At RealClearPolicy former Deputy Secretary and Acting Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor Seth Harris remarks on other countries’ programs to align their peoples with the jobs that will be available in the future:
Consider Singapore, which launched the SkillsFuture program in 2016 to make career-focused education and skills training more accessible for individuals at every stage of their career. The program provides financial incentives, targeted training courses, and career assessment services to foster lifelong learning and skill mastery across the entirety of every Singaporean’s career. Or the French Personal Training Account (Compte personnel de formation), which all private and public-sector employees and job seekers use to track work hours, which turn into credits for vocational and professional training schemes. Better known are the vocational education and apprenticeship programs that have made countries like Switzerland and Germany darlings of the workforce development discourse.
I’m skeptical that there’s a relationship between education in any form and preparing for future work, other than in credentialization. You can prepare for present work but not for future work other than in the broadest possible terms.
I’m also skeptical that there’s much of a relationship between how much is spent on education and future prospects. If there is, Americans have little to worry about. We spend more per student than any other country in the world and the most overall per student than any country other than Norway.
The one thing about which I do not think we should worry much is that the “robots are coming for our jobs”. What will be true is that automation will change jobs in ways we cannot predict.
” I do not think we should worry much is that the “robots are coming for our jobsâ€. ”
I think this is mostly correct, However, there is no guarantee that the new jobs will arrive at the same rate that the old jobs are destroyed. I think there are likely time gaps. Also, there is no guarantee that the new jobs will be of the same quality or earn the same amount of money, at least in the short run. I think part of our challenge will bee facilitating transitions and mitigating negative effects.
Steve
I agree with that completely.
Most people won’t recognize a robot when they see one, medical office’s now have kiosks that print patients to place ID and insurance cards into a scanner, photograph, and give them a number.
Replacing a job.
Delivery drivers now are carrying a hand held computer-scanner connected to a printer that replaces the typist mentioned. Guided by GPS he no longer needs much training and is easily replaced.
As for self driving trucks, I can imagine that on the interstate highways, stopping at transfer yards where a driver takes over for the last mile. Cities are just too complex and conditions fluid. By the way. Self driving long haul trucks will still have accidents. What’s the public tolerance for that? And who bears ultimate liability in court?
As always, the deepest pockets, high tech.
I’m going to dissent re engineering. The engineering profession controls accreditation of undergraduate engineering programs via ABET. They have successfully imposed good quality profession education on every college that offers a BS in any engineering discipline. There are differences between schools, but all accredited schools provide the same skills to their students. This is backed up by written exams conducted by an independent agency. The result is real credentials that certify people with real skills. A Professional Engineer’s license means real skills.
This is backed up by continuing education requirements. Admittedly, in my experience the continuing education requirement for engineers is a joke. However, competition between engineering companies pushes individual employees to maintain competence.
Medical doctors have similar accreditation and licensing programs (actually older than the engineer’s) and continuing education requirements, but I have no personal knowledge of those.
The point being that professional societies recognize the problem of educational obsolescence, and there are programs in place to combat it. In the key professions of engineering and medicine, education is a life-long process. You are very wrong to doubt it.