Cultural Organization (UNESCO), titled “Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education,” was two years in the
making. Over that time, researchers engaged “around one million people, invited
governments, institutions, organizations and citizens around the world to forge a new social contract for education that [would] help us build peaceful, just, and sustainable futures for all.” The study found that income inequality, climate change, technology, demographic shifts, access to education, and structural changes in labor markets will significantly influence education; and that to ensure students are prepared, colleges and universities must rethink and revision education itself. Part of this rethinking and revisioning includes understanding that “skills developed today are unlikely to align with those demanded by the jobs of tomorrow and many will become obsolete.” As a result, education and training systems must increase the support available to those directly experiencing labour market
transitions."
What this means is that the ‘learning must be relevant to the world of work.’ For example, “one of the best strategies to prepare for green
economies and a carbon-neutral future is to ensure qualifications, programmes and
curricula deliver ‘green skills’, be they for newly emerging occupations and sectors or for those sectors undergoing transformation for the low-carbon economy.”33 While the report emphasized the need for intercultural understanding, colleges and universities must question whether skills development is being
addressed at the same level as ideological
argument.
There is cause for worry. A recent Cengage survey of Americans who graduated from a two-year community or four-year college in the past five years found that nearly one in five (19%) reported that their college education experience did not provide them with the skills needed to perform their first post-degree job. Additionally, more than half (53%) of these college graduates have not applied to an entry-level job in their field because they felt unqualified, and nearly half (42%) felt unqualified because they did not have all the skills listed in the job description.
For these reasons, commentators argue that “now is the time for employers to increase credibility for skills-based hiring, to remove stigmas around vocational education, and to move forward to create equal opportunities for all students.”34 If students start avoiding colleges and universities because they do not provide the skills needed to get a job, then efforts to increase cultural awareness – whether legitimate or not – will be for naught.
(continued on page 94)
As the positions of multiculturalists came to be supported not only by administrative power but by increasing scholarship in the Marxist, feminist, and deconstructionist fields (all of which, ironically, focused not so much on ideas but on the process of empowerment – whether economic, sexual, or creative), so too the legitimacy of multiculturalists took on new dimensions.
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