‘We need a major focus on continuing education’

The labour market has been experiencing something close to a revolution in recent years. Countless jobs are being replaced by automation, while new types of occupation are arising due to innovation.
The good news is that new needs follow in the wake of these changes, as we can exploit the new technology to deliver novel goods and services at low prices. New technological opportunities provide a breeding ground for new companies and new types of jobs, and for them to flourish we must all learn new skills.

Technological developments and globalization have been wreaking havoc on the labour market for many years. Jobs in the sewing industry disappeared to Portugal, electronics companies went bankrupt, and now even the jobs of people with intermediate and high education are threatened by computers and robots.

Ever since the invention of the wheel, it has been a fact of life that new technology makes entire sectors disappear. What is new is the lightning speed at which changes are occurring, with whole industries being wiped out in just a few years.

“The days are over where a university master’s degree was enough to secure lifelong employment,” says Philip J. Binning, DTU’s Dean of Graduate Studies and International Affairs.

“Depending on who you ask, 40-50 per cent of all current jobs will be replaced by robots, and the radical technological changes in the years ahead will place huge demands on the ability of society and individuals to adapt.”

The answer—or one of the answers—to this technological development should therefore be a major focus on continuing education or lifelong learning, which the universities need to able to largely provide, Philip J. Binning believes.

The many new technologies are developing at such a pace that there is much we simply cannot predict. But the trend is toward a need for lifelong learning and an increasingly large number of more specialized courses and study programmes. Offering such courses and programmes may be an important task for universities:

“In light of the central role of technology in these changes, it is only natural that a technical university like DTU is playing a leading role in strengthening technology-based teaching in Denmark. We are highly ambitious at DTU, and we are planning a massive increase in our capacity, so that we can provide continuing education for Danish engineers long after they have graduated,” adds Philip J. Binning.

New technological education opportunities

Technological advances ares also helping to change the education sector. Teaching can be personalized using data analytics, and new online platforms make it possible to gather course participants at many different levels and offer peer-to-peer teaching. So the technology is also helping ensure that DTU can deliver quality education with great flexibility, to the benefit of society.

Online study programmes are one of the means of equipping employees to meet the terms and requirements of new times. Universities already widely offer MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). For example, DTU has developed a variety of short-term and long-term courses based on the Coursera online platform.