Employers are reportedly having a hard time sifting through continuing education options for employees, whether they be traditional undergraduate or grad school degrees or technical, short-term credentials.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that new technologies are driving companies to offer more skills training, but those same companies are struggling to sort out which programs are worthwhile.
There are over 738,000 secondary and postsecondary degrees, certificates, badges and other certifications available to U.S. workers, The Journal reports. Yet only half come from colleges and universities; just about as many come from online, non-academic sources.
As companies continue to offer tuition assistance, a growing number are turning to non-traditional skills training—like coding boot camps and LinkedIn Learning.
Lockheed Martin, for example, updated its company tuition-assistance policy in 2018 to include coverage for short-term certificates on topics like Linux software language and information security architecture. The company has since vetted about 150 certificate programs, comparing what certificates other companies offered their employees and what skills were actually needed.
Read the full report here.
