“They want it now and if you don’t give it to them they will find it somewhere else,” Howard said.
Howard delivered his remarks to an audience at CompTIA Colloquium, the annual conference and networking event for the IT training industry.
In the U.S., organizations spent an estimated $138 billion on training in 2012; globally, the figure was nearly $304 billion. Howard projects growth of 2 to 3 percent in training spending in 2013, both domestically and worldwide. Asia and South America are the fastest-growing markets, while Europe continues to lag behind. Training in sales, information technology, leadership and learning technologies are the fastest-growing categories, he said.
Howard also noted that while there is still a place for classroom training or conferences, the trend is headed toward a personal learning environment that is a customized user experience in which the training content is relevant to the individual and no one else.
“Content curation is becoming integral to training organizations,” Howard said. “It’s making sure the content is put together, promoted and pushed to the right places and right people.” That means much more custom content being created. It’s no longer good enough to buy a training program and expect students to adapt to it.
As the leading provider of vendor-neutral skills certifications for the world’s IT workforce, CompTIA is responding to the changing landscape of training, education and certification. “We have a lot of work to do to get people to where we want them to be,” Terry Erdle, executive vice president of skills certification at CompTIA, said in remarks Wednesday at Colloquium.
Erdle outlined several CompTIA priorities for 2013, including:
- Create more content tools to “seed” the market for new products.
- Develop robust products for mobile platforms that are priced competitive for mass market adoption.
- Take advantage of technological advances to develop high volume, low cost certificate products, like security best practices, for employers.
Another strategic priority is to improve the “test-to-train ratio.” Currently only about 20 to 30 percent of all individuals who take a training course end up taking an exam at the end of training program, Erdle said. “Training is optimized when there is some kind of seminal event at the end, a test or a certification,” he said.
Hiring managers now find industry certifications more relevant than college degrees, according to Erdle. He also said the benefits of certification for the individual are clear. A recognized industry certification helps them get their foot in the door for job interviews; earn advancement and promotion once they’re hired; and earn higher salaries than non-certified workers.
“There are IT jobs available today and the number is growing,” he said. “But that message does not get out enough. We’re not putting enough people into the IT workforce.”
