I just read an article written by the Chief Executive of the global recruiting experts Hays titled “The Unemployable Graduate Crisis and How We Can Fix It”. While I appreciate that Mr. Cox has incredible insight as to who is prepared for the labour market and what types of misalignment there may be between the demands of firms and the skills and employability of applicants, I couldn’t help but shift in my seat in discomfort upon reading the article, as well as the comments section.  Cox suggests that limitations be set on what students can access in universities in order to better feed them into the labour market, focusing heavily on STEM and digital.  Right. So, a couple problems off the bat;  First of all, the specialisation and degree does not determine whether or not you will get the job, and we cannot predict with accuracy what will and won’t be in demand 5 years down the line; Read instead a slightly old but certainly not outdated LSE publication that discusses the complex intersection of education and work: “statistics on over- and under-education are difficult to interpret as workers are matched to jobs based on a range of characteristics and not just their education level”  Second, he assumes that all young people are going to act in ways that maximize their own or their countries’ national economic gains, and frankly, their choices probably have a lot more to do with their realities; their gender, where they live, how many people they need to feed at home. No education system can produce turn-key employees, especially if companies don’t invest more in educating for the skills they need–they can’t assume that it will happen magically. Third, pumping more STEM grads into the labour market assumes that whatever ‘skills’ they did gain will automatically be used and productivity and economic competitiveness will inevitably follow, yet research has shown that skills supply does not inevitably produce its own demand.  I think we have forgotten that a diverse set of minds not only exists, but is also necessary. Brilliant minds cannot and should not be molded into some cookie cutter form of thinking. The idea that some specialisations are irrelevant angers me to no avail.  In a world driven by innovation we need creative minds alongside technical ones, or we will fail miserably.  Rather than embrace fields like Medical Anthropology Cox is advocating we think inside the box. With the rapid technological advancements that are made, we really need to broaden our mindsets, rather than limit opportunities. Placing students on one-way pre-planned technical tracks to success simply cannot be achieved, because roads are bumpy, demands shift, collaboration is inevitable, and life happens. In the interdisciplinary and ever evolving world we live in, we need to think beyond specializations and fields of study and gravitate toward broadening opportunity and harnessing individual strengths through offering more learning opportunities, not less, allowing for more innovation and creativity across fields and employment opportunities.  While employers expect ready-to-eat employees, educational institutions are bound in their textbooks, so governments intervene on the supply side, but millenials are seeking a very different challenge than their predecessors.  All stakeholders need to recognize that there is a whole lot of pragmatism that needs to go into planning education and employment opportunities, to be more in line with the expectations and aspirations of those who are entering the labour market, and the demands of the 21st century economy–education alone is not a magic bullet.   I think anyone who has a college certification and has worked in more than one place can recognize that you forget most of what you learned, but remember how you learned it, that most of one’s learning happens on the job, so much of which is transferable, and so much of which you choose to do differently the next time around.  We also need to remember that there will inevitably be a next time around, and finding a job no longer means a job for life. Cox has many valid points and brings up very important numbers that must be considered seriously, but perhaps tracking students isn’t the right solution.  To be fair, he runs the match.com of jobs, so his logic is a mere occupational hazard.