Strategist Michael Porter’s (1-LINK) The Competitive Advantage of Nations provides insight into four attributes that are necessary for Canada is to be competitive on the global grand chessboard.
One of these four attributes is factor endowments. (2-link) These are divided into ‘basic’ endowments i.e. trees, water, oil, gold, etc., and ‘advanced’, i.e. intermodal transportation, internet 5G and yes, education. But therein lies the challenge. According to the Office of The Parliamentary Budget Officer (3-link), “By 2020-21, the federal government is projected to spend $15.7 billion on postsecondary education”. But are we getting value for money?
I contend – No!
Basic marketing 101 – what does your customer want? Yes, the student is a customer, but there are three major stakeholders whose needs must be considered and all aligned with the institution’s curriculum. They are government, business, and academia.
Reluctantly but firmly, I contend the trajectory between what academia is producing and what government and business needs, is more and more divergent. This growing divergence is exacerbated by the disruption and turbulence introduced by the new industrial age – The Internet of Everything. Academia is not producing the advanced factor endowments that Canada will need in this new global politically and economically interconnected ecosystem.
So where will the jobs be? Harold Jarche offers this figure (below) and I agree.
Thanks to: https://jarche.com/
You will note increasingly the reduction of workers required for repetitive work, and the growing need for workers to acquire or grow those qualities shown on the right side of the chart: innovative work thinkers (critical thinkers) with the talents of curiosity, creativity, and empathy.
This new industrial age has and is continuing to explode upon us. Daily greater reliance is being placed on harnessing the synergies offered by the Internet of Everything. Yes, ‘everything’, (6-link) not just ‘things’. We are connecting people, animals, and things to this world wide web.
During the last industrial age, the rapidity of change can be seen from these photos of Times Square which, in 15 years, transitioned from horses and carriages to automobiles. Ask yourself, where did the buggy whip makers go, the blacksmiths, the tack makers? Where did all the car mechanics come from? Did the educational institutions reposition quickly from blacksmithing to automobile repairs? And if not, who seized these emerging blue ocean educational opportunities?
All industries across all sectors will have to undergo a 3C analysis (4-link) to confirm they remain in their sweet spot or will they have to quickly reposition… More on this in future posts.
“5th Avenue in New York City in 1900. There is one car in the photo.”
“In 1913, it was hard to spot the horse.”(5-link)
Consider this— according to Michael Dell of Dell Technologies, eighty-five percent of the job descriptions have yet to be written for this new age. Dark warehouses, autonomous vehicles, and robotics are replacing today’s workers; workers who must either retool or be made redundant.
The adoption of new Internet of Everything innovations has the potential to precipitate disruptive ecosystems for all sectors — for example create significant redundancy in certain demographics of workforce with social, economic and political implications. Again, more about this in future posts.
For those with a few more minutes to spare I commend to you … a thought-provoking backgrounder video, Humans Need Not Apply. (7-Link)
What do you think? Have I gone too far? Are you convinced?
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Watch for the next op-ed Part 1 – “… you can never go home again” … where we stress the need for academia to reposition by adopting new mental models demonstrating more right brain pedagogy in the viewpoint diversity curriculum, and place less reliance on the left brain curriculum where one-size-fits-all.
(Terrance Power is a professor of strategic and advanced international studies with the faculty of management at Royal Roads University in Victoria. He can be reached at anchorgaepublications.com)
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3. https://www.pbo-dpb.gc.ca/en/PSE_chart
5 https://alearningaday.blog/2017/10/22/horses-cars-and-the-disruptive-decade
7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
