Does the academy adapt itself to the job market of the digital age?

The answer to this is negative - this is what emerged from a discussion held by a system of people and computers at the end of the academic school year and towards the next ● What can be improved and how should the academy adapt itself to the student's world and how the catons can help

The article was originally published on the People and Computers website in three parts

Does academia keep pace with technology? Does it adapt itself to the new employment world of the students who leave it? And if so - does she do both of these fast enough? These questions came up in a discussion held recently at the People and Computers House.

The panel, moderated by Yehuda Konforts, the editor-in-chief of People and Computers, dealt with the preparation of the academy for the next school year, in particular in the fields of computers and technology. It was attended by Prof. Gadi Ariav from Tel Aviv University; Prof. Shlomo Dolev from Ben Gurion University; Prof. Shmuel Markovich from the Technion; Prof. Shmuel Wimer from Bar Ilan University; Dr. Ruthi Gafni from Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic College; Dr. Amir Tomer from Kinneret Academic College; Prof. Dafna Winschel from the Hebrew University; Dr. Harel Manshari from HIT; Alon Barnea, Vice President of Afka College of Engineering; Vetel Trossman, CEO of Hi-Tech Dialog placement company.

Many of the participants in the debate claimed that the academy adopts the changes too slowly and that there is still much to improve. According to Barnea, "the academy is slow in its response to changes in the world of study and the world of employment, including technological changes."

"The academic establishment is not responding to the pace of dramatic change and is not adapting itself quickly enough. One must begin by understanding the 'figure of the engineer', understand the variety of needs and roles in industry and academia, and accordingly build study programs with a structured basis and great flexibility for personalization, based on skills, needs ( that change quickly - AB), personal preferences and personal interest of the learner", he noted.

According to him, "It is not possible to adapt to the new era curricula that are rigid and broadly similar for 70 years, at least not fully. The fact that the academic establishment does not adapt them quickly enough leads to the other extreme - programs that are far from being an academic degree, such as bootcamps (courses focused on certain fields, For example, programming - AB). The academy must be ready to change and quickly, to find the right balance between core mathematical studies for the development of thinking and essential skills, and to produce academics who are also professionals and people of the greater world."

To the question of whether academia is doing enough to deal with the severe shortage of high-tech manpower, Barnea replied that "the approach to this should be multidimensional. The question is what is meant by the word sufficient. Can the shortage be eliminated only through activities that are the responsibility of the academic institutions? This is a question that needs to be discussed. Is what we teach enough for the needs of the industry? It is seen that it does not always exist."

He said that contrary to what one might think, the academy prepares students for research in the technological field, but also for work in industry. "We prepare the students for all possibilities, because when a young man begins his studies, he does not know what he wants to do. It is a fact that a quarter of the graduates go on to graduate degrees."

"add a layer of soft skills"

Trossman said on this topic that "the labor market has changed and so has the way of looking for work. Therefore, the way of teaching in colleges and universities also needs to change. When people are looking for a job, they often don't know that they have to pass a house test before they get to the company, as well as Skype interviews, the preparation for which is completely different. The academy must also teach such things."

She referred to the difference in the attitude of multinational companies to university graduates versus college graduates, and the required work experience. "The amount of jobs offered to fresh graduates is smaller than to people with three years of experience or more. There are jobs, but also high demands. Therefore, there are job seekers who can fill the positions offered, but they have to continue looking for work. The reason for this is that in some companies, mainly In American companies, the requirements for specific academic positions are not something that can be compromised," she noted.

In conclusion, Trosman said that "it may be necessary to add a layer of soft skills as well, to help graduates prepare for the rapidly changing world of work."

"Between breadth and depth - we at Tel Aviv University prefer depth," said Prof. Gadi Ariav, from the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University, during a panel that was held at the People and Computers system and dealt with the preparation of the academy for the next school year, on the subject of training engineers and computer subjects. The panel was moderated by Yehuda Conforts, editor-in-chief of People and Computers

Prof. Ariav was referring to the T-model used by some of his colleagues, according to which in part of the degree the students receive horizontal training and only in part of it they go in depth on a certain subject, or study two-track classes.

"At Tel Aviv University, they also teach computer science, as well as industrial engineering and management and other engineering subjects. The engineers come to me when they discover that they need management in order to move forward. Have they suffered irreversible damage due to academic training or not? I myself grew up in practice. There is an interest here of training engineers, managers and teachers - this is a neglected topic. Who teaches the teachers? Engineering in our very romantic view Observing the problems and their solution," said Ariav.

"The requirement for a degree is an interesting question, whether it is necessary or not. There was a study that examined and did an analysis of an academic degree, most of the value of the degree was in getting a job, and then everyone talked about those who dropped out and yet succeeded in the technology business - Michael Dell, Bill Gates, who were accepted to Harvard, But they didn't need it to move on," he continued.

"We, as those who train managers in the fields of technology, have been struggling with this for many years. At first we taught small IT managers, after that I founded a high-tech management school, we eventually closed it because my painful conclusion is that it was too narrow. We trained people who came from all Mini streams, most of them were high-tech management engineers, and we basically disabled them. The narrow focus on technology was a mistake, because of the prevalence of The computers, you need people with different backgrounds such as planning, communication, like music. For example, there is a limited amount of credits if you open a music course? I think the citizen of the world should understand the basics The computer. Most kids look at the iPhone and think they understand information systems, and they have no idea," said Prof. Ariav, who added that "attempts to create incubators at universities raise questions."

Prof. Shaul Markowitz, Deputy Dean for Bachelor's Degrees in the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion: "The process of training is a very complex process, we build layers upon layers of knowledge and thinking skills, for the graduate to know the machine called a computer - the most sophisticated machine that man has ever created. To know how to use In it you need to know it in depth. 7-8 courses for training engineers in other fields is not enough in depth - the third level. Basic courses in various fields such as graphics, communication, cyber; and the fourth level - specialization courses such as deep learning, which are taught by the most expert people in the world. The best universities in Israel produce the best graduates in the world because in the US the program involves a lot of general studies. Companies like Google and Yahoo understand that this is the product. The graduates also face intellectual challenges - advanced mathematical courses train them in an abstract way of thinking"

Dr. Harel Manshari, head of the cyber domain of the HIT academic college in Holon: "One of the roles that the institute undertakes, despite being engaged in research, is to train people for industry with technological skills and knowledge. On the one hand, everything that was said about computer studies at the highest level and mathematics studies... I work in a strange job, I'm not an employee of the institute, the very fact that our president is a mathematician, and precisely on the topic of cyber, there is a need for thinking circles. We deal with the training of people who will later be absorbed in the industries, and we also see the people reaching this. In cyber you need a background, but this is also true in computer learning technology engineering. Our students do projects for the water authority, do work with water corporations. We have employees at the check point."

"There are many types of roles in the industry"

Dr. Ruthi Gafni, Head of the Information Systems Program at the School of Management and Economics of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic College: "Most of the years I worked in industry and in industry there are many types of positions. We need people to work on the algorithms of search engines, or of a rocket launched into space , but in the hi-tech industries there are many other positions for which other knowledge is needed. In the information systems department, we train people in many fields and this is also being built As a pyramid - first of all mathematics and statistics, and then all types of professions that are in demand in the high-tech world. 98 percent of graduates work in industry in a large area of ​​companies. Not all of them have to be computer science graduates.

We do joint actons with institutions in Europe and create virtual teams. Each student lives in a different country and they have to do teamwork in English in a technological field. Our students later go to work in multinational companies, and they will constantly be in contact by phone or Skype with many colleagues around the world."

Prof. Shmuel Wimer, from the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan University: "Until ten years ago I was a full-fledged engineer at Intel, like any manager in the industry I recruited, interviewed employees, many job fairs where HR representatives from companies like Intel and IBM come, and graduates come.

"When it comes to computer science and electrical engineering graduates, the HR people refer them on. But if people from mathematics, industry, and management come - they don't manage to pass the barrier. I always asked that they send me such people. I don't remember people's failures. Physicists, mathematicians, people Industry and management, each person needs independent thinking, needs initiative, needs criticism... the basic program provided by all academic institutions for a year and a half adds up The specific ones that deal with things that are currently fashionable are less important to me. It may take another six months for the company where the graduate will work to get him into the exact field, but the investment is worth it."

"It doesn't matter if you take a person who needs to deal with deep learning, but doesn't come with a background in it. Anyone with a scientific background will be able to learn. Not every engineer needs to know everything. Today, we work in teams," Prof. Wimer concluded.

Academia is facing a dramatic change: learning through hackathons"

"There are classes and lectures where our students don't come to class and instead, we do hackathons for them. This, as part of the dramatic change that is taking place in the academy and the adoption of new learning methods," said Prof. Shlomi Dolev, Director and Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at Ben Gurion University. In doing so, he helped promote the cyber field in Be'er Sheva and the transformation of the Negev capital into a prominent city in the field. According to him, "We do this because we need to teach them to look at the sciences not passively but creatively - how to do new science and how to become entrepreneurs."

Prof. Dolev participated in the panel that was held recently in the system of people and computers and was involved in the preparation of the academy for the next academic year, in the fields of engineering and computer science.

According to him, the emphasis today in the training of engineers and computer professionals is on new tracks, such as data science, machine learning, neuroscience, the security of the online space and quantum computing - "a field that if we don't study it, our students will not be relevant".

"All the computer science departments in Israel are growing and taking in students, encouraging high school students to start academic studies early and holding programs for the ultra-Orthodox," noted Dolev. "This, as part of the role of the academy to train people for industry."

He said that "Computer science should be taught from elementary, and perhaps even from kindergarten, to high school, just as math and English are taught. This is already happening today in hundreds of elementary schools. This is to allow even students who do not continue to academic studies to work in the high-tech industry and on the other hand to respond earlier to the need for graduates with advanced degrees."

"We need not only engineers who think outside the box"

Prof. Dafna Winschel, Deputy Dean for Teaching at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Hebrew University, testified about what is happening at the Jerusalem academic institution. "We 'waste' a year of the students' training on things unrelated to computer science - giving them a foundation of mathematical tools. In addition, like every university, we meet at least once a year with companies from the industry, to get feedback from them. The companies want the mathematical thinking and many of the academic courses The current ones don't teach it. Also, they tell us that they can easily find candidates who know how to program, but lack those who can solve problems - and they need that The academy teaches, and teaches," she said.

Another speaker on the panel was Prof. Amir Tomer, head of the software engineering department at Kinneret Academic College and head of the program for training engineers from other fields in the software field at the Department of Foreign Studies at the Technion. He said that "we also need engineers who think outside the box, but also ordinary engineers".

According to him, "There is a big change, but I disbelieve in the assumption that academia and industry understand its depth. When we see it in full force, it will be too late. We have been doing the same thing for decades, while the people and the tools have changed."

Prof. Tomer talked about the differences in the recruitment procedures for new candidates in the big companies versus the start-ups. "Large companies prefer to recruit graduates of certain institutions and then buy start-ups, through which they get the entrepreneurial and young DNA. The start-ups recruit completely differently."