The Future of Work - Back to the Future

The Future of Work

“Back to the Future”

By Dr. Earl Lewis, Dr. Alford A. Young, Jr., Justin Schaffner, and Julie Arbit

Estimates suggest as many as 800 million jobs will disappear across the globe by 2030, and up to 54 million workers in the United States, which is one-third of its contemporary workforce, will require retraining in order to maintain employment given the anticipated effects of automation on the world of work (McKinsey Global Institute 2017). Some observers might surmise, for example, that working-class jobs in the transportation field might be the first to be transformed—the idea being that self-driving vehicles would rapidly erase the need for drivers in long distance trucking and cab, livery and limousine services, including those employed for the new gig-economy companies such as Lyft or Uber. While those jobs are vulnerable, white collar jobs are also susceptible to being transformed by such forces as machinereading, artificial intelligence, and automation.

Today, advances in science, technology, engineering and math or medicine (STEM and STEMM) has spearheaded a call for more technical education. But where does that leave fragile workers? Some will need access to technical skills, and pathways to continuous reskilling. Others may want to move from two-year to four-year institutions, knowing that—as Joseph Aoun argues in Robot- Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 2017)—the most successful workers in the future will have deep domain knowledge as well as a set of skills and experiences that enable them to work effectively in teams on complex problems not easily automated. That trend underscores the need for a new educational framework that links access to just-in-time training, perhaps leading to certificates and badges, and perhaps ultimately to undergraduate and graduate degrees. This in turn implies that institutions of higher learning need to rethink their relationship to their communities and what it means to educate and serve.

Opportunities for Higher Education

As the United States continues to evolve toward a post-industrial economy, a new approach to higher education must shrink the social distance between colleges and universities and fragile workers. It requires a new emphasis on continuing education and learning. It requires a kind of whiteboard exercise that leverages the traditional disciplines and modes of analysis in a manner to foster creativity as well as subject-matter expertise.

What is needed for fragile workers to become robot-proof and robotready in the world of future work is a renewed version of the liberal arts in the nation’s service. That vision must be inclusive of fragile workers and non-traditional students across the social spectrum. Many institutions previously endorsed the “Liberal Education and America’s Promise” (LEAP) framework developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), which called for educators and employers to engage in new partnerships that advance “the importance of liberal education in a global economy and in our diverse democracy.” The original framework could not have fully anticipated the rate, scale, and far-reaching impact of automation of the fourth industrial revolution.

Many have tried to answer the question of why the liberal arts remain an effective educational option but are only beginning to address what is durable and adaptable about the liberal arts in the face of automation. Liberal arts education must be modular, emphasize horizontal learning, offer stackable credentials and options for part-time, online, and nonresidential programs, and be more accessible to non-traditional students.

Excerpt from The Great Skills Gap: Optimizing Talent for the Future of Work, edited by Jason Wingard and Christine Farrugia.