Jonathan Grudin, a principal researcher at Microsoft, said he was optimistic about the future of work as long as people learned technological
skills: “People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, and technology is already central.”
But the third of respondents who were pessimistic about the future of education reform said it won’t matter if there are no jobs to train for.
Consider it part of your job description to keep learning, many respondents said
— learn new skills on the job, take classes, teach yourself new things.
Pew Research Center and Elon University surveyed 1,408 people who work in technology
and education to find out if they think new schooling will emerge in the next decade to successfully train workers for the future.
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We don’t know how quickly machines will displace people’s jobs, or how many they’ll take,
but we know it’s happening — not just to factory workers but also to money managers, dermatologists and retail workers.
At universities, “people learn how to approach new things, ask questions
and find answers, deal with new situations,” wrote Uta Russmann, a professor of communications at the FHWien University of Applied Sciences in Vienna.
“Many of the ‘skills’ that will be needed are more like personality characteristics, like curiosity, or social skills
that require enculturation to take hold,” wrote Stowe Boyd, managing director of Another Voice, which provides research on the new economy.