The Class of Tomorrow

TECH BILLIONAIRE ELON MUSK FAMOUSLY said that he doesn’t look for degrees when he hires employ­ees, although, according to him, a degree from a good uni­versity or an institution may be an indication of the excep­tional capabilities that he always looks for in a candidate. It is not just employers like him in the world of high tech who seek employees with the capacity for critical think­ing and the capabilities to execute or manage ambitious projects. Across sectors, from teaching to managerial positions to logistics and healthcare to law firms to music academies and mu­seums to restaurant chains and other service businesses, employ­ers are increasingly scouting for skillsets and consider degrees as a mere indication of the strengths that their future hires may possess. What they want—both in the government and the private sector, especially in white-collared jobs—are dreamers who are also doers.

Placing skills first and treating degrees as a value-add is the trend buffeting the world now, especially in jobs that are considered the most high-paying and coveted across segments. The choice before universities, academics, and education policymakers, therefore, is to refine their curricula to help students acquire advanced skills while they secure their degrees so that they are job-ready. Brandishing a de­gree certificate alone does not count anymore. Your skills are what your selectors are primarily looking for. Can your degree give you both the skills and the recognition required for a position? That is the question.

The biggest challenge of our time be­fore educationists is to prepare graduates and undergraduates who can compete with those who don’t have the education­al qualification but have the drive and the skillsets, an outcome of the democrati­sation of education through technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) and other advances. Whatever the stream of your education, you have competition from others who may have acquired knowledge even without degrees, and who are highly motivated and smart. In addition, there are avenues for each per­son to showcase their strengths thanks to the unstoppable march of technology, and to monetise them.

With education getting a new mean­ing, studies have come out about the need to reorient our mindsets to face the new world of opportunities. In a column for the Best Colleges issue, we noted that In­dia’s National Education Policy—which refurbishes the existing system into a 5+3+3+4 format and plans to attract in­ternational students in hordes—would make the country’s educational system more competitive than ever before. But within a year, we have seen rapid growth in technology and the use of technology in education, so the challenges are ever-growing. More than ever before, there is a greater demand now for a match be­tween jobs and formal education.

A World Economic Forum (WEF) survey brought out this year points out that 49 per cent of people work in jobs un­related to what they learnt in college. It argues that a “skills first approach” in edu­cation can enable more than 100 million people to land in positions that are suited to their domain expertise. Essentially, it suggests that identifying skills that will be in need in the future will be crucial to promoting such skills—which means policymakers will have to reorient the education system in all countries and launch courses that help meet this gap in supply and demand. Such efforts are being made in India as well as other parts of the world. Notwithstanding the efforts of governments, those interested in the jobs of the future are mastering skills thanks to technological breakthroughs that have enabled many people to learn on their own. In such a scenario, the role of education institutions, including col­leges and universities, will be to not lag and become irrelevant, but to change at a fast clip to stay ahead of the game.

The challenge is not merely in draft­ing new courses and course material for students to equip them for the jobs and functions of the future, but also in metic­ulously training and selecting the teach­ing staff that can take up this Herculean task. Many colleges currently face a huge talent crunch among the faculty that is not sufficiently retrained to make new education policies a huge success.

It is not that efforts are not going in that direction. Globally, the trend is more evident than in India. For instance, as the WEF report, prepared in May this year with the help of PwC, says, “Since 2004, Google has maintained a commitment to its ‘20% time’ rule, encouraging employ­ees to spend 20% of their time working on learning a new skill or working on a project or idea that will benefit Google, which will enable them to be more creative and innovative. Since 2015, McDonald’s has been investing in Archways to Opportunity, a US-based ini­tiative enabling its restaurant workers to access programmes to learn English-lan­guage skills, earn a high school diploma at no cost, receive tuition assistance to pursue a college degree and access free education and career advisory services. By 2021, the initiative had supported over 55,000 employees and McDonald’s has awarded more than $165 million in tuition assistance.”

Although in small measure, such efforts to prepare students from disad­vantaged backgrounds to adapt to the tough environs of a university campus are also underway in India. Many private educational institutions here are offer­ing these students writing and commu­nication courses to mainstream them. All universities and colleges must have such centres to help students from the hinterland and those who did not have the opportunity to hone their speaking and writing skills in English.

Open spoke to Ashoka University academic and historian Nayanjot Lahiri for her comments on changes that im­mediately need to be done to forge ahead and prepare students for job scenarios of the future. “As far as I see the higher education scenario, I think governments should leave universities and institutes that it funds alone,” she starts off. Accord­ing to her, “University administrations should not have to follow government orders in the way they do [things].”

She adds, however, “This looks very unlikely to happen. Thankfully, what the government seems to be allowing is the coming up of an alternative to the government-run university in the shape of private universities and colleges. This feature of the higher education land­scape matters because, in the long run, the hope of a better future for students may lie in that direction.” Lahiri, an author of several books and an author­ity on ancient India, elaborates, “At one time, the state was the only provider of telephones and banks and air travel. Liberalisation created alternatives that have benefited each of us. So, the student can only pray that, in the long run, our government-run universities will be killed by niftier universities providing less dated and unchangeable courses.” Lahiri explains her logic, “Fossils die out and are replaced by species with higher intelligence. This ought to happen also to the Indian university system if—and I repeat, if—the state, which in India ex­ists largely to mismanage and obstruct, refuses to stop treating the university like the Cornwallis-created absentee zamind­ars treated the peasants of Bengal.”

The choice before universities, academics, and education policymakers is to refine their curricula to help students acquire advanced skills while they secure their degrees so that they are job-ready. Brandishing a degree certificate alone does not count anymore. Your skills are what your selectors are primarily looking for

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While excessive state intervention is certainly not good news, some also say that private universities need to be regulated about the fees they charge be­cause education shouldn’t become an elitist affair. This could be solved only by offering scholarships to students from far and wide who get admission to private universities. “Otherwise, un­like during our socialist past, only the well-heeled can send their children to school. Worse, those who become grads from poor households end up saddled by huge debt thanks to educational loans,” argues a government official who spoke to Open, emphasising that “with technology making a greater impact on people’s lives, learning will become cheaper for those aspiring to do so and pick up skillsets. They may not even need any university.” This means for educational institutions of all hue, be it private or state-run, to survive, it is imperative that they quickly adapt to the skills-first approach.

Ensuring that there is an excellent match between curriculum and jobs is not a new phenomenon. This has been stressed since ancient times and in sev­eral civilisations throughout history. Ibn Khaldun, in his seminal work Muqaddimah, writes, “Skill in science, knowledge of its diverse aspects, and mastery of it is the result of a habit which enables its possessor to comprehend all the basic principles of that particular science, to become acquainted with its problems, and to evolve the details of it from its principles. As long as such a habit has not been obtained, skill in a particular discipline is not forthcoming.”

While certain precepts endure, changes sweeping across the world are so swift that the world has moved from AI to generative AI (GAI), and to the whole concept of artificial general intelligence (AGI). IBM defines AI as “a field, which combines computer science and robust datasets, to enable problem-solving.” GAI is all about en­abling users to quickly generate new content based on a variety of inputs— OpenAI’s ChatGPT and text-to-image generators like DALL·E are examples. Now, we have a new kind of develop­ment known as artificial general intel­ligence (AGI), which is defined as “an autonomous system that surpasses human capabilities in the majority of economically valuable tasks.” Although a section of technologists, including Elon Musk, are thrilled about the scope of AGI, a Stanford University paper argues that AGI is still just an illusion. Whatever that is, what is to be borne in mind is that even ChatGPT, which was all the rage only a few months ago,

is now passé. Claiming that his new AI company is better than others, like Google and OpenAI, Musk, one of the founders of OpenAI, has launched an AI company called xAi to further his cause of understanding the universe better with the help of AGI.

Simply put, AI is altering the world of education in a way that was never expected until a few years ago. Many education experts are of the view that AI and GAI will only aid education and disrupt it positively while others term such apps “hi-tech plagiarism”. Even so, there is a greater sense of adopting AI ju­diciously to make the learning process easier. In an interview with Open earlier, Rita Kothari, a National Capital Region-based academic, had said that she wasn’t overly worried about GAI apps such as ChatGPT and similar products. She expects them to be helpful to students in doing things that are routine and in completing assignments that do not re­quire much creative thinking. Kothari said, “What is seen as competence [un­derstanding of certain subjects that are already in the public domain and that which only needs elaboration] can be replaced or made redundant. But think­ing, reflection, and experience are still the preserve of the human.”

That human writing and creative instincts still stand out and are valued is the argument of these academics who do not fear the march of GAI to make them irrelevant. However, without a doubt, any curriculum or educational system that doesn’t bring academic qualifications and job functions in alignment is sure to be rejected.

Policymakers and navigators of education policy are therefore going to feel the heat.

As reported earlier by Open, many academic institutions, as well as gov­ernments in India, are keen to make use of AI technologies for what they see as huge gains in the democratisation of information and knowledge. The gov­ernment of India, according to reports, is determined to tap ChatGPT to the full­est for innovative tasks, including dis­semination of information in regional languages to groups such as farmers who, if the government’s plans suc­ceed, can avail of services of chatbots to know more about government schemes. According to a news report, a group christened Bhashini—and attached to the Ministry of Electronics and IT (Me­itY)—is developing a ChatGPT-powered WhatsApp chatbot to fetch information about government programmes useful to farmers. And the Indian ministry is not alone in making the most of this op­portunity.

That we need to embrace technology in a regulated manner to be on top of the game as regards education is an argu­ment that is gaining momentum. Inte­grating AI tools into learning systems on our terms is the message thatStefania Giannini, assistant director-general for education at UNESCO argues in her July paper titled ‘Generative AI and the future of education’. The author starts with technologies that have so far disrupted the world over the past several decades. “Over the course of my career, I have wit­nessed at least four digital revolutions: the advent and proliferation of personal computers; the expansion of the internet and search; the rise and influence of social media; and the growing ubiquity of mo­bile computing and connectivity.”

She adds, “My formal academic training is in linguistics, so I have had ample opportunities to think about the structure, form, meaning, and power of language. Language matters. It is what distinguishes us from other animals. It is at the heart of identity and cultural diversity. It gives meaning to the world around us and inspires our actions. It is the basis of everything we do in educa­tion and almost every other sphere of life. It lies at the root of love and of war. It can empower, and it can manipulate …. We are coming to understand that our monopoly on advanced language—a natural ability, cultivated through edu­cation, and our species’ most defining social trait—is no longer something we can take for granted. Recognising this fact is forcing us to revisit the beliefs and assumptions that uphold our cur­rent education systems and, indeed, our wider societies.”

The author then comes up with a pro­found suggestion: “Education systems need to return agency to learners and remind young people that we remain at the helm of technology. There is no predetermined course.” She concludes in her widely discussed paper, “As AI experts remind us, our continued well-being and perhaps even survival may be at stake. Our work must be infused with urgency as we endeavour together to en­sure that our education systems play a key role in getting humanity’s transition into an AI world right.”

More questions surface about the types of courses that need to be promoted and those that need to be discontinued or discouraged. The question that is often asked is: is the age of the essay dead? A lot of education experts and academics have taken part in this debate amidst speculation that liberal arts education, too, is on the way out. Trevor Muir, edu­cator and author, brings up some stun­ning tips to understand this discussion. “This doesn’t abolish English class, but it actually might enhance it. However, that requires some shifting of the paradigm. And there are always road bumps when we do that. We might have to change the assignments we give to reflect this new reality. Oral exams where students have to verbally articulate their learn­ing might need to replace some of those writing assignments, and educators will need to develop better rubrics for that. Maybe, we need to emphasise class discussion and teach students how to talk to each other about what they think and what they’re learning.”

Yet, it is true that many jobs will go extinct and new ones will be created, and anticipating them and skilling stu­dents for such prospective job functions continue to be a challenge and an opportunity for educationists.

THE FUTURE OF JOBS Report 2023 by WEF, pub­lished in March this year, offers perspectives of 803 companies that together em­ploy more than 11.3 million workers in 27 industry clusters across 45 countries. It projects that of the current 673 million jobs, 83 million will be eliminated by 2027 while creating 69 million new jobs.

Some of the key takeaways from the survey are: technology adoption will re­main a key driver of business transforma­tion in the next five years; the largest job creation and destructio effects come from environmental, technology and eco­nomic trends; and big data, cloud com­puting and AI feature highly on the likelihood of adoption. “More than 75% of companies are looking to adopt these technologies in the next five years. The data also shows the impact of the digitalization of commerce and trade. Digital platforms and apps are the tech­nologies most likely to be adopted by the organizations surveyed, with 86% of companies expecting to incorporate them into their operations in the next five years. E-commerce and digital trade are expected to be adopted by 75% of businesses. The second-ranked technol­ogy encompasses education and work­force technologies, with 81% of compa­nies looking to adopt these technologies by 2027. The adoption of robots, power storage technology and distributed led­ger technologies rank lower on the list,” the report states.

It stresses that large-scale job growth is expected in education, agriculture and digital commerce and trade. “Jobs in the education industry are expected to grow by about 10%, leading to 3 mil­lion additional jobs for vocational educa­tion teachers and university and higher education teachers.” It adds that jobs for agricultural professionals, especially ag­ricultural equipment operators, are also expected to see an increase of around 30 per cent, leading to an additional 3 mil­lion jobs. Growth is forecast in approxi­mately 4 million digitally-enabled roles, “such as e-commerce specialists, digital transformation specialists, and digital marketing and strategy specialists,” the paper notes.

Even the way we do monetary trans­actions is set to change with the emer­gence of cryptocurrencies, and corporate leviathans who were earlier sceptical of them embracing these new tools. Histori­cally, utility always gets priority over reg­ulations. Companies like Neuralink, in the meantime, are looking to connect the human brain with a computer through a chip. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers, led by James DiCarlo, have developed a com­puter with a vision that sees things more like people do. The world over, machines are becoming smarter. The work culture that the likes of Elon Musk want to put in place will likely get more recognition. Degrees, therefore, are only going to be as crucial as the skillsets they can offer.

Gladly, several of the top colleges listed on the pages that follow are at it.

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Ullekh NP

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