While COVID-19 created a crisis for many businesses, it certainly was not unprecedented. This article written largely about the business created in the “greed is good” era (of the 80’s), gave large companies that survived the 1997 stock market (mini) crash a way to thrive until the tech bubble burst a couple of years later (in 2000). However, by then businesses learn to adapt. The ones that didn’t fell victim to natural selection and were either eaten or died a slow and painful death. Then we had the CFG 10 years before COVID-19, caused (generally) by reputable financial institutions bundling up poor quality products that would actually cost money (known as sub-prime loans) with a facade of high-quality products. It was not illegal, and people didn’t know what to look for. After all, it was a safe as houses, that didn’t exist, more so customers that didn’t exist when the housed needed to be sold. And the government would not let them fail… until they did. Back to the future, after COVID-19, add in the term “Sub-prime learning”, then see if you can pick where the formal, non-formal, and informal learning segments of the VET sector are in this process?
If Competency is if you “could” do the job in theory, proficiency could be demonstrated when you do the job in the real world. Would you sign up to travel on a cruise ship if you knew the captain had never driven a ship of that size in open water? Even if it was marketed as “unsinkable”? #taetanic This is why proficiency matters.