RE: The Idea Economy is coming... are you ready?
This makes a lot of sense. However, in a way I don't really see the difference between an adaptable knowledge worker and an "idea economy" worker. Or is it just that nowadays everyone already talks about adaptability and that being the most important thing and that people just didn't talk about that earlier.
I still feel that higher education is becoming more and more important, despite your impression that it is becoming less important. It might be that Finland is just so much ahead of the rest of the world that we are taught to think instead of cram. I've seen education as a tool to enable learning new things, as something that helps in learning the skills you actually need. The system has already changed from: "learn this, you'll become a..." to "learn this, you'll be able to learn how to learn in your profession". Only people who stop at early stages of education expect that they will be cutting wood or doing something similar till they die. The reason being, they've gone to school where they were taught that. The other path is to go to an upper secondary, which teaches you how to think (well most people don't understand it at that point, I did), then you go to university or other higher education, where you get a degree which will help you to learn in your actual profession or make you a researcher in your field.
I think this what the education system is for, but in America I know, they still believe that when you graduate to be something, that is what you are going to do. In Finland, you just want to graduate university, then you go do something that you want to. Unless, you study to be a doctor or something that needs highly specialized education to get a license.
Anyway, one shouldn't expect that they will be doing the same thing for the rest of their career. If they do, that was wrong already in the 60's. No one does what they did when they started, unless they are extremely "lucky". Some people might prefer that, personally I look towards new challenges all the time.
And I completely agree with the fact that automation isn't necessarily bad. It will probably just make people work in better jobs. Some won't be able to adapt, but that is just how it is.
Good catch! I did go to sleep thinking "I did not explain the difference very well did I ?"
But once you get to 02h00 it's probably time to go to sleep.
l think indeed Finnish education has blurred that line for you and it might have given you a different outlook because they indeed do things differently.
My experience is with education systems in Belgium, Spain and what I read about the US system, or Ted videos from ken Robinson.
All of these systems seem to focus mainly on transferring knowledge and figuring out the one right answer to the professors' question.
It is very focussed on compliance with authority. Basically styled on old Prussian military values .
Ironically the military this day and age seems to focus much more on the ability to individual problem solving and critical thinking.
I think this article from Tony Wagner sums it up well :
http://www.tonywagner.com/7-survival-skills
(suspicious there's always seven , but a good start...)
How does that translate into business life?
Say you are a banker, lawyer, accountant, civil engineer or doctor even... and most of your job consists of repetitive procedural work, filling out forms, doing the same steps over and over... then you are an overpaid human "computer".
Here in Spain, especially after the crisis, people have it in their head that the public sector jobs are safe. ( they spend years studying for entrance exams !) Because they saw after the 2008 crisis that private salaries went down 40-60% and most public sector workers were not affected.
But the public sector is basically bankrupt ! Most of these jobs are paper shuffling(very inefficiently l might add), stuff a 16 year old can write an app for.
Already you see some department getting privatised, guess what the first move is going to be?
I'll think up some more but I guess this needs to be my next article...
I've had education in other countries as well, but it might be that I've learned what to focus on in studying from the Finnish system. However, the situation is the same in Finland that people use many years to get to their choice of university. The average is 3 years before you get there. I heard that in Spain pretty much everyone gets to try university, but many loose their place when they don't perform. In Finland you just need to try entrance exams until you get in. I did not get in on my first try for example. That system is ridiculous, but I don't really know how it could be made better.
And I agree, some professions will just be filled with computers, because an AI can do excel faster. etc.
This presentation by Hans Rosling shows the result of the education system: We are basically very outdated in understanding our world: Not totally related but fun none the less: