Future jobs
World has been changing very fast due to the digital revolution and other technological changes. Covid-19 disruption has accelerated the pace of penetration of digital technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning even in the lives of common people. After Covid-19 pandemic many jobs have either become obsolete or at least require a new/updated set of skills to continue one's job. Many workers will never regain their pre-covid jobs as those jobs will never be back in the market and many new post-covid jobs skills may be more challenging and or different in nature. Fast technological changes have made so many new jobs available. What are skills required for future jobs is a question whose answer is not known to anyone because there are a large number of future jobs which don't exist yet. What is a way forward in such a situation? This requires deep introspection and integrated thinking about the learning model to be adopted.
Moreover, life expectancy has been increasing by two to three years with each decade in the past two centuries. It is expected that life expectancy of people born in the next 30 years may reach 150 years. With increased life expectancy and work life spanning over 50 to 80 years , there will be a remote possibility that one enters a job and retires from there. One has to switch more than a dozen jobs in one's life span. Each job will have a somewhat different nature of skills, so one can be in the job market only if one is continuously updating one's skills.
Due to increased life expectancy, one has to re-imagine LEARN, EARN AND REST to LEARN and EARN, LEARN and EARN, and LEARN and EARN… This continuously changing nature of job skills demands that one has to adapt oneself in a continuous learning mode to meet future challenges.
According to Sohail Inayatullah (futurist), often organizations think when some disruption happens or they miss something. Futuristic thinking means that working on problems before some structural change makes one redundant. According to him, often people think about the future, it is out there- Robotic, Space travel, etc. Future is not like an empty space, it is like the past. It is an active aspect of the present and thinking about the future is to change as today.
Now the question is: are there such opportunities of continuously improving one's skills or learning new skills? Many jobs still prefer a degree and ask what one knows rather than what one can do. To resolve the issue of having a degree for those who have skills, are we ready for part time learning opportunities in our universities and colleges? This will help millions who have the skills but are unable to get decent jobs because the degree signaling effect is very strong. Are there programs available where one can learn new skills while staying on job? Will our universities serve those who are unserved?
Even if our graduates are well trained and have requisite skills for the job market, there is a skill gap emerging overtime due to technological advances. As a result either they will become less productive or unemployed altogether. Currently, there are very limited opportunities available for upskilling.
Moreover, who will cater the needs of burgeoning youth who didn’t get opportunities for higher education either due to high cost of education or due to somehow getting lower scores in some class(es) and did not secure a seat. These fundamental questions need to be addressed at national, provincial, regional and university level.
How is our education system taking up this pace of technology change? Are we preparing children for jobs of the future and kinds of industry and economy within that when they leave college/university? Jeremy Howard (data scientist and AI) says not at all. He says its sad that basic computer skills and basic data analysis tools are not taught the way it should be even in the US.In her book Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don't Even Exist Yet ,Michelle R. Weise asks for developing a comprehensive Learning Ecosystem and to shift goal posts from TIME as fixed and LEARNING as variable to keep LEARNING fixed and TIME as variable. When LEARNING will be fixed then it will not matter whether its online platform or Physical (full time/part time) as one can’t go to the next step unless one has those pre-requisite skills. She also emphasizes that the university learning ecosystem should enable graduates to start moving on a continuous learning path rather than simply focusing on imparting certain skills. It’s a very timely book providing enough food for thought for all of us to rethink our higher education system to meet the challenges of new technologies
Pakistan has a youth bulge and economic growth is not sufficient to absorb it in the labor force market. On the positive aspect, due to digital technologies many jobs have become global in nature. How can one compete in a fast changing domestic and global market in the Silicon Valley era? Traditional university education system is misaligned with the current job market and simply adding a technological learning management system to it will not resolve the issue. The future of both higher education and jobs is uncertain, and many potential futures exist. In order to move from a future we don’t want to move to a future we want, we have to think and practice boldly.
In her book Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don't Even Exist Yet ,Michelle R. Weise highlights that due to the fast changing world and due to rapid emergence and penetration of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, Machine Learning among many others, there is a need to develop a new learning ecosystem. This book is written mainly for a country like the United States but these points are equally important for low income countries like Pakistan.