Tech Skills Shortage Puts World-Leading Ambition At Risk, Report Warns

Ambitions to be world leaders in tech risk being thwarted by a shortage of skills, warns a new report.

Technological superiority has become both an economic and a strategic priority in the post-globalized era, following the twin shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing international tensions.

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U.S. President Joe Biden has set out his aim to “develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future”, as part of an ambition to revitalize industry.

Across the Atlantic Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is hoping to position the U.K. as a global tech leader, most notably as the home of AI regulation.

But neither country is doing enough to nurture the talent that could achieve these ambitions, according to a report by online learning giant Coursera.

The platform assessed the skills proficiency of 124 million of its learners across 100 countries for its fifth annual Global Skills Report.

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And the resulting rankings made sobering reading for both Biden’s and Sunak’s ambitions.

The U.K. ranks 64th in a table dominated by Europe, with Switzerland, Spain and Germany taking the top three places and the continent occupying eight of the top 10 positions.

The U.S. fares even worse at 78th, although this masks wide variation between states, with the East and West coasts generally performing well and the Deep South largely at the other end of the spectrum.

The U.K.’s slide from 38th in last year’s rankings has been particularly led by decreasing interest and proficiency in skills where the country is aiming to be a world leader, such as biotech, biosecurity and fintech, according to Marni Baker Stein, Coursera’s chief content officer.

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There has also been a decline in “bread and butter” skills, such as data science and analytical skills.

“The U.K. is investing less in skills-based training,” Ms Baker Stein says. “The U.K. has large ambitions to be a cyber-security power globally, but the gaps that are starting to emerge between what learners are capable of and the jobs that are out there are a cause for concern.”

U.S. efforts to create a skilled workforce have been hampered by an educational pathway that is not sufficiently aligned to where the economy is going, she said.

“The focus of educational programs has not kept up with the needs of work, now and into a fast-changing future,” she added.

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The consequence for both the U.S. and the U.K. is that they are having to import a sizeable proportion of their skilled workforces, a position that gets them out of a hole but is “not sustainable” in the long run, she said.

The rankings were produced by measuring the skills proficiency across a number of areas when learners start on the platform, forming the basis of a country profile.

The U.K. and U.S. positions reflect a lack of investment in skills, which needs to take in not just young learners but acknowledges the need for people to keep developing their skills throughout their working lives.

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But education on its own is not enough, without giving learners a steer over what skills are involved and where they are needed, she added.

Switzerland has become a world leader not just by investing in infrastructure and education but by developing pathways to help learners get good jobs, she added.

“We need to effectively built them into our educational pathways like we have done with reading and math and science and literature,” Ms Baker Stein said.

“These skills need to be part of every person’s basic literacy and knowledge about how they stack up into different career paths.

“We need to understand what these sectors and jobs are and better understand how to access them.”

She acknowledges that measuring skill levels is just one signal, but taken alongside workforce shortages in fields such as cybersecurity it helps to build an overall picture.

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There are grounds for optimism, however. Learners as well as institutions are becoming more focused on value rather than immediate outcomes, and more institutions are building tech skills into the curriculum, she said.

“The educational problem of our time is supporting people through life-time pathways of learning so they can stay relevant in the job market,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine where that is going to go, but it is going to happen. It must happen.”