Serious challenges before our schools, students and professionals

A third to half the jobs that we are currently employed in would disappear in the next 15 years; and yet your child is being prepared in school for those very same jobs that won’t exist by the time they graduate. Our curriculum prepares us for a lifetime career, but a child today can expect to change jobs at least seven times over the course of their lives – and five of those jobs don’t exist yet.

The coming days would see us pursuing careers that we cannot even imagine today. For instance your child could be an expert licensed drone pilot, or a cyber warrior in the army, a data analyst making sense of the peta bytes of data generated through our social interactions and trying to forecast our behavior.

The other big challenge facing students today is that the velocity of technology changes has gained incredible speed; this is making knowledge obsolete faster than before. The learners of today have to be adept at learning, unlearning what they have learnt, and relearning the new skills, a process of lifelong learning to stay relevant through these momentous changes. This is very different from the current system which shapes the mind and bakes in the knowledge.

The new thinking demands that the mind be shaped like putty which can then be reshaped. There has to be an education system that allows learning on the job. Corporate enterprises need to step into providing such kind of education if they are to ensure that they have the skills for tomorrow. Siemens, for instance, has launched a four-year “earn and learn” programme for apprentices.

While it is difficult to predict the jobs that will be in demand tomorrow, we can forecast the skills that will help us to stay relevant, especially the generation that is still in our schools and colleges. We have already moved to a data driven economy in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and this is going to increase even more in the coming years and Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) become business as usual in every aspect of our lives.

To ride this data economy, students will have to focus on logical reasoning and pattern identification for their school levels. This can help them to gain knowledge in data analysis at the college level where they will have to learn some kind of a programming language like MATLAB which allows implementation of algorithms. As MATLAB is proprietary software so students can use its open source equivalent, Octave. According to experts, Spark is another such technology that is revolutionising the analytics and big data world and needs to be learnt for machine learning application. Python, a highly readable language designed to have an uncluttered visual layout, often using English keywords where other languages use punctuation.

Python skills are already in high demand. However, to specialise on understand data analysis it is imperative for students to have a strong foundation in the basic sciences of Physics, Mathematics and Statistic. Most of these courses are available Massive Open Online Courses known as MOOCs like Udacity or Coursera. While these allow students to learn on their own, they will need a guide by their side in the advanced stages.

While AI and ML are disrupting jobs, there is great potential to use AI in education. “Adaptive learning”—software that tailors courses for each student individually, presenting concepts in the order he will find easiest to understand and enabling him to work at his own pace—has seemed to be just around the corner for years. But new machine-learning techniques might at last help it deliver on its promise, according to The Economist.

Creativity and linguistic skills: Not everyone would be so scientifically inclined, so what about those with a creative streak? The hope for them lies in the amazing growth of the animation industry which is going to increase even further. Creativity and linguistic skills will be in as much demand as technological skills, as it will be a while before creativity is automated or robots become an expert at these as well.

While data is one of the driving forces of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but sometimes, when we perceive the world through data-driven models, it can become harder to see the humanity behind the numbers. Technology thus has the potential to erode our sense of empathy.

Workers will need empathy – the ability to persuade and to work well with others. They will need a positive attitude – the ability to relearn, go back to college, and adapt to new situations as old skills become obsolete. Thriving in this uncertain world, where careers could change every few years, will also require resilience. These “soft” skills are hard to teach – and, as much as mathematics or science, will demand great teachers.

The great challenge of the next 10 years for corporations and institutions will be to rebuild the empathy that we’ve lost; companies will be looking for leaders who are able to help them do that, regain the trust of humanity along with technology leadership.

Abhijit Roy writes on technology issues. He is based out of Kolkata.