Devising An IR 4.0-oriented Education

Devising An IR 4.0-oriented Education KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 23 (Bernama) -- Here is an interesting observation: parents today bend over backwards to ensure their children get the best of education because the logic is that good education equals good employment prospects. However, the World Economic Forum in 2016 reported that 65 percent of children entering primary school at the time will ultimately work jobs that have yet to exist. It also predicted over five million jobs would disappear by this year. The trend is set to continue. How then do parents prepare their children if the jobs they would be working in have not even existed? FUTURE-PROOFING EDUCATION The most apparent step is to get the education system to evolve with the times so that future generations can keep up with the future workforce. The Malaysian Education Ministry has made it clear that one of its goals is to develop future-proof graduates with the right set of skills, abilities and humanistic values through educational transformation. It has also acknowledged that globalisation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) will change the future of employment with many current jobs no longer existing in the years to come. “In the face of the IR 4.0 era, we have to deal with expertise which never existed before and many new fields. So we need to equip our children with IR 4.0 technologies,” Maszlee Malik was quoted as saying last year when he was Education Minister. However, he had said, education institutions were currently not offering the right skills and this has caused Malaysian graduates to become less marketable, whether locally or globally. Cognisant of the problem, the ministry had engaged industry players to provide annual evaluation of programmes and co-curricular activities offered at various higher education institutions to ensure they adhere to industry needs, thereby increasing the marketability of graduates. Industry 4.0 Malaysia Association president VKK Rajasekaran approved of the move and suggested that the ministry also look into curating courses and programmes in line with IR 4.0. “More than 60 percent of fresh graduates today remain unemployed even after a year. This is partly the result of the mismatch between the programmes offered and market demand. “There has to be a parallel shift of what is being thought in schools and universities as they do not meet market demands,” he told Bernama in an interview, adding that this was necessary to prevent local talents from going abroad to find employment opportunities or better-paying jobs. Despite that, he said, local universities and colleges today are increasingly attuned to the needs of the industry and are curating courses that teach Internet of Things (IOT) architecture, robotic engineering, data science and cloud computing architecture, among others. “However, they need to continue promoting these courses and highlight its relevance in the future job market,” he said. ARE OUR JOBS SAFE? There is a growing fear that the shift to IR 4.0 would cause many to lose their jobs. These fears are not totally unwarranted as a 2017 study revealed that up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs by 2030. The study by the McKinsey Global Institute on 800 occupations across 46 countries found that most jobs then would be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic automation. It found, however, that jobs requiring human interaction and specialised lower wage jobs would be least affected. Rajasekaran, however, believed that the loss of jobs due to automation would be offset by the creation of newer jobs to meet the evolved needs of IR 4.0. “There will be a shift in demand for more semi-skilled and skilled jobs as routine and mundane tasks would be relegated to machines,” said Rajasekaran. This in turn would lead to a rise in the need for a university education, as jobs that require less education shrink. “As such, courses to prepare students for the future workforce should be introduced in secondary schools and in TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions,” he suggested. GOVERNMENT AGENCY INVOLVEMENT The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) Talent Development and Digital Entrepreneurship vice president Dr Sumitra Nair said that a lot could be done with the education system to prepare students for the challenges of IR 4.0, but other aspects of education need to be looked into as well. “All countries around the world are racing against time to ensure the readiness of their future talent by using the multi-stakeholder approach, rather than solely focusing on the education system,” she said. To bolster the tech talent life cycle, Sumitra said MDEC is engaging with school students, tertiary education students, the existing workforce and latent talent. “We’ll nurture the future tech talent pipeline and strengthen tech graduate employability for tertiary students. We want to ensure sustainable career growth for the existing workforce while also including latent talents,” she said. MDEC, under the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia, has been tasked with leading the nation's digital economy forward. To kick-start the digital movement in schools, it launched #mydigitalmaker three years ago. The joint public-private-academia initiative helped reveal digital talents in schools and consequently nurtured them to become digital producers. --BERNAMA