The Future Of Education And Labor

This book explores the ways in which education impacts labor markets. Specifically, the contributions in this book indicate that the future of labor is creative, socially aware and inter-disciplinary while identifying the changes and innovations needed in our educational systems to meet this demand. Due to an increasing automatization (robotic manufacturing), the character of labor and work in general will change dramatically in the near future. This will be the case not only in the western countries, but also in the larger emerging economies in Asia, for example China and India. While societal environments, economy and the character of labor are increasingly in a process of dramatic changes, the educational systems and the leading principles of research about labor and employment are not changing adequately. Cross-disciplinary (inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary) thinking and learning is not the main focus of our educational systems. Consequently, the systems of academic research follow and apply disciplinary or even sub-disciplinary strategies, avoiding cross-disciplinary research approaches, and not supporting inter-disciplinary academic career models. This book introduces such strategic models to better prepare the next generation of workers for the new knowledge economy, and the future of democratic societies.

Over the past few decades, US business and industry have been transformed by the advances and redundancies produced by the knowledge economy. The workplace has changed, and much of the work differs from that performed by previous generations. Can human capital accumulation in the United States keep pace with the evolving demands placed on it, and how can the workforce of tomorrow acquire the skills and competencies that are most in demand? Education, Skills, and Technical Change explores various facets of these questions and provides an overview of educational attainment in the United States and the channels through which labor force skills and education affect GDP growth. Contributors to this volume focus on a range of educational and training institutions and bring new data to bear on how we understand the role of college and vocational education and the size and nature of the skills gap. This work links a range of research areas—such as growth accounting, skill development, higher education, and immigration—and also examines how well students are being prepared for the current and future world of work.

Workforce readiness is an issue that is of great national and societal importance. For the United States and other countries to thrive in a globally interconnected environment of wide-ranging opportunities and threats, the need to develop and maintain a skilled and adaptable workforce is critical. National investments in job training and schools remain essential in stimulating businesses and employment agencies to collaborate productively with educators who provide both training and vocational guidance. Workforce Readiness and the Future of Work argues that the large-scale multifaceted efforts required to ensure a reliable and strong supply of talent and skill in the U.S. workforce should be addressed systematically, simultaneously, and systemically across disciplines of thought and levels of analysis. In a four-part framework, the authors cover the major areas of: education in the K-12, vocational, postsecondary, and STEM arenas; economic and labor market considerations; employment, organizations, and the world of work; laws, policies, and budgets at the federal, state, local, and military levels. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume informs high-priority workforce effectiveness issues of current and future concern and concrete research, practice, and policy directions to generate novel insights of a multilevel and system-wide nature.

Mainstream economists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs claim that unfettered capitalism and digital technology can unlock a future of unbounded prosperity, create endless high paying jobs, and solve the world’s vast social and ecological problems. Realizing this future of abundance purportedly rests in the transformation of human potential into innovative human capital through new 21st century forms of education. In this new book Alex Means challenges this view. Stagnating economic growth and runaway inequality have emerged as the ‘normal’ condition of advanced capitalism. Simultaneously, there has been a worldwide educational expansion and a growing surplus of college-educated workers relative to their demand in the world economy. This surplus is complicated by an emerging digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning that generates worker displacing innovations and immaterial forms of labor and valorization. Learning to Save the Future argues that rather than fostering mass intellectuality, educational development is being constrained by a value structure subordinated to 21st century capitalism and technology. Human capabilities from creativity, design, engineering, to communication are conceived narrowly as human capital, valued in terms of economic productivity and growth. Similarly, global problems such as the erosion of employment and climate change are conceived as educational problems to be addressed through business solutions and the digitalization of education. This thought-provoking account provides a cognitive map of this condition, offering alternatives through critical analyses of education and political economy, technology and labor, creativity and value, power and ecology.

The interwoven futures of humanity and our planet are under threat. Urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures.