevitably change, with cost of entry dropping in some cases and profitability of new ventures becoming more unpredictable, or at least reactive to different pressures.

Many companies still rely on the traditional education system to produce the needed people. But that system is incapable of responding to new challenges quickly enough. While companies seek more agility, the educational system, by its nature, is limited in its capacity to be agile.

So companies have responded by providing training programs, which can be good, but usually are limited in their scope and depth because of the constraints of taking people out of production in order to train them.

What's really needed is a radical transformation in the overall educational and corporate training systems. They need to communicate and work together more effectively. Institutions need to respond to the needs of business. Corporate training needs to be an extension of the education provided by the institutions. It already often is informally but not so often formally.

Deloitte and others have said that “Companies should invest more in educating and training workforces for the digital era.” There is probably no alternative if companies are to remain competitive.

They're right. Companies need to put more resources into education.