What Does The Increase In The Need For Generalists Mean For The Education Industry?​

 

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argued that to become an expert in anything, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours practising it. So, to become an expert in a language, you need to study it for 10,000 hours, which is 20 hours every week for ten years.

 

That is 10,000 hours of focussing on that one particular topic.

 

Is that necessarily a good thing to do?

 

David Epstein, in his book Why Generalist Triumph in a Specialised World, argues that this is a myth, that actually we need to be more generalised. He argues that the cliché – Jack/Jill of all trades, master of none – is actually wrong.

 

In the modern world, there are not many people who only do one task. Think of a language expert. They do not just spend all day speaking Spanish, for example. They have other tasks to do, such as –

  • Translating a document from English to Spanish or vice versa
  • Proofreading to ensure that it is precise and clear
  • Speaking to clients to find out exactly what they want

If they work for themselves, they might also have to –

  • Prepare their own invoices
  • Keep records of work completed and when
  • Develop bookkeeping or accounting skills
  • Be a good verbal and written communicator to talk to clients
  • Be a good marketer to promote themselves and gain new clients and work
  • Organise themselves well
  • Be a good timekeeper
  • A good planner
  • Be able to set their own deadlines and timelines for work

So, it is not just about being good at speaking a different language, to obtain work in that area, anyone needs to develop other skills.

 

This has led to the idea of the multi-hyphenate.  A multi-hyphenate is not a multitasker, they are a generalist. At one time, multitasking seemed like a great idea, but actually we came to realise that a multitasker did lots of tasks, but didn’t necessarily do them well. A multihyphenate is something else. It is someone who is flexible and able to work anywhere on anything. Famous multihyphenates are Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein. They were able to develop and create many different ideas and skills, not just focus on one.

 

Whilst not many of us are Einsteins and Da Vincis, many of us do have the ability to be flexible and work in a generalised way.

 

This is vital in the modern world.

 

Working from Anywhere                   

In the last few decades, technology has changed drastically. People can work from anywhere in the world. The COVID-19 pushed this even further when many people were forced to work online and from home. 

 

Different Professions and Businesses

Working at home, the rise of the zero contracts and the increase in freelancing means that some people are running several businesses or have several different jobs.   Flexibility is therefore essential. 

Think of something simple like being a gardener. Simple? No. Not really. A gardener might do tasks such as home garden maintenance, but what if they also design gardens online and sell them to customers, perhaps they write their own books or blogs about gardening. They might need public speaking, presentation and podcasting skills to do online or face to face talks. They might work for themselves, so also need bookkeeping, marketing and organisational skills. The “simple” task of gardening becomes not that simple at all and many gardeners may not realise that they are actually multihyphenates.

 

Changing Careers

As well as potentially have more jobs at once, people are change careers more often than in the past. Millennials in particular can change jobs ever two years, whilst on average people change jobs every three to five years now.

 

Transferrable Skills

There is an increasing need for transferrable skills, skills that people can transfer from one profession to another. A person working in retail may be good at numbers and working with people. These skills can be potentially transferred to another profession.

 

Generalists and Business

More and more businesses are looking for those multi-hyphenates, the generalists, as they recognise their potential.

  • A generalist has the potential to move around with an organisation.
  • They have transferrable and useful skills that can benefit themselves as well as the organisation they work for.
  • This is extremely useful for businesses, particularly at a time when many organisations are struggling to hire staff and are experiencing staff shortages.

 

What does this mean for the education industry?

The education industry often focuses on training people for particular jobs. To work in business, horticulture, agriculture, psychology and so on. They help people to develop a specific set of skills to work in that industry.

 

However, as we have seen above, today, people –

  • May change careers frequently
  • May want to work from home or more flexibly
  • Will need to update their skills regularly
  • Will require transferable skills – skills that are useful in more than one occupation
  • May want to set up their own business and need more skills than simply the one that they need to be an “expert” in.
  • Businesses and organisations want generalists. They are useful. They can fill the gaps. They are more easily transferred from one job role to another, which benefits the organisation.

 

Therefore, whilst it is important that people are knowledgeable and an “expert” in their field, it is also important that they have other skills to be able to move jobs or change careers more frequently.

 

This is important to the education industry in a number of ways –

  • Rather than training people for one career, the education industry needs to be aware that people may need to train over and over again for new careers, promotions, opening new businesses and so on.
  • It is important to train people to be generalists, to develop transferable skills, rather than skills in one career only.

This means that the education industry needs to encourage students to study broadly. For example, an agriculture student who wants to focus on crops, will, of course, need to be an expert in crops –

  • Propagation
  • Soil
  • Growing crops
  • Types of crops

 

But they might also need to have other expertise, such as –

  • Problem solving
  • Marketing
  • Perhaps writing, such as blog writing, social media etc.
  • Starting and maintaining a business
  • Creativity
  • Sustainability
  • Time management
  • Bookkeeping and/or accounts
  • Change management
  • Innovation
  • Innovation management
  • Staff management
  • Staff training
  • Supervision
  • Management

And more.  This may seem excessive, but these are all transferrable skills. Say the crops expert decides after five years that they want to go into something else, perhaps selling herbal products, such as soaps, candles etc. The transferrable skills they have developed are therefore really useful. They will help them to move onto their next job or career.

 

Opportunities for Education Businesses

This means that there are a lot of opportunities for education providers. They can provide the specialist courses, but they can also provide general courses for everyone.

 

Only a certain percentage of people will want to study for a certain career. Only a certain number of people will want to be horticulturalists or psychologists or journalists etc, but most people will need to develop those transferrable skills.

 

The time may have come for educational businesses to promote courses in transferable skills, such as –

  • Marketing
  • Problem solving
  • Creativity
  • Bookkeeping and accounts
  • Writing
  • Public speaking
  • Presentation skills
  • Training
  • Management and supervision
  • Personnel
  • Motivation
  • Crisis management
  • Change management
  • Innovation

 

How can you take advantage of these opportunities?

ACS Distance Education offers a wide range of  online courses in specialist and generalisable skills.

 

Specialist courses include –

  • Horticulture
  • Agriculture
  • Psychology
  • Marketing
  • Permaculture
  • Writing
  • Business
  • Management
  • Animal studies
  • Environmental studies and more.

But we also offer generalist courses, such as –

  • General management and supervision
  • Writing
  • Marketing
  • Problem solving
  • Public speaking and presentations
  • And more.

As you can see, some specialist courses are also generalist courses, but a generalist may not wish to go into the same detail as a specialist.

 

ACS Distance Education offers over 700 courses. We also offer the opportunity for people to resell our courses to their own students under their own branding.  We call these affiliations.  There are many advantages of becoming an affiliate 

 

If you –

  1. Want to start up your own online school offering specialist and generalist courses 
  2. Are an existing educational business and want to add more courses to your stable of courses check out our available courses and e-books we can make available HERE   
  3. Want to know more about how we can work with you and your business in training staff or supplying CPD courses 

Get in touch with us now and you can chat to our Affiliations Team to discuss more details.  

 



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