LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Ever since the pandemic there has been a shift from expensive degrees to skill sets. “Upskilling” is becoming more widespread and 8 News Now spoke to a tech expert on what it is and how you can go about it to secure your new job.
Despite recent layoffs, the demand for tech talent in certain areas like coding, cybersecurity, and data analytics, continues to build.
Anant Agrawal is an MIT professor and the founder and CEO of EDX, one of the largest online educators of technical talent in the world.
“Technology is moving very very fast,” Agarwal said.
The company’s popularity has soared to about 46 million users as more people are looking to upskill.
“You learn you get a degree in engineering or psychology, let’s say and then you find that as technology moves, you have to keep adding a ‘shot of something’ or another over time, to keep current with technology and your job that’s upskilling,” Agrawal said.
Whether it’s someone choosing to secure “hybrid skills” to gain a promotion at a current tech job, or someone looking secure their very first job, Agarwal said more young people are choosing this path.
“The whole Gen Z generation has a much lower trust in higher education and college, than the baby boomer generation,” Agarwal said. “Today we have courses from MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, top companies like Google, IMB, Meta, Amazon web services, and others.”
EDX was created in 2012 to expand access to high-quality education for everyone. Its very first class, “Circuits and Electronics” had 155,000 learners from 162 countries as opposed to 100 students who would have been taught in classrooms at MIT.