Nearly half of employees say college failed to prepare them for their current job. Instead, they prefer hands-on training—and TikTok

Employees are second-guessing whether a bachelor’s degree is worth the cost, according to a new survey, shared exclusively with Fortune, of over 3,000 U.S., U.K., and Australian employees by learning content provider Go1.

Nearly half of respondents say that universities failed to prepare them for their current jobs, and just a quarter believe higher education best prepared them for their positions.

However, 61% say that actual work experience best prepared them for their current roles, followed by formal on-the-job training and life experience.

“Tertiary education and college education [is] not keeping up with the pace of change in terms of technology skills and the speed at which the workforce is changing,” says Chris Eigeland, cofounder and co-CEO of Go1. “That requires workplaces to step up and build that level of trust, authenticity, and engagement with professionals throughout their career in a way which, arguably, they didn’t have to before.” 

Three-quarters of respondents believe their current employer offers learning and development programs that adapt to or accommodate their specific needs, and 59% feel empowered to ask for better programs to suit their own needs. But, employees express frustration with how organizations approach training and development, stating that employers treat such programs as a “box-ticking exercise” and offer content that’s boring, impersonal, or simply too long.

As with most things, educational preferences, or how employees prefer to learn, vary between generations. But across the board, nearly half of employees say they are open to using AI to help them learn, and 45% agree that AI will help them develop key workplace skills quickly.

Younger workers were more likely to consider AI critical to their career development; 31% of Gen Z and millennial workers say generative AI learning tools are all they need, compared to 12% of baby boomers.

TikTok’s popularity boom is also making waves in employee education. Forty-two percent of employees prefer using short-form videos (under three minutes in length) for learning content, second only to on-the-job training with an instructor (47%). Employers have caught onto the trend. Short-form content was the top learning type offered by organizations, followed by on-the-job learning.

The three oldest working generations most prefer real-life or experiential learning—six out of 10 baby boomers prefer on-the-job training or shadowing over short-form content.

While Eigeland thinks on-the-job learning will only grow in popularity across generations, especially as virtual and augmented reality become more mainstream, he also thinks L&D leaders would be remiss to ignore the multi-generational desire for cohort-based, collaborative learning.

“You’ve got one theme, which is the just-in-time short-form learning, which comes through very strong. But it’s also counterbalanced against this core desire to learn from others and to have community,” says Eigeland. “I think that’s sometimes missed in the L&D discussion, in the shininess of the TikTok, gamification of learning.”

Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion

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