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This week, Ten with Ken visits Fleming College, in Peterborough Ontario, where Ken Steele and president Maureen Adamson discuss the labour market needs of the fourth industrial revolution, and the need to prepare college students with interdisciplinary programs and the so-called \\u201csoft skills\\u201d in demand by employers.

Some of the biggest challenges facing higher education institutions, aside from budget pressure and demographic shifts, are the rapidly-evolving labour market. Most elementary students today will work in jobs that don\\u2019t yet exist. Artificial intelligence and automation are widely projected to impact at least half of all human jobs over the next few decades, and already prototypes have been unveiled of semi-autonomous vehicles, bricklayers, drywallers, news anchors, and even master chefs.\\xa0 In the past few decades, the jobs that have increased most worldwide are not those that require STEM skills, but those that require people skills, communication and emotional intelligence.

Fleming College is helping prepare students for a changing world, Maureen explains, through interdisciplinary experiential programs at its Kawartha Trades & Technology Centre. In this new 87,000-square-foot facility, plumbers, carpenters, and electricians work together to build an entire house. Students gain \\u201chard\\u201d, technical skills, but also those critical social and teamwork skills.

Multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interprofessional training will become even more vital as \\u201cnarrow\\u201d AI gets more and more capable of automating work within individual specialties. Ken shares Kai Fu Lee\\u2019s schema of AI\\u2019s impact on the labour market, which divides employment into 4 quadrants based on the level of creativity and strategic thinking required, and the level of \\u201ccompassion\\u201d or social skills required. Lee predicts that routine, impersonal jobs will be fully automated within 5-10 years, while routine interpersonal tasks will require a partnership between an AI performing \\u201cback-end\\u201d tasks (like interpreting medical scans) and a human explaining those results to a patient. More creative, transdisciplinary work will require humans working in conjunction with AI tools for the foreseeable future. (Check out Kai Fu Lee\\u2019s TEDx talk, \\u201cHow AI can save our humanity,\\u201d at https://youtu.be/ajGgd9Ld-Wc).\\xa0

The fourth industrial revolution, caused by the impact of AI and automation on the labour market, means that today\\u2019s college graduates will desperately need the so-called \\u201csoft skills\\u201d like creative, strategic and transdisciplinary thinking, as well as interpersonal communication and empathy. \\u201cNot everything is technical,\\u201d Maureen emphasizes, which is why Fleming tries to integrate arts and humanities skills into many of its courses. Ken cites Scott Hartley\\u2019s argument (in the Fuzzy and the Techie) that \\u201cthe antidote to technological irrelevance is to become MORE human, not less.\\u201d\\xa0

Experiential, team-based collaborative learning models will help young people in particular become workforce-ready, and develop the interpersonal and workplace skills that many students no longer gain through part-time jobs.\\xa0 Maureen observes that \\u201cstudents need to learn how to learn,\\u201d and emphasizes the importance of the employer perspective on skills and competencies. (A 2015 Canadian survey by McKinsey found that 83% of educators, 44% of students, and just 34% of employers felt that today\\u2019s youth are being adequately prepared for the world of work.) \\u201cThe more we can listen to our industry partners\\u201d about their needs, Maureen believes, the more colleges can \\u201ccreate programs in more of a design-thinking fashion.\\u201d For Fleming, and most colleges, \\u201cit\\u2019s going to be a culture shift\\u201d that will take significant time, as well as \\u201cinvestment in our people.\\u201d

A sincere thank-you to Fleming College for arranging the onsite videography for this episode.

Next week, Ken\\u2019s conversation with Maureen Adamson turns to diversity and equity in higher education, both in terms of gender parity and the integration of international students and perspectives.\\xa0 To be sure you don\\u2019t miss it, take a moment to subscribe at http://eduvation.ca/subscribe/

And if you would like to host 10K at your campus, more information is available at http://eduvation.ca/twk/site-visits/

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