Vocational training is often not future-proof
Receptionists, warehouse employees and accountants will find it difficult to find work in the future. Then better not follow such a training? Of course it is. But MBO and MBO students have to adapt to the changing labor market.
Photo Fred van Diem - Education Magazine
Call center employee is currently a promising profession for an MBO student, according to the benefits agency UWV. Plenty of work. But speech robots will probably make the same call center employee redundant. Shouldn't teenagers be trained to become a call center employee?
Of course you do, says Karin Holderbusch, team leader at Roc Mondriaan. She is angry about reports in the media about ROCs training students for professions that will soon no longer exist. “For many people it is not diminishing that MBO students are the cogs that keep our labor market running. Professions evolve, as they always have. In the past, most people lived from agriculture and fishing. That has decreased considerably, but agriculture and fishing still exist. ”
Hans Vugts, director hotel Casa and chairman of the hospitality education consultations in Amsterdam, also does not understand the fear of the changing labor market. He and his fellow hospitality entrepreneurs are desperate for MBO students. “I can imagine that the number of administrative functions will decrease due to further automation. But I don't see robots serving in our restaurants. And many MBO students work in the household who check the cleaned rooms. I don't see a robot checking the top shelf of a closet or looking for hair down the drain. That is all very important human work. ”
You cannot expect a student to practice the same profession for fifty years
What about the receptionist, who, according to the UWV, does not have a promising profession? Vugts: “Traditional checking in and out may be replaced by checking in with your mobile. But even then people are still needed for the social aspect: to explain the city, the sights, where you can eat well, how public transport works. In the hospitality industry everything revolves around the attention of people of flesh and blood. ”
“I think that today's professions form the basis for the professions of the future,” says MBO team leader Holderbusch. "They will develop further via a robot, but that will not be overnight."
Foundation
The OECD, which compares rich industrial countries, praises in its report Education at a Glance 2017 Dutch vocational education is precisely for high success rates and good labor market prospects. Paul Kirschner, University Professor at the Open University and Professor of Educational Psychology: “The Oeso wants people to fit well into companies and that is something MBO does. If we train students properly, it is no problem at all that they are now following a course for a profession that will no longer exist in fifteen years' time. ” But Kirschner does not believe that we fully educate our students. “Vocational training should give students a good foundation of knowledge and skills. To a certain extent, MBO does that. But it stops too soon. Rocs teach students knowledge and skills, practice these and then test whether the students can apply what they have learned. Once the students have passed the test, the teachers continue. In doing so, they ignore the metacognitive skills. You also have to create situations in education in which the knowledge and skills learned are inadequate, in order to encourage students to look for solutions themselves. ”
The mboer is often well where he is and is not the first to want to move on
Kirschner takes the bakery school as an example. There you can teach your students how to bake the most delicious cakes. But if the student gets a job in the mountains, the baking works differently because of the different air pressure. “You cannot expect programs to teach students how to make a cake at sea level, at 1500 meters and at 2000 meters. In other words: you cannot give students everything they need to function properly. But secondary vocational education pretends that we can. ”
Adaptability
Resilience and adaptability are qualities that are important at every level, but perhaps extra for MBO students. Kirschner: "Due to the fact that you are trained in MBO for a specific profession, and can therefore see MBO as final education, it is even more important to include these things."
That training for a specific profession is outdated, says Ton Wilthagen, professor of the labor market at Tilburg University. “The concept of 'profession' as we know it today is outdated, the labor market is much more about competencies. Nowadays, if a career lasts fifty years, you can no longer expect to be in the same profession all those fifty years.
Moreover, it is difficult to predict the labor market. “For example, there is now a great demand for people who develop apps. While ten years ago we had no apps. And in the next six years there is still a considerable demand for MBO graduates with an economic-administrative education. While we previously thought that those professions would already have disappeared. What you can see is that there is now no need for MBO students who can handle their calculator well, but for MBO students who can apply administrative software well, ”says Wilthagen. “Although the need cannot necessarily be predicted, the direction can be. There is more and more work with a digital character. The chosen field of study makes less difference, as long as you understand devices and software. ”
Today's MBO students are not doing that enough, Wilthagen thinks. “In a number of courses, too little attention is paid to digital technology. For example, in healthcare education it is important that you are socially strong and understand how medicines work, but you must also ensure that students are sufficiently technically skilled. That is not happening now. "
Power
Back to the call center. Wouldn't it be better not to opt for that? Wilthagen: “It is best to follow a training to become a call center employee. But then, after three or four years, you have to be able to do something else and follow further training and further training. ”
And that requires a change of mentality. “MBO graduates are often in the right place and are not the first to want to continue”, team leader Holderbusch acknowledges. “After twenty years, who is still doing what he was initially trained for? Few people anyway. This should also become more common for MBO students. There is a task for employers there, they must give employees the space to develop. ”
This happens in the hospitality industry, according to Vugts. "MBO students can continue to grow and develop very well with us through internal training."
These are the catering employees who want to continue working in the catering industry. But what about the call center? Why would a call center help its staff get training for a completely different profession? According to Professor Wilthagen, that is where things go wrong. “Our infrastructure is now such that you are out of luck if your employer does not want to pay for further training. There is talk of lifelong learning, but it is the employer who pays and therefore has too much power. As a result, we do not have a future-proof model now. ”
