UW–Madison’s Matthew Hora, a professor of adult and higher education in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies, will be featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s online festival, “Innovation Amid Uncertainty,” on Sept. 18.
Hora, who also directs UW–Madison’s Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, will join Chronicle senior writer Scott Carlson for a conversation titled, “Can Colleges Really Teach Skills?” The session builds on a discussion the two began earlier this year in The Edge newsletter, focusing on the meaning of “skills” and higher education’s role in preparing students for the workforce.
“We don’t know what ‘skills’ means. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of that word and its relationship to content or knowledge, as if they’re two different things, which they’re not,” Hora said in The Edge interview.
The 30-minute session, scheduled on the festival’s third day, will examine what it really means to teach skills. It will also consider whether higher education is prepared for the shift to a “skills economy,” where employers value the demonstration of skills more than a degree.
View the full agenda for the Chronicle Festival.