The Future Of Education and Work | Looking Closer and Deeper
Looking at the bigger picture and deeper
Over the next 10 years the world of work is set to undergo drastic changes, with disruptive changes to business models will have a profound impact on all aspects of our lives — specially, education.
Here’s a quick video of what this research is about.
For sure, no one knows what the world would look like in 10 years’ time, and that’s the worry for the youth and educators today. We are preparing for job roles that haven’t been created yet. Perhaps we can make a good attempt at understanding the key factors that could potentially be the ones to bring new changes — with technology as the main driver for all the recent and future disruptions.
I’ll start off by quoting the philosopher Stephen Stich’s theory of ‘reflective equilibrium principle’ which explains the inner workings of our brains. It explains the categories of states that store the information about the world that influence our beliefs and shape our cognitive biases. It also suggests that our beliefs and cognitive biases are in a constant state of flux, which means there are new ones being created, taking over and replacing the old ones as we go on about our daily lives. This cognitive process continues to occur regardless of — if we try to proactively work on improving or changing our biases, or we let it run on autopilot — and hence education is a similar pursuit, and secondly when we start questioning the current education system, then perhaps our biases may surface as we dive deeper into this discussion.
The start, the divergence and convergence of cultures and systems
Perhaps it’s true for most things in life that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and it was no different for educationalists to fill in the work opportunities at the start of the industrial age in the 1800’s. Now if you think beyond that, the real need for education stems from ‘survival’ and ‘wellbeing’, whilst others might say it comes from our innate human desire to progress and driven by the curious nature of our brains. I’ll let you decide, as the difference of opinion favours the point I’m trying to make here. As it also appears to be a logical progression driven by human needs to further the education systems and expand on the models and modes of delivery. Looking at the world from a modern western view it’s not impossible to hope that all experts, educationalists and philosophers could agree to a common logic. But it isn’t the case, for starters take the example of other disciplines that have withstood outside capitalism for centuries — such as religious, charities, humanitarian institutions. It all boils down to the earlier point we made around what can be defined as human wellbeing on different levels.
The political scientist and famous optimist Francis Fukuyama, in his book ‘The End of History’ published in 1989, suggested the convergence of all political and economic systems, and consequently of values. Since the release of his first book Francis Fukuyama has gone back to course correct his theories — several times.
On the opposite end of this argument, Samuel Huntington published ‘Clash of Civilizations’ in 1992 presenting us with a view of continued and rising differences. He even highlighted the possibility of ethnic conflict. Now if you consider 9/11, widespread warfare, COIVD-19 and events such as Black Lives Matter, I could say that Samuel Huntington saw it coming, or another reason is that one of the arguments had to be right anyway. The important point here again is the difference of opinion, and the unpredictable nature of this world.
Richard E. Nisbett in his book ‘The Geography of Thought’ establishes the longstanding differences between the Eastern and Western cultures, then he goes on to suggests that the present West is more Chinese, and China is more Western than ever before. He explains the history in great detail, comparing the two from the very early foundations — with the modern western society built around mathematics, logical and objective thinking of the Greek philosophers, whilst the East had a focus on the environments effecting the objects and the unknown forces of Yin and Yang as foundations laid by Tao, followed by Confucius who changed the focus to human wellbeing but still ignored individual freedoms and objectivity. There were other disciplines in the East that existed pre-modern schooling, such as Gurukuls of India, or Madrasas in the Islamic world that largely emphasized humanity and suppressing materialistic and objective pursuits. However, with the spread of the British Monarch and towards the mid of the last century, the K-12 and similar British key-stages based system became the gold standard for modern systematic education across the globe.
The shift in job roles
One noteworthy fact is the transition of job roles through the industry ages from 1.0 in farming to, 2.0 towards factory workers, and in 3.0 to 4.0 — we are now transitioning from technology led jobs to an era of complete automation, of AI, Big Data, iOT and robotics. The transition between the ages has dictated the emergence of new subjects, skills and demand for specialized education. The rapid shifts in the availability of newer means in the last few decades have been phenomenal — with the internet changing the distribution dynamics from one-to-many to start off with — and now with VR Blockchain, 5G and Holographic technologies to deliver location independent, secure and immersive experiences. However, the approach and delivery methods around education have somewhat remained unchanged. This had two important consequential impacts A) Widening of the income gap for those who could not re-skill themselves to reposition themselves for the job market B) The rising difficulty level to reskill — moving from manual to manual jobs in the early industry eras, and then later towards semi-automation to now full-automation focused job roles. Perhaps it’s worthy of another detailed discussion in a future issue, but it was important to lay the role of demand and impact on education, and ultimately on the quality of life.
Now having considered the commonalities, the differences and convergence of civilizations with the birth of the industrial age — much of the world has inherited the century old system which has run its course and needs to be reborn again.
The effect of globalisation, emerging technologies and disruptions
Globalisation and fast penetration of technologies has given us many blessings and challenges wrapped in a bundle. Now it’s all about finding the right balances, adapting to the good parts and suppressing the not-so-good parts of what comes with it is likely to remain a challenge for the foreseeable future — in a nutshell.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an estimated 1.37 million workers are projected to be displaced due to new re-skilling challenges. 81% of employers said prospective employees lack critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills. Also, 75% think graduates lack adequate innovation and diversity skills.
In the UK the picture is no different, to get an idea of the skill gaps, see the research published by thehrdirector.com at the start of this year, reveals the following:
- 6 million people in England are at risk of being without a job by 2030
- 5.1 million low-skilled people are chasing 2 million low-skilled jobs
- 12.7 million people with intermediate skills are chasing 9.5 million jobs
- Yet, for high skills jobs, employers can’t find enough workers.
- There are 17.4 million high-skilled jobs but only 14.8 million high-skilled workers
Currently there are several sectors where there is a serious shortage of workforce across all skill levels. For instance, the pandemic has resulted in a sharp increase in eCommerce led jobs and consequently affecting related sectors — leading to an increased demand for warehousing, logistics and transportation. Tesco in the UK, alone, recruited 35,000 people in the last ten days of March, including many in warehousing, delivery, and IT, in addition to frontline shop staff.
Such spikes in demand are something no-one could have anticipated, but such is the nature of disruptions. However, what is clear to us is the demand for highly skilled jobs, and for roles that have evolved over the years and workers have fallen behind on re-skilling themselves.
Now the genuine concern for many is around selecting the right set of future skills and career path. For instance, the top ten of the biggest technology led corporations did not exist just over two decades back. What relevance will our learnings have with disruptions becoming more frequent and severe?
Employability and return on investment are at the top of the mind for many prospective students. A student who enrols for a career after school in 2020 will likely be at the peak of their career in 15–20 years from now, so the direction they chose today will have a huge impact on their career, and there’s fear for losing jobs to AI and robotics. We recently did an entire series to answer some of the key concerns and biases around AI. We will discuss AI and disruptions more a little later.
The century old system
We should give credit to the educationalist Horace Mann who laid the foundations of the modern education system, giving the masses an opportunity to learn a wide range of subjects that were never offered before — through, a however limiting, but systematic approach. It was quite ahead of its time. It’s a miracle that it survived thus far, but now the cracks are beginning to show. There are many challenging aspects to the current system, but in the recent years it has become more evident that even having good grades do not guarantee good jobs, hence the law of diminishing marginal returns in force — clearly indicating the level of maturity, whereby no further gains can be made without a significant transformation.
For as long as we can remember, the only path to education was to start in kindergarten and then graduate from high school following the K-12 path or through the key-stages in the United Kingdom to GCSC, and ultimately benefiting from an opportunity to diverge and somewhat personalize the choice of curriculum past the high school. Statistics now reveal as much as 40% kids drop out of schools in the US, and the numbers get worse when it comes to ethnic minorities with a dropout rates as high as 60% — so those kids never get to the stage of personalising their education and setting goals for their future.
For the masses, the illusion of success was engraved with good grades for the most part, and every other talent is put aside or perhaps chucked into a bin. There are many examples of such folks, such as Charles Dickens, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Rehana, Jay-Z Simon Cowell, Drew Barrymore, Clare Balding, Russel Brand, and many more who in their school time saw nothing but failure and frustration, then went on to defeat the odds and became highly successful — thanks to their own dogged persistence, and may be a turn of fate, but not otherwise.
Although science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are in higher demand than ever in the modern workforce, but we mustn’t discount the troubles of students who have no choice but to follow the STEM system. In-terms of contents we know that creative and art-based subjects are not taught exclusively, and its hugely problematic for people with highly creative right-brains who mustn’t have to struggle beyond basic knowledge of mathematics and science-based subjects.
The impact of COVID
In October 2019 around 50 days before the first case of COVID was recorded, a team of global health expertspublished a scorecard called ‘The Global Health Security Index’ which ranked the US as the number one, and United Kingdom as the second best country on health practices and capability to deal with a pandemic. The two countries that on paper were the safest turned out to be the biggest failures. The reason the team of experts got it so wrong: The experts did not consider the political context in which a national policy response is formulated and implemented. It’s also the same reason Fukuyama went wrong with ‘The End of History’. The lesson to be learned here is perhaps we should be paying more attention to the experts, and also learn from other countries who have come risen to the challenges of answering healthcare and education related challenges in much more scientific and proactive ways than us.
With the pandemic, we were ushered to re-construct ourselves as digital beings, and having access to computers, internet and remote learning platforms wasn’t the only challenge. The teachers and other administrative workforce also required quick adaption to new systems. The EdTech company Edmentum released an AI powered virtual assistant to assist teachers master education platforms. It now empowers 8,000 districts in the US and the UK.
Earlier on at the start of the pandemic we saw a notion shared by many that finally technology can be a great equaliser for home-schooling, bringing all social classes on the same level. However, home-schooling and finding alternatives came with its own challenges. In a recent article Bloomberg reported on parents in the US who are struggling to keep up with their full times jobs and home-schooling. They were hoping the schools would re-open, but since the announcement of continued home-schooling — have now formed groups on social media to connect with locals and setup make-shift schools. Then, they find and appoint educators who want to get paid more to teach smaller groups of kids without the health risks of larger, public schools. Now this kind of arrangement may be practical but not accessible and affordable for everyone. It exposes the reality of the notion we had we presented earlier on, and clearly the lower income groups are likely to remain out of such arrangements and an entire generation of kids can be left behind in this chaos.
Whether such arrangements are the future or not?, Or whether it’s for the fortunate some, or everyone? — are questions that remain unanswered, but even if it was a solution for everyone, we’re still attending to the same century old curriculum which is as good as their wifi connection, or their parents’ capacity to help them. We might be getting too fixated again, and pushing to go back to how things were pre-COVID and missing out on the earlier point we made that it’s not just about the delivery mechanism, but the pandemic has given us an opportunity to revisit and freshen up the musty old model, therefore the bigger question is — why not offer alternative paths to students — even if we are not ready to make a complete personalised system transformation? What about the ones who are not so successful on the traditional path? Can we continue to leave them behind?
The chaos is no different for the college and university students. In February this year industrial action stopped teachers for 14 days from their duties, and then came the COVID lockdown bringing everything to a grinding halt. Surely, it hasn’t been the best memorable year of their lives with several adverse events, all occurring at once. For some, an early termination of the spring semester, and being told to vacate university hostels, and travel bans in place for foreign students forced to making secondary living arrangements. Clearly, it wasn’t dealt with care or perhaps the ones responsible had too much on their plates.
In April, the Universities UK released a statement that said students should not expect a tuition fee refund and carry on with their learnings online with whatever means made available to them.
Although it may appear to be a sensible decision to allow students to carry on with their studies and prepare for their exams as normal, however, there are serious concerns over the quality of online education that is being delivered, with some universities offering just PDFs and powerpoint documents and others lacking in technology to deliver virtual lessons. For some, the lack of systems also mean — no way of carrying out exams, evaluations and gradings — but they must since the Government said so.
It wasn’t right, and surely something had to be done about it, which is why some 350K students have now signed a petition demanding a refund of their full tuition fee.
There’s still support for the government’s unkindly directive by some — painting a picture of tough motherly love and endorsing it as an act to safeguard students from losing a full academic year.
This reminds me of some past cases, when the concern for sincere public wellbeing hasn’t materialised as expected. Take the case of sugar tax for instance. It seems like a roaring success when you hear it from an advocate of the idea who argue that the 26% or so fall in the overall sugar contents in drinks, or the extra £150 million the Government now collects in the form of sugar tax levy from companies that continue to sell high sugar content drinks is a huge success — not really. If you look at the facts, it isn’t the case at all. Studies now reveal that the average sugar consumption per person has gone up by 0.5% as of 2018 and the lower income groups are more risk tolerant. What this means, is that someone craving for sugar now picks up a high sugar snack alongside a drink. Plus, the low income groups are likely to be more obese, and at the same time paying more and consuming more sugar. In short, the circular problem we have created hasn’t helped anything or anyone?
There are now plans in place to re-open universities and allow students to opt for on-premise lectures, however universities are reluctant to declare the extent of the activities — as to what and how much will be restored. Some surveys also reveal that one in five students are reluctant to go back to uni this year.
Another important point to consider here is the fact that neither the Universities can’t be fully blamed for it, which however does not mean they can’t do anything about it. Whilst some may face serious financial troubles if they were to pay out full refunds, whist others, not so much. For instance, it may not apply to the prestigious universities where the endowment funds are worth billions. Wikipedia reveals the estimated endowment for the top universities in the UK are well over £100 billion, whereas that of the USA are around half a trillion dollars. The debate is intensifying around whether they should tap the endowments from hedge funds and investments, and lend a helping hand to the students, teachers and even other universities in great need. It’s highly unlikely, but wroth questioning — wasn’t that the real reason why endowment funds were in the first place?
The future
In the recent years the pendulum for change in education had begun to move, and perhaps with the recent pandemic, it’s now in full swing. Long before COVID, we saw emergence of several newer models across the globe in countries such as Finland, Hong Kong and North Korea who had realised the challenges early, or perhaps decided to do something about it before others — for instance, Finland’s new education system was inspired by the research done by American philosopher John Dewy. These countries have vastly improved the ability of kids in reading, math and science over the past decade in large part because they trusted the teachers to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. Shorter school days, no formal exams and free education for everyone and most importantly with no dead-ends. Each child is given the right to decide their own path, set their own pace, and take tests when they feel ready.
There is no likely shortage of technological means when it comes to future education systems, but new ideas currently adopted by a handful of institutions; such as the flipped classroom, blended learning model, inverted classrooms, role reversal approaches are the kind of areas that need to be tested and expanded further to have a better construct of the future learning systems.
There are also new models gaining attention who have reimagined as to how education can be approached as a business. Consider the case of Lambda school, which offers free education upfront and instead of tuition fee — they have contractual income sharing agreements between students and teachers, where the teachers and institution become stakeholders in the success of their students.
In 2012 the company behind Udacity started MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) and joined by Stanford professors who founded Coursera and started offering MOOCs for free to universities. It claims to have over 110 million learners and offers over 3,000 courses but has its own challenges. Since it goes against the traditional model and being offered in traditional establishments, it has experienced numerous growing pains that include a lack of credit for MOOCs, lecture videos of poor quality, low rates of interaction with the course, and issues with assignment grading, among other things. Around the same time Minerva in the US that began as an effort to modernise higher education using unorthodox methods of teaching with limited number of students per class and essentially a hybrid of the traditional and new methodologies is gaining popularity.
There also a huge shift in focus from tech giants such as Googls, Apple and other VC funded firms are also joining the race. Apple now has a dedicated free learning centre for teachers and curriculums for young kids ‘everyone can code’ and also one for higher education.
The democratisation of technology and teaching approach is also a subject where there are several benefits to letting the teachers educate themselves freely on tools and techniques they see fit, and make use of online collaboration tools and digital means to engage with the youth, but on the other hand most institutions and practitioners are under strict guidelines or have genuine concerns over children’s’ safety. Digital platforms and social media is likely to remain highly relevant for engagement and most certainly expand further into more engaging and immersive experiences, and any institutions not buying into the concept of social media may be in grave danger of falling behind.
There’s a lot happening in the L&D (learning and development) space with hundreds of new Ed-Tech startups jumping on the bandwagon alongside incumbents, or parents and social groups answering home-schooling challenges on their own. In all of this, we don’t see the Government playing an active role.
Ed-tech and AI
Given the frequent disruptions and rapid shift in business models, AI is set to play a major role alongside other emergent technologies. A survey of 3,000 business MIT Sloan Review found that many executives understand AI’s potential, but have yet to put a strategy that leverages it into action.
Here are some of the most interesting findings from the survey:
- Over 60% of all companies don’t have an AI strategy in place.
- 75% of executives believe AI will enable their companies to move into new businesses.
- Almost 85% believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage.
- Almost 85% believe AI will allow their companies to obtain or sustain a competitive advantage.
When asked non-AI experts what AI could do for L&D, then the go-to-response is “suggestion engines” that power the content recommendations you see each time you log into Netflix or Amazon. Indeed, AI serves as the backbone of these suggestion engines, and when used for L&D, AI could be limited to function just as a suggestion engine, then we are not thinking about the fuller scope of where ML (Machine Learning) comes in. The real effectiveness of AI is dependent on the data it can utilise, so the more data the system processes, the more AI learns about individual learner needs and ultimately turning a learning platform into a continuous improvement engine.
AI and Machine learning can be used in many ways to augment the learning experience. AI can provide a much more consistent focus on the students to pick up on their learning gaps, help them by means of making suggestions for improvement and keep apace with individual capacity for absorbing and practicing new knowledge. It can also do the same for teachers by providing insights and highlighting areas that require more attention on individual basis. AI can constantly be in touch with the performance of a student — therefore it can potentially eradicate the need for formal exams.
Nevertheless, there will always be questions and concerns over the use of AI, or for instance how effective it be to start with — without any data for ML to benefit from, and plus concerns around user safety.
Since the inception of engines, cars, aircrafts, space shuttles, internet — each had their own host of detractors who said those things will never work, and it’s not going to be any different for AI and other emerging technologies that may seem absurd for Education.
Three important points to remember
1. Differences have existed and will continue to exist; how purpose of education and human wellbeing is defined.
2. Uncertainty and disruptions are just the ways humans progress, and the pandemic has been a catalyst. Since the Western world did not do so well facing COVID, so perhaps for future education we should look at other models and learn from them.
3. Fears concerns about the future of education and use of AI is again linked to uncertainty and lack of understanding that make people fearful of new technologies.
References
WEFORUM — stats on education and skills
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Towards_a_Reskilling_Revolution.pdf
MIT AI For Education
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/04/905535/unleashing-the-power-of-ai-for-education/
Impact of COVID on Education
Alan Turing Institue on AI for disabled kids
https://www.turing.ac.uk/research/research-projects/ai-and-inclusion
Also apple is rapidly expanding offerings for teachers and students via Apple Teacher — has announced expanding free online training with a curriculm ‘swift’ for higher education and also one for younger kids ‘everyone can code’ .
https://www.apple.com/uk/education/k12/teacher-resources/
More updates on further research on my youtube channel — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJghTgZmPHV9G4LZfrX1fug
Title image credit: Photo by Bradley Hook from Pexels
