It is January and the legislature is back in session in Idaho. Governor Little outlined his budget which is appropriately weighted in my mind toward Education support with an eye to building the workforce of tomorrow. The session started early on Monday with the annual Legislative Academy presented by Idaho Business for Education. Many of the legislators attended and heard from two dynamic and well credentialed speakers. Without a full biographical review you should know Gus Schmedien is a Senior Human Resource Specialist at Hewlett-Packard and Marcela Escobar represents the Brookings Institute after a career at Harvard. Gus invests some of his time on the workforce of tomorrow at HP and Marcela is an economic growth expert. Gus walked us through what they are expecting from the fourth industrial revolution. Digital manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and smart production like 3D printing, digitization, and capital efficiency take us beyond just electronics and IT. A few examples were helpful for me, a robot passed a medical examination, petabytes of information were successfully stored on a strand of DNA including an operating system and several movies and retrieved, printing in metal is a reality. Virtual and augmented reality powered by Artificial Intelligence allows MD’s to be trained through medical imaging as opposed to the traditional cadaver lab. A recent study of both learning techniques found that anatomical knowledge through AR was gained 60% faster and it was just as effective. These advances will significantly change the skills needed in our workforce.
“By popular estimate-65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.” According to McLeod and Fisch from their work “Shift Happens”. Demographic changes point to a smaller and aging workforce by 2030. Innovation will accelerate. It is expected that the cell phone will be 1 billion times more powerful in 30 years, wireless will by 66x faster by 2020 and the world will generate 50x more information by 2020. The skills workers will need to compete are not surprising – it remains all of the hard knowledge we teach today – science, math, and reading coupled with soft skills like communication, collaboration, and creativity. Education needs to adapt its teachings to ensure we meet the ever evolving needs of our employers. At the same time, while cognitive skill measures will always be important, we must supplement the formula with new assessments that show what a student can do versus what they know. The pace of disruption and innovation coupled with a shrinking workforce calls for an effective and affordable lifelong teaching and learning platform for our adult populations. Idaho, with the support of business and under the leadership of our new Governor, understands the critical need to push to our 60% goal -it cannot be accomplished without some of our own education disruption.
William Pollard states “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” As a fan of serial innovator and disruptor, Richard Branson, his advice is relevant “there is no greater thing you can with your life and your work than follow your passions-in a way that serves the world and you.” It is no small task to update, expand, reinvent, and transition our education system to meet the fast approaching future. I know idaho has the leadership in the current public/private partnerships to assure focus on a productive and well prepared work force.
Enjoy the week end. Mike