How Data Education Could Close The Poverty Gap.

What is a name ? A beautiful sentiment to the nature of things. Although spoken differently in its original context, it gets to the heart of the purpose of a thing. When C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel wrote their famous article in the Harvard Business Journal called “Core Competence of the Corporation”, business owners began asking, “what is my true value?” Or as Prahald and Hamel referred to it as, core competency. Today executives and managers at every level look inward, past P&L statements, balance sheets, KPI’s, and benchmarks to self analyze their core competency.

General Assembly (GA), an institution specializing in data and other tech related education should be aware of their core competency during this period of incredible fluctuation in demand within the market of education, but also they should be aware of the increasing education gap that exists within our country. I believe GA is poised to impact this knowledge gap at the highschool and young adult level in a big way that could positively influence the lives of thousands.

Since 2010, GA has been the catalyst for vocation transition and education for over 70,000 students. As a current student of GA, we encounter a microcosm of society. As par the course, everyone in the class must share why we are here at GA to subjugate ourselves to three months of intensive rigorous instruction. A common theme from many in the class is, “I want to transition from what I was doing to what I want to do.” This theme of transition is the core competency of GA . The spirit of transition was the fertile ground which inspired Jake Schwartz to create General Assembly.

Currently these transitions have been focused on a narrow demographic of adults who are in need of change and transition within their work lives. This model has worked and its current success is indicative of it. But why stop at just a select demographic? Could GA direct its resources at the high school and young adult level through the existing high school and community college extra curricular programs? There have been multiple educational overhauls the last twenty years, each with their own pros and cons, and unfortunately there have been multiple cuts to extra curricular activities — the kind that have in the past helped pay the bills for kids who prefer to enter into the workforce rather than enter college and acquire debt.

In 2016, 61% of all jobs did not require a college degree,with the fastest and most lucrative of all non-degree vocations being web development and software developers. With the advent of 5G, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts demand for data related jobs will increase over four times the national average by 2028 with salaries 2–3 times higher than the poverty threshold. This kind of opportunity should be afforded at every high school along with other existing extra curricular activities. It’s the kind of opportunity that if they choose to do so, could facilitate major transformation for children who cannot only afford a college, but also give an option to participate in this growing sector and benefit themselves and communities.

I am not proposing we simply force kids into data science or programming classes to solve cyclical and generational poverty. I simply see in GA a decade old , successful business model that is rooted in transforming people’s lives through skills based education all the while doing so under the constraints and hardship of free market competition. While in some places, traditional and higher education value is waning, leaving in its wake a heavy burden of debt and a misallocation of resources. I hope to see GA leverage its core competency in a way that facilitates a transition of lives, not only from one vocation to another, but from subsistence to growth.