Fourth Industrial Revolution has changed the education in 21st century? Know, How it has happened?

Preamble

In this article, we are going to through light on how the evolution of Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the education in general”. I hope, everyone is now clear about “what is Fourth Industrial Revolution and how it has changed the engineering education”. If not, see the previous article for the same.

Proceeding further, as we all know Fourth Industrial Revolution is all about the development of enormous computing capacities to handle the massive amount of data and in turn automating the job processes. When we are going to talk about automation, it is not only that technical jobs are being automated, but several non-technical jobs are also under the threat of automation. We can also understand the same through the facts and figures. Moving to the data (given below) as per the survey “Future of Jobs 2018” by aspiring minds,

Facts & Figures

S. No.	Job Function	Demand	Automation Potential
1	Accounting	3%	61%
2	Analytics and consulting	4%	35%
3	Core engineering	7%	27%
4	Customer service	9%	64%
5	General management	7%	14%
6	Marketing	7%	21%
7	Operations management	1%	53%
8	Sales	12%	39%
9	Software and IT	31%	42%

Reshaping the Education – How?

We can understand that jobs with maximum potential for automation are customer service, accounting, operations management, sales and marketing with 64%, 61%, 53%, 39% and 21% potential to automate respectively. In this we have omitted software & IT skills with 42% potential to automate, as we have discussed much about that in the previous article. However, if we will see the demand pattern for customer service, accounting, operations management, sales and marketing, the observation is that the demand for all these job functions is very less with maximum demand for sales as 12%.

What you can forecast through this data? The answer is – the jobs are changing. It doesn’t mean that they are becoming obsolete, instead they are becoming rich and advanced in their implementation. It means that the sales and marketing, these days, is not all about door to door and traditional marketing, but it is about implementing through digital platforms to influence the target audience and taking feedback through the same. It will also help in collecting the required data digitally and analysing it to draw some conclusions in order to improve the product and services and at last delighting the customer experience.

Now the question is that “how all these changes are impacting the education sector”. The answer is – the responsibility of the students is not only to master their own major academic discipline these days, instead they are also required to learn future skills, which are going to impact their career. It is also demanded that they should learn the soft skills as these are only skills which are going to help them in the today’s global and diverse market as they will make them ready for lifelong learning.

Concluding Remarks

All this is not only for today’s students but the same is also true for the yesterday’s graduates as well. Because the needs of the jobs are changing, thereby in order to be in job ready mode, you are required to learn the demanding skills. In simple terms, we can say that the need of the hour is to be ready for getting reskilled. In another words, it is not going to matter now that “in which academic discipline, you had been majored” instead what is going to matter is “how you are able to implement those learnings in accordance with the today’s global and diverse market”.

As you all know that every thing starts from scratch. It means that in order to make future generation ready for the skills of their time, it is the responsibility of the schools and higher institutions to equip them with these future skills and making them ready for life long learning in the present.

However, now a days there are several online platforms as well, which provides nano degrees and certifications from reputed institutions in these demanding skills through distance and digital mode at a very nominal cost. Apart from these nano degrees and certifications, the various online platforms are also there for such kind of learnings. These online tools can be adopted by today’s graduates and yesterday’s as well for their continuous learning.

Important message

At last, learn and be ready to change with the need of the hour as Change is the only constant in the universe.

What are your thoughts on the same? Share your views with us in the comment section. Also share it with your friends on the social media to spread the thoughts.

Thanks

Sources

1. N. W. Gleason, “Higher education in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”

2. “Future of jobs 2018”, Aspiring minds

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Disclaimer: The views presented in this article are the author’s own views. The views are presented here just for the purpose of information. These views are not meant to harm any one’s belief / thoughts.