What if I told you that you will do a job in 10 years that does not even exist today?
What if I told you that you can start learning how to build exactly this self-flying (Yes, you read correctly!) car from your company from next year onwards via online MOOCs?
What if I told you that you cannot fully rely on your education received by the old institutions of university and high school for your work life?
And what if I told you that there is a high chance that you will do a job that does not even exist yet?
Yesterday, Udacity, a major player in the online education industry announced that they will be the first ones offering a Self-Flying car Nanodegree. To put some weight to that claim, they have hired experts ranging from Nicholas Roy, from MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Angela Schoellig from the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies and Raff D’Andrea, co-founder of Kiva Systems, which Amazon bought in 2012.
Nowadays, we live in times in which we enjoy the greatest extent of flexibility regarding our education that has ever existed.
This, on the one hand, provides us with great freedom. For the first time in history people can have á la carte education: You like business a bit and technology a bit and you want to be a bit more technologically educated in blockchain or self flying cars? No, Problem, enroll in a MOOC and learn about it.
You rather like startups, but you do not know where to start?
No, Problem, search online and you will find more than enough resources of even high academic quality to get you started ranging from MOOC’s from the most elite universities (edx.org represented and cofounded by Harvard University) to elite venture capitalists (https://www.startupschool.org/ , created and represented by Y-Combinator).
You actually realized that you do not like business and would like to transition to Biology?
No, Problem, enroll in a micromaster course in bioinformatics (“https://www.edx.org/micromasters/bioinformatics) to receive a micro master degree for a fraction of the cost of the actual university from a prestigious university?
Well you understand the point…
On the other hand, due to this freedom a major part of the responsibility for our education was shifted from the universities and institutions educating us back to ourselves. Employees are increasingly expected to never stop learning and hybrid qualifications are increasingly sought after according to a research by Burning Glass Technologies in Boston.(http://burning-glass.com/research/hybrid-jobs/)
Hybrid educations are no part of the traditional university system and are just a small part of an even more dramatic change.
Companies require for instance, more and more technical skills such as programming skills for even business graduates that were simply not covered in traditional business university programs and as it as new development, universities are on average too slow to react.
In other words, nobody will force you to learn more than what is required at university, not your professor and certainly not your parents as their generation followed a rather stringent career path of university education and almost guaranteed employment, but you are expected to do that simply because of workforce competition.
In short, with this new shift in responsibility not only the individual educational freedom increases dramatically, but also the competitive pressure increases.
This pressure in turn leads the individual to make use of that freedom and foster lifelong education to stay competitive.
Will you increase your chances and learn something new online or are you already set up with a job?
Do you rather embrace the new educational freedom or do you favor the times when universities have shown you the path to follow?
References
edX. (2017). Bioinformatics. [online] Available at: https://www.edx.org/micromasters/bioinformatics [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
edX. (2017). edX. [online] Available at: http://www.edx.org [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
GENERAL ASSEMBLY & BURNING GLASS TECHNOLOGIES (2015). Blurring Lines. [online] Boston. Available at: http://burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/Blurring_Lines_Hybrid_Jobs_Report.pdf [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
Roy, N. (2017). Building The Future of Smart Transportation with Flying Cars | Udacity. [online] Udacity.com. Available at: https://blog.udacity.com/2017/09/building-the-future-of-smart-transportation.html [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
Startupschool.com. (2017). Startup School. [online] Available at: http://startupschool.com [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
The Economist (2017). Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative. [online] Available at: https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21714169-technological-change-demands-stronger-and-more-continuous-connections-between-education [Accessed 20 Sep. 2017].
