Employers: Time to take more responsibility for training and developing key employees

I blogged the other day about how people with vocational qualifications may be set for a bright future, certainly in terms of pay. Interestingly, a further article related to the matter of vocational qualification appears in today's Personnel Today.

The article - IT graduates see degrees as a waste of time (by Michael Miller) - suggests almost half of recent IT graduates think they should have skipped their degrees and gone straight into work. A further noteworthy comment points to a widely-held belief that half (53 per cent) of respondents said they would have preferred to complete vocational or on-the-job training.

What this suggests to me is that university or an advanced college education is by no means the only path to a successful and rewarding career. The unanswered question, however, to come from this scenario is why are school leavers going into full-time educational programmes (that are largely funded by the individual) when employers (with the help of FE and HE institutions) can provide adequate training themselves? I can't help feeling, also, that employers are best suited for developing careers of technical and professional jobs, but avoid this burden if at all possible.

The result is people feel they have been duped into funding training opportunities that can be easily accommodated by employers. Employers need to be pressurised into relieving the burden of individuals instead of blaming institutions for not providing them with ready-made and ready-to-go trained employees.