Quick, everyone dropout because school will fail you, and you can go create JOBS! Jobs, not Steve but those things we all want and need, are the topic of the year. How do we generate them? What skills do new graduates (and really even us old ones) need? Is the future all digital or are we missing something by leaving off analog work? Can tests tell us the future? The list drones on. And, then again Steve Jobs is on our mind too as a symbol and maybe already as a myth for our time. After all, he rose, he fell, he rose again. Somewhere Joseph Campbell is smiling. I do find the life of Steve Jobs inspiring; I just don’t know that we can extrapolate lessons for the world from Jobs or the few like him. A recent Times article asks Will Drop Outs Save America? Jobs, Gates and Allen, the Twitter and Facebook founders, are lauded examples of those who had no college degree but have created some impressive companies. The article claims that schools fail to teach us “skills or attitudes that would ever help you start a business. Skills like sales, networking, creativity and comfort with failure.” Yet, Google has some rather impressive academic roots as do Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Amazon, and others. So what can we make of this? We are over-reading the evidence, and sorry but school plus technology are needed. Most important, they are what we make of them, and we should focus on the systems and rules that foster space for creative endeavors be they in school or the marketplace.
First, there is this claim “It’s time that we as a nation accepted a basic — and seldom-mentioned — fact. You don’t need a degree (and certainly not an M.B.A.) to start a business and create jobs, nor is it even that helpful, compared with cheaper, faster alternatives.”
Read More »Job Creation: Analog or Digital, Formal or Informal, the Paper or Plastic of Our Day