Jobs of the future part 2
Economic prosperity happens through jobs. More jobs will allow people to improve their standard of living and escape poverty. But with the advancement of technology such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Automation, etc., many labor jobs are being eliminated resulting in the increase of unemployment in many countries. Although there are new jobs being created, many of them require a different knowledge and skills, mostly at the college level, which leads to the question whether local universities are readied and willing to meet this challenge.
Many “academic” professors have argued for years that “university is not a vocational school” therefore, they do not need to train students for the industry’s jobs. But by maintaining this view, the education system failed to meet the country’s needs by providing skilled workers for the overall economy. The evidence is visible with high unemployment among college graduates in many countries. Today, the gaps in employment are widening between technology workers and labor workers, between rural and urban workers, between skilled and unskilled workers. As jobs are difficult to find, lives are getting harder, and the living conditions are getting worse, people are desperate, and some are getting into problems of drugs, alcohol, crimes, and other anti-social behaviors.
Every government understands that they must create more jobs to reduce the unemployment, but they cannot create jobs without skilled workers, and they cannot produce skilled workers without changing the education system by focusing on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Improving the economy requires NOT just more jobs, BUT better jobs, jobs with higher wages and they must be available to most of the population.
According to several global studies, one job in technology areas could create additional seven more jobs in other areas. But they also found that only 21% of current college students are studying in STEM fields because a majority of students did not have strong foundations in science and math to enter into these fields in college. The studies went further to point out the primary cause of this issue: The lack of qualified high school teachers in science and technology. It concluded: “Without qualified high school teachers, the entire school system, from high school to college, will not be successful in implement a quality STEM education.”
If this problem is not solved quickly, it will become a severe problem for the future of a country because without more jobs, and better jobs, the economy will not survive in this technology-driven world.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
