Lifelong Learning

With the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies, automation is replacing humans in the cognitive space as well as the physical one. The sheer number of both soft skills and technical skills already required by most modern companies is exploding. At the same time, the skills people do pick up remain relevant for a shorter and shorter amount of time. AI only accelerates this trend. We’ve crossed a threshold where the timed obsolescence for skills is shorter than for a single career. The message: People need to adapt faster than ever.
The good news here, however, is that previous technology revolutions have demonstrated that these changes also create new opportunities and entirely new kinds of jobs. The world will need more people who are able to do jobs that AI cannot. To succeed, then, we need to “robot-proof” our workforce. To do this robot-proofing, we need an approach to education and training that supports ongoing learning and is flexible and engaging. Unfortunately, our current model of education is aimed primarily at training young people at the beginning of their careers, when learning is their full-time occupation. It’s a model that, by and large, is built around the notion of “seat time”: If you need 40 credits to graduate, you need to spend a certain number of hours in a classroom, listening to a professor. That’s fine if you have lots of time to spend. But, as AI accelerates workers’ need to continually update skills, time is quickly becoming a scarce commodity.
So, what might an alternative approach look like?
One direction might be to change what people study. Increasingly, the value humans can add stems from innovation and creativity: seeing connections in seemingly unrelated things. Emphasizing cross-disciplinary knowledge could fuel these creative connections; to support that goal, some universities are already reorienting their departments around real-world careers areas instead of narrow, academic disciplines.
We also need to shift where we place the responsibility for learning. When we are very young, our parents are responsible for our education; later that responsibility shifts to our teachers. Instead, we need a model where individuals are supported in taking responsibility for their own lifelong education, even after graduation. And companies need to take responsibility for continually providing opportunities for their employees to develop.
There needs to be greater connectivity between higher education and the labor market. Colleges can address this need by focusing on skills that are truly in demand. In part this could be accomplished through more partnerships between corporations and institutions of higher learning.
Improving higher education is important, but most of us expect that we’ll be continually upgrading our skills after we graduate. In fact, non-traditional students — adult learners attending post-secondary education part-time — are already one of the fastest-growing segments within universities and colleges.
To meet the need of these non-traditional students, it’s time that educational organizations fully embrace certifications focused around mastery and demonstrated competency, not seat time. With this approach, students would get credit for what they actually know, not how much time they’ve spent in a classroom.
In sum, learning can’t end with graduation. To be competitive, companies will need to step up and provide education opportunities themselves, while encouraging self-directed learning, so they can ensure that their workers are continually acquiring new skills as the old ones become obsolete.
The information was taken from Entrepreneur.
