8 ms·

Do adults have the skills they need to thrive in a changing world?

49 points by ciconia 2y ago

sam_lowry_ 2y ago
I tried finding why Brussels and Wallonia did not participate, but could not. Any idea?
- tijgerbeagle 2y ago
  also, is Brussels included in "Flemish Region" ? I have a feeling Wallonia was not high enough to get on the charts
  - sam_lowry_ 2y ago
    Brussels is clearly not included.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
[flagged]
redblacktree 2y ago
[flagged]
- junaru 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throawayonthe 2y ago
    [dead]
  - voidUpdate 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - rvense 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - analog31 2y ago
    In German there are three.
  - xg15 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't post ideological battle comments here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, usually by evoking worse from others. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- smeej 2y ago
  Both sides promise to fix everything all the time. That's essentially the whole game. I don't even know how long ago people stopped believing they had the agency to improve things in their own lives themselves, but it seems.to have coincided with the 24-hour worldwide news cycle. It used to be that most of the bad things you found out about in the world were things you might be able to do something about. Your neighbor's car breaks down and she needs a ride to work. A family has a fire and needs furniture or clothes. These days it's hard even to find those kinds of local mews stories. Instead you're reading about gigantic crises all over the world you can't possibly touch and need to be solved at a scale far, far removed from your influence. I'm not saying having "low information voters" because people are illiterate or innumerate isn't a problem. I just don't think it's the primary one influencing the kinds of candidates that run or the kinds of promises that get them elected.
- throawayonthe 2y ago
  [dead]
- rikafurude21 2y ago
  Stupid people are the majority in most common groups of people and so this argument can basically be used against anyone, espeically politically. Also, there are countries besides the US. Americans sometimes forget that.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  > It's really no wonder far-right candidates promising to fix everything are doing well lately. Many OECD countries would have had a large chunk of the population now +50 yrs old who where born in a time where they physically didn't have access to education and where child labour was normalized. Secondly, I hear a shockingly high number of University educated Europeans (in historically social-democrat countries) quite simply repeating TT talking points that Trump is a better choice for the 'economy'. What we are lacking is proper education on human biases, and on identifying and understand how propaganda operates.
- ben_w 2y ago
  The bottom 18% of adults have, by definition, an IQ of 86.2 or less. While there's ongoing argument about the extent to which that's a selection bias and there's other skills that aren't captured in this metric (and already were well before LLMs demonstrated that it's definitely possible to train for those tests), IQ scores do correlate with the ability to perform across those kinds of skills. While we can — and, I would argue, should — help raise people up as far as possible, it's not really surprising that the least capable are the least capable.
- lossolo 2y ago
  > far-right candidates promising to fix everything are doing well lately It has always been like this—just the end of a cycle, accelerated by the invention of social networks, which broke the monopoly of information gatekeeping and broadcasting, once controlled by a few TV/radio stations and newspapers. Adding to this is the outsourcing of most low-wage industries (so where most of these 18% of voters worked) to Asia. What you call a "low information voter" has always existed and will continue to exist.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  From https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535279/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-education-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535279/presidential-ele... while, yes, less educated voters voted Republican in larger numbers, 45% of voters with bachelor's degrees and even 38% of people with post-graduate education voted for the Republicans. Shame on them but that still deflates the "low information voter" meme being circulated. The public, even the educated, just wasn't into the message the Democratic Party was selling.
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't post ideological battle comments here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, usually by evoking worse from others. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
nextworddev 2y ago
More than ever basic computer science, economics, political science, and security fundamentals are needed to at least avoid being complete NPCs. Unfortunately intellectual pursuits are looked down upon (perhaps by design)
- te_chris 2y ago
  Not least by the idiots in power saying STEM STEM STEM and defunding the departments that provide context to the world.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    I had a similar argument this morning with friends. Italy has a strong humanities imprinting in its society and school programs, and math/physics are usually taught in a horrible way, with the end result that people saying "I can't do math ahahah" are quite a common thing amongst the non stem people. However, if you say "I don't know shit about Dante" you'll be seen as ignorant (rightfully so, imho). I don't think the guilt is on the people saying they can't understand math, because they probably are right in that they have troubles with simple maths. The school system still lays on the fascist philosopher Gentile. However, I don't think that stem is inherently less apt at creating citizens than humanities. For some things required today to be a decent citizen, a bit of stem knowledge is required, let alone if you want do dwelve into politics choices. Most engineers I know are pro nuclear. Amongst non engineers, this support is way less present. If I try to talk to someone about digital privacy, chances are nobody is gonna be interested about it except for a few stem people. And yet these are all things that are actual topics in the public discourse. Stem stem stem isn't inherently bad in itself. It's bad if you go stem stem stem and you think you are superior, but I don't think it's bad in itself. I think I've mad a bunch of different arguments and some might be a bit hard to understand, feel free to ask for clarifications
    - te_chris 2y ago
      I agree, studying STEM doesn't exclude becoming a balanced person. Politcians tinkering with the education system and killing humanities and arts departments because they don't make coders makes it harder to create a balanced society. The irony of LLMs is that the sorts of modes of thinking taught by art and the humanities are going to be more valuable as we need to evaluate and work with AI and agents. Science and engineering will remain valuable too! But that isn't what's being questioned by these midwit business graduates we call leaders.
boomskats 2y ago
It took a while to find an actual explanation for the Polish data issues they mention. It's at the end of section 5 of the Reader's Companion document, under "Overall assessment of data quality" [0]. Click saver: > In Poland, nine interviewers were identified as having a relatively large share of cases with unusual response patterns of respondents, using the same criteria that led to the identification of cases in the other countries. All data from these interviewers (774 cases in total) have been excluded from the data used to estimate the population model, which establishes the relationship between the variables from the background questionnaire and performance on the direct assessment to generate proficiency estimates (OECD, forthcoming[1]). This exclusion enhances the robustness of the model, by ensuring it is estimated based only on the cases considered to be of sufficient quality. > Moreover, stronger evidence was collected that six of these interviewers in Poland breached data collection protocols throughout the survey. For instance, some of these interviewers were implausibly productive, conducting many interviews on a single day. Others did not record interviews or obtain respondents’ phone numbers, which made validation of interviews more difficult. Yet another interviewer was found to have falsified seven cases during data collection (cases which were immediately removed from the dataset as part of the quality-control process and are not included in the 774 cases under consideration in this note). Twenty-seven other cases collected from this interviewer were, however, validated and remained in the dataset. Since these factors raise concerns about the quality of all cases completed by these six interviewers, the responses to the cognitive assessment items for all cases of these six interviewers were excluded from the database (559 in total). Plausible values for these cases were then estimated using only their responses to the background questionnaire (for which no unusual patterns were detected) and the parameters estimated by the population model. > In Poland, other cases with unusual response patterns that could suggest possible disengagement or lack of a reasonable level of effort during the assessment were identified. As these cases were not clustered within any particular interviewer, they were left in the dataset and treated as all other cases, given the difficulty of establishing objective criteria to determine whether reasonable effort was exerted, and whether the results of the assessment truly reflect the proficiency of respondents. While similar cases are present in all countries, the number of such cases in Poland can potentially have a significant impact on the estimated proficiency of the overall population. This should be kept in mind when interpreting Poland’s results. For this reason, in OECD (2024[3]) results for Poland are flagged with an asterisk. [0]: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adult-skills-2023_3639d1e2-en/full-report/the-methodology-of-the-2023-survey-of-adult-skills-and-the-quality-of-data_f06aecea.html#section-d1e16955-979fd8ccd0 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adult-skills-...
ricokatayama 2y ago
> Skills mismatches call for greater alignment between education and the labour market with about one-third of workers in OECD countries being overqualified or underqualified for their positions, the misalignment has economic and social implications, particularly for overqualified individuals. The question here is how to align educational actions with market demands. Skills alignment is only possible at a very granular level, and mass initiatives fail to meet this need. Companies lack the tools to understand people on a very deep level. This is my current obsession.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  You mean undercertified or overcertified? No amount of formal education can guarantee whether someone’s genuinely qualified to handle a certain position or not.
  - ricokatayama 2y ago
    According to the study, for those who are overqualified
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  And mass initiatives (like university degrees) are created fastest for the strongest signals -- the loudest hype -- and thus tends to overproduce new people just as demand dies. What are your thoughts on how we can help improve this alignment?
  - ricokatayama 2y ago
    Hey pal, indeed, these anomalies occur mainly due to a lack of signals coming from the hiring market itself. Formation initiatives (and even people’s interests) always lag behind what the market is ready to absorb. I've been talking to the entire market about skill management and I’ve noticed how flawed our methods for visualizing individual skillsets are. It’s impossible to consider upskilling and reskilling this way. When demand arises, the only possible solution is firing and hiring. This alignment will only occur when the demand provides a granular, specific, and clear indication of the skill gap.
lordnacho 2y ago
The skills you really need to thrive in the world aren't listed: emotional control and social navigation I've seen plenty of people be successful without being able to do algebra, while barely ever reading a book. I've never seen anyone reach great heights without being in control of their own feelings and understanding the feelings of others. Of course it's hard to measure such nebulous skills, but we've all come across it in our day-to-day. We've all met that guy who seems to know exactly what to say in every situation.
- j45 2y ago
  Learning how to learn is probably a more root/core skill. There’s a free and popular course by that name too.
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  You speak a great deal of truth - I found myself learning these skills at the pointy end of a cane at British boarding school, and they have served me exceptionally well, in everything from my career to chatting up a policeman I can barely speak the language of to not pay a hefty fine. These skills will continue to be valuable regardless of what the future holds. I would add one related, arguably harder skill to master - pattern recognition. Being able to see patterns where others do not yet is an enormously valuable skill in life, and a key part of my arsenal for a changing world - I am, after all, an elder millennial, and I have watched the world go from smoking on the tube, bowler hats, typewriters and briefcases to… this - and I have anticipated and adapted. I have found myself thinking a lot about this topic of late - I have a daughter, soon to be two, and I want to ensure that she is well equipped for whatever the world throws at her.
  - xnorswap 2y ago
    > pointy end of a cane > I am, after all, an elder millennial These things do not add up at all.
    - lordnacho 2y ago
      I think they still had corporal punishment into the early 90s in the UK?
gryfft 2y ago
Heh, fun headline to apply Betteridge's law to. > However, on average across OECD countries, 18% of adults do not even have the most basic levels of proficiency in any of the domains. This is painful but unsurprising.
WokeGayFaggot 2y ago
[dead]
newsclues 2y ago
Which adults? I think lots of the university educated ones (without professional skills), not really. The tradespeople and dropouts that figured life out on their own, those ones have a better shot.
Eumenes 2y ago
> Adults with highly educated parents have better literacy skill levels than those with less educated parents Lol, not sure about this. I have two young children in private school and most of the kids come from wealth, like white collar/office professions, etc. My wife and I have the hardest time identifying with our fellow parents. They have zero hobbies outside of: social media, bringing their kids to breweries on Saturday, sports, Netflix, etc. Our single friends tend to be far more interesting with eclectic tastes.
- nunez 2y ago
  Can't have hobbies when you're busy working to afford that private school
- lotsoweiners 2y ago
  Sounds like my kinda people.
- ozim 2y ago
  I think you conflated highly educated with wealthy. At the same time you conflated having eclectic tase with being highly educated. I have really well educated friends who are burgers and beers and having not really sophisticated hobbies while doing really sophisticated jobs.
everdrive 2y ago
Does the world need to change at an ever-growing rate? From my perspective there's no net benefit here. Just constant churn.
- zwirbl 2y ago
  Need to? No, of course not. Will it slow down? Unlikely
- wruza 2y ago
  There’s no way to stop either. Change is a consequence of competition, which comes from resource shortage, which is a natural part of logistic map that the nature follows, well, naturally. It’s constant churn by design. It would be nice if we could agree to stop, negotiate reasonably and relax (and grab those with noses too high and throw them into a deep pit). But it doesn’t seem to happen any soon. Attempts were made but turned out to be a really bad joke. Humans are too stupid for that to work.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
Slightly off topic - but probably a big reason that Finland has good literacy scores, is the television companies choose to subtitle foreign content rather than dub. My wife taught herself to read before starting school so she could understand what was going on in Charlie's Angels It's caused a stir when Netflix dubbed some films into Finnish https://yle.fi/a/3-12275492 https://yle.fi/a/3-12275492
- perihelion_zero 2y ago
  Finland proving the supremacy of "Subs not Dubs". Noted for future reference.
- Yizahi 2y ago
  > After all, no one is being forced to watch the dubbed version of the film. Yeah, except when we do, but it is too late then. Currently staying not in my home country and last year saw that "Everything Everywhere All At Once" was streaming. I immediately started it, only to discover that it was dubbed in the local language. So I got either local dub, or Chinese+local sub, nothing else. And my level of local language was like A1 or so. Thankfully a year later this issue has been solved, because it is not available for streaming at all today. Yay!.. :)
perihelion_zero 2y ago
Almost anyone who has a semi-useful technical or trade skill and can manage communications, marketing, sales etc is liable to become extremely rich. Almost anyone with no skills except they can talk to people and arrange/organize deals is liable to make someone else rich, and might be well-off if they can figure out how to get a slice of the pie.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
incomingpain 2y ago
Who decided education is the only factor to thrive in a changing world? Literacy? I figure the majority of adults in my neighbour are not literate. My definition of literate is 1 non-fiction book per year OR 1 fiction book per month. The big problem I see in society, fundamental flaw that's changed significantly in the last 30-40 years. Emotional regulation. The real root cause problem is that there's a growing group of people(no available label, diverse group) who genuinely believe they are 'empaths' not like Vulcan level, but Betazed like. This group of people believe they are so good at emotions they can accurately sense other people's emotions. In reality, they are so emotionally dysregulated that other people's emotions overwhelm them.
Balgair 2y ago
I'd suggest people dig into their specific country's data too (at the bottom) For the US it is here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adults-skills-2023-country-notes_ab4f6b8c-en/united-states_427d6aac-en.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adults-skills... Though the US is near average, man, that's really hiding some data there. Things that stood out to me: In literacy, 28% of adults (OECD average: 26%) scored at Level 1 or below, meaning they have low literacy proficiency. In numeracy, 34% of adults (OECD average: 25%) scored at or below Level 1 proficiency In adaptive problem solving, 32% of adults (OECD average: 29%) scored at or below Level 1 proficiency. In the United States, average results in 2022-23 went down compared to 2012/15 in literacy and numeracy Again, these results are near the average. But still...? I wasn't expecting that ~1/4 or ~1/3 adults had these issues or that we were going in this direction. Yes, the reasons are flamewar-able, of course. Still, these data points are, to me, stark.

49 points by ciconia 2y ago

sam_lowry_ 2y ago

I tried finding why Brussels and Wallonia did not participate, but could not. Any idea?

tijgerbeagle 2y ago
also, is Brussels included in "Flemish Region" ? I have a feeling Wallonia was not high enough to get on the charts
- sam_lowry_ 2y ago
  Brussels is clearly not included.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

[flagged]

redblacktree 2y ago

[flagged]

junaru 2y ago
[flagged]
- throawayonthe 2y ago
  [dead]
- voidUpdate 2y ago
  [flagged]
- rvense 2y ago
  [flagged]
- analog31 2y ago
  In German there are three.
- xg15 2y ago
  [flagged]
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't post ideological battle comments here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, usually by evoking worse from others. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
smeej 2y ago
Both sides promise to fix everything all the time. That's essentially the whole game. I don't even know how long ago people stopped believing they had the agency to improve things in their own lives themselves, but it seems.to have coincided with the 24-hour worldwide news cycle. It used to be that most of the bad things you found out about in the world were things you might be able to do something about. Your neighbor's car breaks down and she needs a ride to work. A family has a fire and needs furniture or clothes. These days it's hard even to find those kinds of local mews stories. Instead you're reading about gigantic crises all over the world you can't possibly touch and need to be solved at a scale far, far removed from your influence. I'm not saying having "low information voters" because people are illiterate or innumerate isn't a problem. I just don't think it's the primary one influencing the kinds of candidates that run or the kinds of promises that get them elected.
throawayonthe 2y ago
[dead]
rikafurude21 2y ago
Stupid people are the majority in most common groups of people and so this argument can basically be used against anyone, espeically politically. Also, there are countries besides the US. Americans sometimes forget that.
DoingIsLearning 2y ago
> It's really no wonder far-right candidates promising to fix everything are doing well lately. Many OECD countries would have had a large chunk of the population now +50 yrs old who where born in a time where they physically didn't have access to education and where child labour was normalized. Secondly, I hear a shockingly high number of University educated Europeans (in historically social-democrat countries) quite simply repeating TT talking points that Trump is a better choice for the 'economy'. What we are lacking is proper education on human biases, and on identifying and understand how propaganda operates.
ben_w 2y ago
The bottom 18% of adults have, by definition, an IQ of 86.2 or less. While there's ongoing argument about the extent to which that's a selection bias and there's other skills that aren't captured in this metric (and already were well before LLMs demonstrated that it's definitely possible to train for those tests), IQ scores do correlate with the ability to perform across those kinds of skills. While we can — and, I would argue, should — help raise people up as far as possible, it's not really surprising that the least capable are the least capable.
lossolo 2y ago
> far-right candidates promising to fix everything are doing well lately It has always been like this—just the end of a cycle, accelerated by the invention of social networks, which broke the monopoly of information gatekeeping and broadcasting, once controlled by a few TV/radio stations and newspapers. Adding to this is the outsourcing of most low-wage industries (so where most of these 18% of voters worked) to Asia. What you call a "low information voter" has always existed and will continue to exist.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
From https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535279/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-education-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1535279/presidential-ele... while, yes, less educated voters voted Republican in larger numbers, 45% of voters with bachelor's degrees and even 38% of people with post-graduate education voted for the Republicans. Shame on them but that still deflates the "low information voter" meme being circulated. The public, even the educated, just wasn't into the message the Democratic Party was selling.
dang 2y ago
Please don't post ideological battle comments here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, usually by evoking worse from others. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

nextworddev 2y ago

More than ever basic computer science, economics, political science, and security fundamentals are needed to at least avoid being complete NPCs. Unfortunately intellectual pursuits are looked down upon (perhaps by design)

te_chris 2y ago
Not least by the idiots in power saying STEM STEM STEM and defunding the departments that provide context to the world.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I had a similar argument this morning with friends. Italy has a strong humanities imprinting in its society and school programs, and math/physics are usually taught in a horrible way, with the end result that people saying "I can't do math ahahah" are quite a common thing amongst the non stem people. However, if you say "I don't know shit about Dante" you'll be seen as ignorant (rightfully so, imho). I don't think the guilt is on the people saying they can't understand math, because they probably are right in that they have troubles with simple maths. The school system still lays on the fascist philosopher Gentile. However, I don't think that stem is inherently less apt at creating citizens than humanities. For some things required today to be a decent citizen, a bit of stem knowledge is required, let alone if you want do dwelve into politics choices. Most engineers I know are pro nuclear. Amongst non engineers, this support is way less present. If I try to talk to someone about digital privacy, chances are nobody is gonna be interested about it except for a few stem people. And yet these are all things that are actual topics in the public discourse. Stem stem stem isn't inherently bad in itself. It's bad if you go stem stem stem and you think you are superior, but I don't think it's bad in itself. I think I've mad a bunch of different arguments and some might be a bit hard to understand, feel free to ask for clarifications
  - te_chris 2y ago
    I agree, studying STEM doesn't exclude becoming a balanced person. Politcians tinkering with the education system and killing humanities and arts departments because they don't make coders makes it harder to create a balanced society. The irony of LLMs is that the sorts of modes of thinking taught by art and the humanities are going to be more valuable as we need to evaluate and work with AI and agents. Science and engineering will remain valuable too! But that isn't what's being questioned by these midwit business graduates we call leaders.

boomskats 2y ago

It took a while to find an actual explanation for the Polish data issues they mention. It's at the end of section 5 of the Reader's Companion document, under "Overall assessment of data quality" [0]. Click saver: > In Poland, nine interviewers were identified as having a relatively large share of cases with unusual response patterns of respondents, using the same criteria that led to the identification of cases in the other countries. All data from these interviewers (774 cases in total) have been excluded from the data used to estimate the population model, which establishes the relationship between the variables from the background questionnaire and performance on the direct assessment to generate proficiency estimates (OECD, forthcoming[1]). This exclusion enhances the robustness of the model, by ensuring it is estimated based only on the cases considered to be of sufficient quality. > Moreover, stronger evidence was collected that six of these interviewers in Poland breached data collection protocols throughout the survey. For instance, some of these interviewers were implausibly productive, conducting many interviews on a single day. Others did not record interviews or obtain respondents’ phone numbers, which made validation of interviews more difficult. Yet another interviewer was found to have falsified seven cases during data collection (cases which were immediately removed from the dataset as part of the quality-control process and are not included in the 774 cases under consideration in this note). Twenty-seven other cases collected from this interviewer were, however, validated and remained in the dataset. Since these factors raise concerns about the quality of all cases completed by these six interviewers, the responses to the cognitive assessment items for all cases of these six interviewers were excluded from the database (559 in total). Plausible values for these cases were then estimated using only their responses to the background questionnaire (for which no unusual patterns were detected) and the parameters estimated by the population model. > In Poland, other cases with unusual response patterns that could suggest possible disengagement or lack of a reasonable level of effort during the assessment were identified. As these cases were not clustered within any particular interviewer, they were left in the dataset and treated as all other cases, given the difficulty of establishing objective criteria to determine whether reasonable effort was exerted, and whether the results of the assessment truly reflect the proficiency of respondents. While similar cases are present in all countries, the number of such cases in Poland can potentially have a significant impact on the estimated proficiency of the overall population. This should be kept in mind when interpreting Poland’s results. For this reason, in OECD (2024[3]) results for Poland are flagged with an asterisk. [0]: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adult-skills-2023_3639d1e2-en/full-report/the-methodology-of-the-2023-survey-of-adult-skills-and-the-quality-of-data_f06aecea.html#section-d1e16955-979fd8ccd0 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adult-skills-...

ricokatayama 2y ago

> Skills mismatches call for greater alignment between education and the labour market with about one-third of workers in OECD countries being overqualified or underqualified for their positions, the misalignment has economic and social implications, particularly for overqualified individuals. The question here is how to align educational actions with market demands. Skills alignment is only possible at a very granular level, and mass initiatives fail to meet this need. Companies lack the tools to understand people on a very deep level. This is my current obsession.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
You mean undercertified or overcertified? No amount of formal education can guarantee whether someone’s genuinely qualified to handle a certain position or not.
- ricokatayama 2y ago
  According to the study, for those who are overqualified
datadrivenangel 2y ago
And mass initiatives (like university degrees) are created fastest for the strongest signals -- the loudest hype -- and thus tends to overproduce new people just as demand dies. What are your thoughts on how we can help improve this alignment?
- ricokatayama 2y ago
  Hey pal, indeed, these anomalies occur mainly due to a lack of signals coming from the hiring market itself. Formation initiatives (and even people’s interests) always lag behind what the market is ready to absorb. I've been talking to the entire market about skill management and I’ve noticed how flawed our methods for visualizing individual skillsets are. It’s impossible to consider upskilling and reskilling this way. When demand arises, the only possible solution is firing and hiring. This alignment will only occur when the demand provides a granular, specific, and clear indication of the skill gap.

lordnacho 2y ago

The skills you really need to thrive in the world aren't listed: emotional control and social navigation I've seen plenty of people be successful without being able to do algebra, while barely ever reading a book. I've never seen anyone reach great heights without being in control of their own feelings and understanding the feelings of others. Of course it's hard to measure such nebulous skills, but we've all come across it in our day-to-day. We've all met that guy who seems to know exactly what to say in every situation.

j45 2y ago
Learning how to learn is probably a more root/core skill. There’s a free and popular course by that name too.
madaxe_again 2y ago
You speak a great deal of truth - I found myself learning these skills at the pointy end of a cane at British boarding school, and they have served me exceptionally well, in everything from my career to chatting up a policeman I can barely speak the language of to not pay a hefty fine. These skills will continue to be valuable regardless of what the future holds. I would add one related, arguably harder skill to master - pattern recognition. Being able to see patterns where others do not yet is an enormously valuable skill in life, and a key part of my arsenal for a changing world - I am, after all, an elder millennial, and I have watched the world go from smoking on the tube, bowler hats, typewriters and briefcases to… this - and I have anticipated and adapted. I have found myself thinking a lot about this topic of late - I have a daughter, soon to be two, and I want to ensure that she is well equipped for whatever the world throws at her.
- xnorswap 2y ago
  > pointy end of a cane > I am, after all, an elder millennial These things do not add up at all.
  - lordnacho 2y ago
    I think they still had corporal punishment into the early 90s in the UK?

gryfft 2y ago

Heh, fun headline to apply Betteridge's law to. > However, on average across OECD countries, 18% of adults do not even have the most basic levels of proficiency in any of the domains. This is painful but unsurprising.

WokeGayFaggot 2y ago

[dead]

newsclues 2y ago

Which adults? I think lots of the university educated ones (without professional skills), not really. The tradespeople and dropouts that figured life out on their own, those ones have a better shot.

Eumenes 2y ago

> Adults with highly educated parents have better literacy skill levels than those with less educated parents Lol, not sure about this. I have two young children in private school and most of the kids come from wealth, like white collar/office professions, etc. My wife and I have the hardest time identifying with our fellow parents. They have zero hobbies outside of: social media, bringing their kids to breweries on Saturday, sports, Netflix, etc. Our single friends tend to be far more interesting with eclectic tastes.

nunez 2y ago
Can't have hobbies when you're busy working to afford that private school
lotsoweiners 2y ago
Sounds like my kinda people.
ozim 2y ago
I think you conflated highly educated with wealthy. At the same time you conflated having eclectic tase with being highly educated. I have really well educated friends who are burgers and beers and having not really sophisticated hobbies while doing really sophisticated jobs.

everdrive 2y ago

Does the world need to change at an ever-growing rate? From my perspective there's no net benefit here. Just constant churn.

zwirbl 2y ago
Need to? No, of course not. Will it slow down? Unlikely
wruza 2y ago
There’s no way to stop either. Change is a consequence of competition, which comes from resource shortage, which is a natural part of logistic map that the nature follows, well, naturally. It’s constant churn by design. It would be nice if we could agree to stop, negotiate reasonably and relax (and grab those with noses too high and throw them into a deep pit). But it doesn’t seem to happen any soon. Attempts were made but turned out to be a really bad joke. Humans are too stupid for that to work.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

Slightly off topic - but probably a big reason that Finland has good literacy scores, is the television companies choose to subtitle foreign content rather than dub. My wife taught herself to read before starting school so she could understand what was going on in Charlie's Angels It's caused a stir when Netflix dubbed some films into Finnish https://yle.fi/a/3-12275492 https://yle.fi/a/3-12275492

perihelion_zero 2y ago
Finland proving the supremacy of "Subs not Dubs". Noted for future reference.
Yizahi 2y ago
> After all, no one is being forced to watch the dubbed version of the film. Yeah, except when we do, but it is too late then. Currently staying not in my home country and last year saw that "Everything Everywhere All At Once" was streaming. I immediately started it, only to discover that it was dubbed in the local language. So I got either local dub, or Chinese+local sub, nothing else. And my level of local language was like A1 or so. Thankfully a year later this issue has been solved, because it is not available for streaming at all today. Yay!.. :)

perihelion_zero 2y ago

Almost anyone who has a semi-useful technical or trade skill and can manage communications, marketing, sales etc is liable to become extremely rich. Almost anyone with no skills except they can talk to people and arrange/organize deals is liable to make someone else rich, and might be well-off if they can figure out how to get a slice of the pie.

deleted 2y ago

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incomingpain 2y ago

Who decided education is the only factor to thrive in a changing world? Literacy? I figure the majority of adults in my neighbour are not literate. My definition of literate is 1 non-fiction book per year OR 1 fiction book per month. The big problem I see in society, fundamental flaw that's changed significantly in the last 30-40 years. Emotional regulation. The real root cause problem is that there's a growing group of people(no available label, diverse group) who genuinely believe they are 'empaths' not like Vulcan level, but Betazed like. This group of people believe they are so good at emotions they can accurately sense other people's emotions. In reality, they are so emotionally dysregulated that other people's emotions overwhelm them.

Balgair 2y ago

I'd suggest people dig into their specific country's data too (at the bottom) For the US it is here: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adults-skills-2023-country-notes_ab4f6b8c-en/united-states_427d6aac-en.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/survey-of-adults-skills... Though the US is near average, man, that's really hiding some data there. Things that stood out to me: In literacy, 28% of adults (OECD average: 26%) scored at Level 1 or below, meaning they have low literacy proficiency. In numeracy, 34% of adults (OECD average: 25%) scored at or below Level 1 proficiency In adaptive problem solving, 32% of adults (OECD average: 29%) scored at or below Level 1 proficiency. In the United States, average results in 2022-23 went down compared to 2012/15 in literacy and numeracy Again, these results are near the average. But still...? I wasn't expecting that ~1/4 or ~1/3 adults had these issues or that we were going in this direction. Yes, the reasons are flamewar-able, of course. Still, these data points are, to me, stark.