Skills need to be the focus for students, not job titles, implored the president of Lawrence Technical University and keynote speaker at the 15th annual AIRC conference.
“Future work and education are not about compartmentalisation, but rather transdisciplinary,” he asserted.
In his address, Soubh listed off many top jobs in today’s job market that did not exist 20 years ago such as driverless car engineer and cloud architect.
“And 20 years from now I cannot tell you what the job titles are going to be. Jobs we are training our students for now have not been created yet.
“Skills are what will charge the landscape of the future,” Soubh continued.
He proffered that students will need a wide variety of interdisciplinary skills such as communication skills, manufacturing skills, engineering skills, programming and AI skills along with those that have often been termed “soft skills”.
He also listed 14 major challenges facing humanity which have been embedded in the UN’s SDGs. These challenges include advancing personalised learning, making solar energy economical, securing cyberspace and advancing medicine and drugs through heightened individualisation.
Soubh predicted big medicine would be “the wave of the future”, which will involve a multitude of experts trained across different fields. Further, it will be guided autonomously by AI.
“Robotic and robotic-assisted surgery is rapidly expanding, and this methodology will allow doctors to perform procedures with more precision, flexibility and control,” said Soubh.
“Classic recruiting for specific degree programs is a thing of the past”
As such, he recommended that multidisciplinary skills based on student interests are what educators should be encouraging students to pursue – without confining them to a degree program.
“Life is going to be very different,” he concluded. As a result, he asserted that this fact is completely changing the face of admissions at all levels.
“Classic recruiting for specific degree programs is a thing of the past,” he stated.
Rather, he said universities should recruit based on broader interests and aspirations for careers not for specific degree programs.
Soubh also suggested that leaders should explore how AI, data analytics and large learning models can be leveraged in recruiting efforts to customize and track messaging.
