Work-based learning (WBL) is a growing movement in education. WBL combines some form of on-the-job training with related instruction in the classroom bringing "Content with Context" into the classroom. For example, Registered Apprenticeships represent some of the highest value credentials issued in the United States and around the world.
Credentials attained in secondary and postsecondary institutions through internships and apprenticeships are a perfect use case for facilitating the rapid adoption of self-sovereign identity (SSI) and Atala PRISM. Our long-term goal is to develop a DApp in the work-based learning and credentialing space.
Our opinion is that work-based learning is the future of education and workforce development. We will take a ground-up approach by initially focusing on secondary and postsecondary institutions. Incoming high school and college students will likely become the early adopters of SSI, pushing industries to adopt this technology to quickly identify and hire young talent coming up through the pipeline. These companies could eventually design training programs and issue credentials using our technology, which would have an exponential network effect over time as more and more students and businesses use our platform.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 3.7 million students in the United States graduated from high school in the 2018-2019 school year. During the 2019-2020 school year, the breakdown of degrees earned by college students is:
-1,018,000 associate degrees
-2,038,000 bachelors degrees
-843,000 masters degrees
-190,000 doctorates
These are foundational credentials that can be added to an individual's digital ID. In that same year, BurningGlass noted in their Credentials Matter Phase 2 report that 30 states reported that K-12 students in their states earned 1,320,212 credentials beyond a diploma. We believe that these numbers will grow exponentially over the next decade as more and more states focus on accelerating their students workforce readiness skills through various workforce development/ work based learning initiatives.
Why the emphasis on workforce development & work based learning? In 2018 Korn Ferry released a report titled Future of Work the Global Talent Crunch that predicted that there will be a global talent shortage of more than 85 million people resulting in almost $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue by the year 2030. This equates to a loss of an estimated $1.7 trillion in the United States alone. COVID-19 has only accelerated the labor shortage that the Korn Ferry report predicted.
Emsi highlighted this problem in their 2021 report titled Demographic Drought: How the Approaching Sansdemic Will Transform the Labor Market for the Rest of Our Lives. This report estimates that the US will have a talent deficit of six million people by the year 2028. They identified three factors that resulted in the acceleration of the labor shortage. They are:
1) Record numbers of baby boomers left the market in 2020.
2) Millions of Prime Age workers left the job market or opted for part-time work.
3) The United States experienced the lowest birthrate in our nation's history.
We have to rethink education and workforce development strategies in order to overcome these factors. The report goes on to recommend that employers and schools focus on three areas:
1) Recruit beyond traditional demographics
2) Invest in programs to reskill and realign the existing workforce
3) Focus their efforts on retaining the students & employees they already have.
Labor shortages are rapidly changing the hiring practices of employers. Businesses have to reimagine their talent acquisition strategies if they even have one at all. They have to explore and develop new pipelines for talent. As the demand for talent grows, employers are looking to high school students to fill those entry-level gaps through internships and youth apprenticeships.
Our DApp can play a crucial role in helping to fill those gaps and allow HR departments to identify and hire young talent quickly. It will also help businesses find existing employees with related skills for open positions. Our app will allow companies to up-skill those employees through various training programs and issue or verify new credentials earned to fill those needed positions, creating an opportunity for companies to develop an internal talent pipeline to stay competitive in this challenging labor market.
-The first challenge is the lack of wide-scale understanding of blockchain technology and self-sovereign identity (SSI), limiting adoption and the use of digital identity solutions in the short term. Education and marketing will be critical in overcoming this challenge. We have extensive connections in our industry throughout the local, state, and federal levels to lobby for this technology.
-The Second challenge is that we just gained access to the Atala PRISM Pioneer Program. It will take time for our team to research the Atala PRISM SDK to begin building out our ideas. We will take a similar approach to the Cardano approach: research before developing, to get it right.