Communicating with Students in a Noisy World
Learn how you can improve your relationship management to attract and retain non-traditional students
Of course, they’ll create some new jobs, but the projections of how much of our economy automation will consume are daunting:
In the PEW Research Center’s Report The Future of Jobs and Training, PEW asserts that higher education will have a big say in which path we go down, addressing both symptoms and causes: “Changes in educational and learning environments are necessary to help people stay employable in the labor force of the future.”
It’s tempting to focus this discussion on traditional, 18- to 22-year-old undergraduates—digital natives whom schools can address through their core programs.
Overlooked are adult learners, who could become the fourth industrial revolution’s first generation of leaders—or a lost generation.
Themes to Build Upon
In the white paper, we’ll discuss several concepts variously put into practice that adult education programs can weave into their offerings to help prepare their students to grow into the kinds of lifelong learners who matriculate into sustainable, fulfilling careers:
A Moral Imperative
The moral imperative here is unavoidable. We simply cannot expect adults to disrupt their professional and personal lives by returning to college, to take on debt in exchange for a credential that AI and machine learning can obviate 5 to 10 years later.
In both the blue-collar and white-collar realms, advanced automation is already displacing workers at alarming scale, many of whom may form the next cohort of adult learners:
From Vocational to Holistic
While still addressing immediate vocational needs, non-traditional programs must also infuse in their curricula the skills that will continue to distinguish humans from robots: judgment, creative problem solving, systems thinking, cultural agility, ethics and communications.
In the white paper “Adult Learners in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Pioneers or a Lost Generation?” we tackle many of the challenges ahead for adult and offer examples of possible long-term solutions.
As Daniel Araya and Creig Lamb point out in the Brookings Institute blog: “For many policymakers, a natural response to this shift has been to focus on more and improved training in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects. What is often less appreciated, however, is the role liberal arts will play in this Fourth Industrial Revolution. … Growing calls to bridge AI with human ingenuity suggest that our education systems will need to focus on teaching skills that will augment and complement AI to meet the impact of machine automation.”
We’re in the midst of an industrial revolution marked by unprecedented scope and velocity. There is good news and bad news in this. The bad news is colleges and universities face an imminent moral imperative to deal with a weighty, complex, rapidly evolving issue. The good news is many of the skills higher education will need to deliver have been at hand for centuries: collaboration, creativity, systems thinking, strong communication and strategic problem solving.
To learn more about the challenges facing adults in the labor market of the near-future, and how they can be overcome, download this white paper.
Learn how you can improve your relationship management to attract and retain non-traditional students
Author Perspective: Analyst