Technology, Education and the Work of the Future | Peter Dean | TEDxFulbrightPerth

[Music] [Applause] after 50% of all jobs could be automatic that is a pretty stunning statistic when we think about it about half of this room's jobs are potentially under threat if you have been trained in the vocational education and training sector unfortunately that statistic goes up to about 70% question is why is this happening we live in an era of artificial intelligence of blockchains of robotics of geopolitical change globalization and fate news we are living through an era of digital disruption these two things come together through the notion development of a fourth Industrial Revolution these combined along whether changing the way our society works the geopolitical level this affecting civics and citizenship and the way we can communicate and interact in our societies as an educator I've thought about these things a lot but in particular in my last six months at my job I've been particularly focused around these issues and the issues of the future so we're reflecting on our topic for tonight I came up with this question what does the work of a future look like in 2030 and how do we prepare for it I've been pondering as I said this question for quite a while and I've got fixated there for a while on this number 2030 what does 2030 really mean it and it dawned on me that for those people who are going to grow up and go into the workforce potentially around 2030 and finish high school or particularly maybe choose to go to university they are seven years old at the moment and I turned around and realized I have a seven-year-old son and his name is Flint and I thought what is it that I can tell Flynn about how to prepare for this future what is it that I could potentially tell fleeing that was also be relevant to the students that I teach here at the University of Western Australia to those thinking of coming to university but also to my family and my friends and my colleagues who face at least another 10 years in the work force out to 2030 so what I've come up with is my top five tips for that hopefully will be relevant to the rest of us about how do we prepare for the work of the future in 2030 the first one is to be educated education in an era of change and disruption is more important than it's ever been education is critical now as well as into the future it doesn't matter whether it's a degree or a diploma or a PhD seek out and take those opportunities for education where you may find them this is particularly important in an area where we'd have lots of different types of education and training that we can receive from massive open online courses through the specific and bespoke training courses but if I had one bit of advice for Flynn when he turned 17 and trust me there is no likelihood that he may even listen to what I've got to say it would be to go to university Hiba gets the opportunity why because that same study that tells us 50% of jobs could be automated that 70% of vocational education and training jobs could be automated says to us that less than 30% of jobs where you need a university degree are under the same threat so if you can and you get the opportunity go to university in fact don't go to university once consider the fact that you might have to go back again to retrain or to re-educate yourself or to find other qualifications into the future the second one is breadth is the new black so my advice would be not to go too narrow too early now Flynn came home to me a couple of days ago and announced that for the third time in a row he got 10 out of 10 in his math test and he announced that I am quote-unquote a mass master and that's great I'm not much of a mathematician I have to say he definitely gets that from his grandparents but if Flynn wants to go to university when he's 17 and studying mathematics I think that would be absolutely great and awesome but my advice to him wouldn't be to go to university and just study mathematics he also has a passionate interest in literature in arts and in history and in his modern age of disruption and of change my advice to him would be to stay abroad when he first starts to engage in his passions in those areas not just a focus on science technology engineering and mathematics the STEM subjects even though they're critically important but also to look to the arts and humanities because to deal with the fourth Industrial Revolution to deal with the geopolitical change we're dealing with today the focus is on steam and not stem he is putting on the arts into the science technology engineering and mathematics because that is the totality of who we are as people [Applause] my next advice is one of the benefits of doing those things together it will help you improve your soft skills your ability to communicate to working groups and work in teams to be entrepreneurial to be innovative to be adaptive to be all those great things but my other point the Flynn would be and to everybody else is education is not the only place that you get that experiential learning is key to who we are as human beings and by pursuing the things that we do in our extracurricular activities our co-curricular activities the things that we do that our hobbies and our interest is how you'll also develop those same skills and hone them so exceptionally well the key is to remember to think about and to understand how you repackage the skills that you learn in those parts of your life along with the formal education you receive and to be able to articulate those to the employers that you're going and sitting in front of how do I take my formal skills and my informal skills and put them together to explain how I can value add to that workforce of the future think careers not jobs I have on my wrist a gold watch my father was given this for doing 36 years of service in exactly the same job the reason that he saved in that job for such a long period time was to provide security to his family security that he had never had when he'd grown up he was born during the Depression he grew up during the Second World War in the 1950s and he worked through the boom-and-bust eras of the 1960s through to 2000 by providing that security of that one job he allowed his children to go to high school and finish which he never got to do and have an opportunity to go to university which he could never even dream off me as a generation Xer I've had a lot of jobs and I'm actually already onto my third career to reinforce it in my household already only a month ago my wife announced that she was going to come to this Verity University and study had the one that also teach them because she was sick of her career and she wanted to do something different the Australian Productivity Commission tell us last year that 50% of people who changed their job changed their industry 40% the people who changed their job changed their career it is estimated that for Millennials and for Flynn's generation he will have up to 10 or perhaps even 12 jobs in his career so having a breadth of experience and a depth of knowledge and working on these soft skills as well as these disciplinary knowledge is going to be key the other one is that credentials and credibility are important if you're going to take the time to educate yourself or receive training make sure you get a credential for it as I mentioned there is many ways to do this it can be a diploma at cambria degree he may be evans be silly enough like me to do a PhD who knows but he has a massive open online courses he can do he has training courses that come through particular organizations or industry there is a huge variety of things out there that you can choose from to be educated by but it's important you get the credential that goes along with it that validates what you've done and it's important that it has a degree of credibility because quality still matters particularly in an era of information and disinformation of news and of fake news so if you're going to get a degree and you're going to get a diploma or you're going to get any types of training look for the best institution that you can that provides the best support it can because that quality is going to be key to how you repair yourself and now you present yourself for the work of the future because in the end there is no value in having a degree from Trump University the future however we shouldn't look at in a dystopian type of way the future does equal opportunity if we look back in ten years in the past as well as ten years in the future we can see interesting things ten years ago there was no gig economy and there was no rubra ten years ago there were no app developers and we have a global shortage into the hundreds of thousands of those so today if you combine all those things and think about the opportunities it's also not about the jobs of the future there's the jobs you create for other people into the future and the careers that go along with them the key and interesting things have happened to me a few weeks ago was a bit of training and development that I got a young graduate from this university came in to speak to some of our staff and he'd set up his own startup and he was going around talk to students about how they organize themselves at school and how they think about their interactions this and this going what he told us is that young Millennials of today don't think about what job they want to do when they grow up they think about who they want to be when they grow up so my broader thinking to flame and to others the key question I think is who is it you want to be and if you want to prepare yourself for the work of the future you want to be the person who has a broad-based education you want to be the person who has all those soft skills you want to be the person who can innovate you want to be the person who's an entrepreneur you want to be the person who can mix all these things together to create your future not just be responding to that future in the end those types of skills are what employers I've been talking to over the last six months tell us that are not just for the future these skills that they want now in response to what's happening with artificial intelligence AI and robotics is important to repackage those scenes together because you can't really automate entrepreneurship you can't really get a robot who can do that type of innovative human interaction so in responding to these things what I would say to Flynn and to those also enos is that you need to unlock your humanity you need to pursue your passions and you need to reveal your multiple careers and that is how you prepare for the worker future thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 23,196

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Achievement, Future, Technology

Id: HBs-TBebSFg

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 12 2018