Job Skills Might Be More Important Than a College Degree in the Future

Job Skills Might Be More Important Than a College Degree in the FutureJob Skills Might Be More Important Than a College Degree in the Future1require candidates to have a college or graduate degree today.But a new CNBC article is challenging the notion that a degree is really all that important to ones professional success. As it turns out, you might not even need a degree at all in the futureespecially if youre a freelancerThe Future of Work Wont Be About College Degrees, It Will Be About Job Skills is an eye-opening op-ed written by Upwork CEO Stephanie Kasriel. It focuses on the Freelancing in America 2018 survey, which found that freelancers are focusing on skills training rather than education. In fact, almost the entire 6,001 U.S. workers polled for the survey (93%, to be exact) stated that skills training was useful in comparison to the 79% who claimed that their college education was integral to the work they were currently doing.Kasriel brings up an important point in her pie ce. Too often, degrees are still thought of as lifelong stamps of professional competency, she wrote. They tend to create a false sense of security, perpetuating the illusion that work- and the knowledge it requires- is static. Its not. This means that many college students are taking on tremendous debt without any real guarantee of a financial payoff in the future.If you still think that a four-year college degree is your ticket to a cushy career and financial freedom, these eye-opening stats just might change your mind. Its estimated that 65% of children starting elementary school will have jobs in the future that dont even exist yet, according to the World Economic Forum. And the Upwork Quarterly Skills Index cites that 70% of the fastest-growing skills are new to the index.What does this mean for current college students, new grads, or people thinking about hitting the books again and continuing their education? Should they all skip school and focus solely on skills? bedrngnis n ecessarily. But its important to keep in mind that the workplace is a living, breathing thing, not a fixed entity that never changes. And as such, what you learn in school will only be a starting point towards getting a job, not something that will get you through the course of your career.Thats why job seekers, whether theyre graduates from an Ivy League school, graduates from their local community college, or dont have a degree at all, need to adopt a growth mindset when it comes to work. As Kasriel writes in her CNBC story The fastest-growing segment of the workforce- freelancers- have realized more than most that education doesnt stop. Its a lifelong process. Diploma or not, its a mindset worth embracing.This means accepting all of those things that previous generations in the workforce never had to deal with, such as career changing andchoosing to freelance rather than have a traditional full-time job. Youll also need to become a lifelong learner (and not assume that you learne d everything you were ever going to need to know for your career in school), and focus your efforts on skills and experience rather than relying only on your education.Its about knowing that your career trajectory is probably not going to be a straight line, but rather a series of squiggles and curves that will ultimately allow you to have a career (and a life) that is at once fulfilling and meaningful.Want to test out your skills? offers free skills tests to members.