By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Western State University officials want to supply area businesses with the workers they need even as the university attempts to forecast the workforce needs of the future.
Provost Jay Johnson, the Vice President of Academic Affairs, says universities no longer can be satisfied with just churning out students with four-year degrees.
“We do need to have degrees that are focused in that direction,” Johnson tells KFEQmmunity. “We also need to provide some real-time continuing education and upskilling, credentialing, those types of things. And that’s we really started doing.”
Johnson says the university has adjusted its offerings to provide more than just the traditional under graduate degrees. But Johnson admits predicting the workforce needs of the future is difficult.
“That’s been even more complicated with just the immediate impact of AI,” Johnson says. “We’re trying to figure out what that’s going to do for the workforce, because they’re talking about how that is going to change the nature of work really in the next five years.”
Johnson says Missouri Western has adjusted to provide training opportunities for area businesses to give their employees additional skills. Programs at the Houlne Center for Convergent Technology, which Missouri Western runs in conjunction with North Central Missouri College, offer a wide range of choices, from formal degrees to certifications.
Johnson says Missouri Western is very attune to meeting the needs of area businesses.
“But we also have to make sure we’re reading the tea leaves just in the nation, because what is affecting elsewhere is going to eventually get here or what’s affecting here is eventually going to get elsewhere,” according to Johnson. “And so, we have to make sure that we’re in front of all of that stuff, but it’s hard being all things to all people.”
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