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JEREMY MAGGS: Now, I don’t need to tell you, the future of work is changing faster than most education systems can keep up with.
From artificial intelligence and green industries to jobs that don’t even exist. I guess the important question, and the one that we need to keep asking, is whether South Africa’s youth is being prepared for opportunity or disruption.
We had a lot of coverage last week with insight from Davos and the World Economic Forum, and there was a lot of talk about adaptability, not just qualifications, that is ultimately going to define employability. I want to take this a little bit further. Executive director at Eduvos, Dr Riaan Steenberg, welcome to you.
Let’s start with the big picture from the World Economic Forum, what stood out to you as how quickly skills demands are shifting, not only globally but in Africa? There’s a complete paradigm shift here, isn’t there?
RIAAN STEENBERG: Thank you, Jeremy. Yes, there is. I think we’re seeing that creativity, resilience, collaboration, curiosity and systems thinking are very real skills that people need into the future.
If I was a youth today, I would be very scared of what is going on.
We are seeing that kind of trend coming through with a lot of young people saying, well, why should I go study? Why should I prepare myself for what looks to be these traditional careers and at the same time, thinking that those careers won’t exist into the future?
I think what we need to realise is that the education system is shifting, and we’ve been shifting it at Eduvos for some time, into a more capabilities-orientated view.
So I think we should really then work on — and the way that I think about it very practically — is to say you can ask AI as many things as you want to, but it’s the level at which you ask those questions that will determine if you’re going to be successful afterwards.
We’re seeing that there’s a direct correlation between how people have been learning, what they’ve been studying, to know what to make of this new reality. So those resilience skills are very, very important.
JEREMY MAGGS: Riaan, I wonder if we can just switch the conversation slightly to parents who are going to be listening to this, and there would be a degree of anxiety about choosing the right qualification, the right degree. Do you think the idea of a single linear career path is effectively over?
RIAAN STEENBERG: Yes, I do think it is effectively over. I do think that the average human will become a command-and-control entity for a number of robots that are going to do different things for different people over time.
I think we all will need to get to know ourselves very well and understand what we want from our environment and that around us. I think as a parent, we have to be open-minded about the fact that it is still important for your child to go study and to develop the ability to think critically through the whole system, to understand where it’s at, and as well to utilise the perspectives that you’re gaining.
The way that I often like to think about it is to say that it’s almost like in Harry Potter, when people go stand in front of the Sorting Hat, and some people will be more analytical, some people will be more creative, and some people will be more organising others and so on.
These are kind of the disciplines that degrees have given us, and that you need to continue to develop as a human being.
So it’s a very important time in your life to be developing your skill, your socialisation ability, but also your very direct profession, because that is, in the long term, also going to lead to the type of work that you’re going to be doing in the future.
JEREMY MAGGS: I like that phrase about thinking critically through the system, and I think that’s critical. It’s about multi pathways in higher education. But, Riaan, what does that mean in practice though for the person standing in front of the hat waiting to be sorted?
RIAAN STEENBERG: Choose the thing that you’re passionate about and make sure that that is at least what you need to be learning about now, and also where you think that that is going to go.
So it is still very important to learn to programme. You may not end up being a 24/7 programmer. You may end up prompting AI to programme for you. But somebody needs that critical insight.
I often think that we take this view that says, yeah, but when I sat in front of the AI, I asked it about the trends of the future in skills today. Nobody else is going to ask that question.
It’s what you then do with that, and how you then translate that into a practical way to earn money, to develop a future, to express yourself as a human being. That’s important.
I think it’s important for us not to get scared during this time, but also to realise that it’s very, very critical for people in Africa specifically — which was part of your original question — to lift our skill level and understand science, technology, engineering, maths, understand programming, law, business, so that we can create the new industries of the future.
JEREMY MAGGS: I get what you’re saying, but also to be practical, you’ve got to think about balancing passion with employability, haven’t you?
RIAAN STEENBERG: One hundred percent and that’s why we partner very closely at Eduvos with employability partners at every level.
What they demand from us is people who are job ready. They’re looking for people who can think critically through issues and utilise these tools to advance their businesses.
I’m very happy to say that we’ve had 23 000 students last year, and about 80% of those will get jobs within six months of them graduating.
So you have to be practical, and I think parents must demand from their learning institutions that they must prove their employability, because that’s ultimately what you’re investing in, is the opportunity for your child to have a future.
JEREMY MAGGS: If you could shift one mindset among students, parents, or even policymakers — because we haven’t even addressed that side of the equation — to better prepare South Africa for the future of work, what would it be and why?
RIAAN STEENBERG: I think that’s a two-part question. I think if I was a parent, I would trust private education because we are very demand-led. We work with industry to really understand what they need and I think that that’s super critical.
If I could change something in the whole country, I think government needs to see itself as a partner of industry and start providing the skills of the future and not things on some formula that says this is the number of people who should be studying.
There is a lot of capacity in the system, and if we start working together, we can actually start addressing the country’s skills needs, and not necessarily the number of people who need to go through the front door.
Right now, I see the debates are a lot about the number of universities that we need to be building and how more and more people had bachelor’s passes.
I think that that’s important and critical but being in business and industry, I know that that’s not the constraint. The constraint is the funding model.
It’s the way that we’re looking at the whole system and that we really need to change the rules of this game to say it’s the people who want to pay to access the future who need to go to university, and that university does not have to be 100% government funded.
So we have to change that game.
JEREMY MAGGS: I am very pleased, Riaan, that I am at the age where I don’t have to stand in front of that Sorting Hat, as you put it. Thank you for a very elucidating conversation. I appreciate your time. Dr Riaan Steenberg, executive director at Eduvos.
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