Enormous questions confront America in this historic presidential year. But regardless of who moves into the Oval Office in January, we know this much: America will need more from our colleges and universities in 2025, not less, and we need to plan for that.
Name an area of importance to our future—training for the millions of new workers in technology and other fields, the proper role of artificial intelligence, advances in green energy, our response to climate change, the promise of genetic science. In those and countless other areas, solutions are being incubated right now on America’s college campuses.
That progress tends to get lost, however, amid legitimate concerns about the cost of education and its efficacy in preparing students for jobs. We get it: Higher education must do better. But some of those doubts are symptomatic of our times. Consider this:
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 81 percent of those surveyed said the economy was an issue that would be “very important” in determining how they vote. Of course. But harder to read are the views of those who look at a low 4 percent jobless rate, inflation down to 2.4 percent and wage growth of 6 percent and mistake those numbers for bad news.
Underneath the uncertainty lies the gravitational pull of supply and demand. Economists have warned for more than a decade of a coming labor shortage due to birth rates that slowed at the start of the 21st century and fell further during the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
The result is a troubling paradox: more jobs than qualified people to fill them—but education and training programs frequently misaligned with regional needs. This new reality has confused both employers and workers, forcing them to re-evaluate their strategies for success in a rapidly changing world.
For employees that means a need to embrace learning and its significant potential to boost incomes. Only 54 percent of working-age adults in the US have a credential beyond high school—at a time when skills are more important than ever.
Consider artificial intelligence: The growth of AI may create entire new professions while threatening others with elimination. No one knows which jobs will be aided—or destroyed—by AI and other technological innovations.
As Karim Lakhani predicted last year in the Harvard Business Review, people who can’t work with AI will be replaced by those who can.
“I want to insist that the learning journey does not stop, and you have to invest in your own personal learning. And I think companies need to invest in the learning for their own employees as well,” he said. “Companies have to embrace this, and so do individuals.”
This is a conversation about the present, not the future.
“In many ways, your personal lives are mediated through your transactions, through your smartphone, through these devices, and how you interact with consumer technology products,” Lakhani said. “You are already living in an AI age.”
The key to thriving in a tech-mediated world is to recognize the distinction between tasks that can be easily automated and the work that only humans can do—work characterized by creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. As I explained in my book, Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines, we’re increasingly seeing a world in which people, instead of being defined by jobs, define themselves by their ability to do different kinds of work—by their talent.
Certainly, while specific skills are especially important in first jobs, long-term career growth happens when people can apply general knowledge to new challenges—a quality fostered in many college bachelor’s degree programs.
When it comes to economic change and technology, it’s not that the robots are coming to take our jobs. It’s that we must develop our very human capacities for learning and growth. It’s not surprising to feel a degree of anxiety amid such rapid change. But the problems we face aren’t unsolvable, and we have the resources to craft solutions. We simply must commit to use them.
Lighting that path, adapting to a future marked by historic, sweeping innovation in technology and society, is the work of higher education—in 2025 and beyond. And while America’s colleges and universities face their own challenges, they’ll find plenty of support if they can make the case that they’re uniquely meeting the country’s growing need for talent at a scale no other institution can.
This article was originally published in Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.