The rise of “third workplaces” — from axios.com by Erica Pandey
Excerpt:
The big picture: As the world begins to move past the pandemic but holds onto remote work, we’re seeing the rise of “third workplaces” — teleworking spots in cafes, hotels or co-working spaces.
A LIFETIME OF LEARNING — from continuum.uw.edu
Excerpts:
The 60-year curriculum is the modern approach to a lifetime of learning. Getting a degree, getting a job and never setting foot in a classroom again are not today’s reality.
A discussion paper from the McKinsey Global Institute predicts that in the next 10 to 15 years, the need for new tech skills will accelerate. We will also need people who will develop, innovate and adapt those technologies. The paper asserts that, right now, 80% of the workforce doesn’t have the skills for most of the jobs that will be available in the next five to 10 years.
From DSC:
It would be good to integrate more vocational types of pathways/items in here as well.
For College Finances, There’s No ‘Return to Normal’ — from chronicle.com by Mark S. LeClair
The critical problems facing higher education won’t end with the pandemic.
Excerpt:
Higher ed is in trouble. It faces a demographic crunch in 2026, when smaller high-school graduating classes will mean greater competition for students. That will lead to tuition discounting and underenrolled classes for many colleges. And yet that demographic crisis is only one of many significant challenges the sector faces. As noted by Forbes in its annual review of college and university financials, approximately 20 percent of all institutions now warrant a “D” ranking (its lowest). Many are under serious financial strain and may not survive.
The Forbes financial analyses have been warning of a worsening situation for years. The added stresses from the Covid-19 pandemic will further aggravate the untenable circumstances facing hundreds of institutions. There is now a very short window within which we must carry out significant reforms.
The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready? — from Microsoft
“Over the past year, no area has undergone more rapid transformation than the way we work. Employee expectations are changing, and we will need to define productivity much more broadly — inclusive of collaboration, learning, and wellbeing to drive career advancement for every worker, including frontline and knowledge workers, as well as for new graduates and those who are in the workforce today. All this needs to be done with flexibility in when, where, and how people work.”
Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft
Also see:
The Short-term Credentials Landscape — from newamerica.org by Monique O. Ositelu, PhD, Clare McCann, and Amy Laitinen
What We See and What Remains Unseen
Abstract
Given the rapid growth in short-term programs, and policymakers’ fast-growing interest to invest federal higher education dollars into very-short-term credentials, we explore what the research does—and does not— show us about such credentials’ utility in the labor market. With concerns about equity, our review of the literature guides us towards caution, as a strong push for short-term certificates may run the risk of reifying socioeconomic stratification.
From DSC:
I wonder…will accreditation move towards the use of crowd-sourced methods? Similar to rating one’s driver or one’s experience with a product, will microcredentials get into more reviews and recommendations from the users of various learning/training-related sites and services?
Will users of a service comment on whether the credential helped them (with a salary increase, with practical knowledge, with an expanded scope of projects at work, etc.)?
Nalukai Academy: Harvesting Hawai’i’s Next Generation of Leaders — from gettingsmart.com by Ashley Ranan
Excerpt:
Nalukai’s program curriculum includes 5 areas of interest:
Also see:
21 jobs of the future: A guide to getting — and staying — employed over the next 10 years — from cognizant.com and the Center for The Future of Work
Excerpt:
WHAT THE NEXT 10 YEARS WILL BRING: NEW JOBS
In this report, we propose 21 new jobs that will emerge over the next 10 years and will become cornerstones of the future of work. In producing this report, we imagined hundreds of jobs that could emerge within the major macroeconomic, political, demographic, societal, cultural, business and technology trends observable today, e.g., growing populations, aging populations, populism, environmentalism, migration, automation, arbitrage, quantum physics, AI, biotechnology, space exploration, cybersecurity, virtual reality.
Among the jobs we considered, some seemed further out on the horizon and are not covered here: carbon farmers, 3-D printing engineers, avatar designers, cryptocurrency arbitrageurs, drone jockeys, human organ developers, teachers of English as a foreign language for robots, robot spa owners, algae farmers, autonomous fleet valets, Snapchat addiction therapists, urban vertical farmers and Hyperloop construction managers. These are jobs that younger generations may do in the further off future.
Also see:
Here are the top 10 jobs of the future — from bigthink.com by Robert Brown
Say hello to your new colleague, the Workplace Environment Architect.
Excerpt:
6. Algorithm Bias Auditor – “All online, all the time” lifestyles for work and leisure accelerated the competitive advantage derived from algorithms by digital firms everywhere. But from Brussels to Washington, given the increasing statutory scrutiny on data, it’s a near certainty that when it comes to how they’re built, verification through audits will help ensure the future workforce is also the fair workforce.
President Speaks: 5 higher education trends the pandemic is accelerating — from highereddive.com by Adam Weinberg
Technology, student choice and career prep will factor more heavily into colleges’ decision-making going forward, one president explains.
Excerpt:
Over the last several weeks, it has become clearer what the post-COVID-19 higher education landscape will look like. The trends that will shape the sector’s future are not new. But the pandemic has accelerated them.
Trends are like water. As they run faster, they cut deeper and in unexpected ways. Here are five that COVID-19 has given momentum to.
With New Online Marketplace, Community Colleges Hope to Better Compete With For-Profits — from edsurge.com by Yashvi Peeti
Excerpt:
Community colleges are staking a claim in the territory of online course marketplaces.
They’re about a decade behind their university counterparts, who helped to found edX in 2012, the same year that startup Coursera launched its competing service, now worth millions.
But leaders of a new platform called Unmudl say the time is right for community colleges to collaborate and make their workforce-training programs available more widely by marketing them through a shared website.
It’s a vision quite different from the traditional mission of community colleges to serve their communities—the literal, physical ones that surround their campuses.
Also see:
As school districts move from “reopening” to “recovery,” what will they be recovering from? — from crpe.org by Paul Hill & Michael DeArmond
Excerpts:
Coming out of the pandemic, these leaders thought it was time to try something fundamentally different. “We have to rethink school, period,” one told us.
They thought schools needed to “recover” from traditional conceptualizations of schooling that had never provided all students with high-quality learning opportunities. As these leaders talked about rethinking public education, they put lots of ideas on the table, some of which they piloted during the pandemic:
Also see:
From DSC:
When I see the word acceleration mentioned here…it (at least initially) raises a red flag for me. Speeding up the trains will leave many further behind. And if that’s not what’s happening here, I’d say that another word or phrase be identified and used here…as many others will have the same initial reaction to this word. A PR problem.
Law Firm Deregulation Programs Pick Up Speed in Utah, Arizona — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Sam Skolnik
Excerpt:
Efforts to allow non-lawyers to own law firms in Arizona and Utah are picking up steam, as participating companies say it’s inevitable that more states will be following similar paths.
Utah’s regulatory “sandbox” and Arizona’s “alternative business structures” program are being closely watched by the country’s largest law firms like Snell & Wilmer, which is actively weighing the possible benefits.
“Snell & Wilmer has considered and is considering opportunities that these changes may present to a traditional law firm,” said Mark Morris, a Salt Lake City-based partner with the firm, which also has offices in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. The firm, he said, “is closely watching the successes and failures of others who are actively participating in these programs to help guide any future decisions.”
A16z is betting $20 million on Maven, an ed tech and creator economy mashup — from protocol.com by Penelope Blackwell
Since launching in January 2021, instructors have sold over $1 million worth of courses on Maven.
Excerpt:
A little over a decade ago, Gagan Biyani founded Udemy, one of the main platforms that popularized massive open online courses. Now, he’s back with a new idea that jams together ed tech and the creator economy, and he thinks it can help more students stick out their online learning.
His new company, Maven, is focused on cohort-based learning. An expert tutor with a large online following leads an online course for a group of learners. The students join and move through content at the same pace, but much of the learning happens peer-to-peer as the students share their experiences over the web.
“There are thousands of experts, creators, and practitioners around the world who have valuable knowledge to share but aren’t traditional professors, and we think this is the best way for creators to monetize over the next decade,” said Biyani. “We’re creating the university of the future, built around these 21st-century professors.”
From DSC:
If adjunct faculty members want to go a different way in order to try their hand at making a lot more money, institutions of traditional higher education better look out! Especially if this new/alternative approach picks up steam! Such institutions have been paying extremely low rates for adjunct faculty members. And because these folks aren’t tenured faculty members, they rarely get much of a say in the strategies and directions that their institutions set and pursue.
With lifelong learning now a requirement, this type of alternative will be on an increasing number of peoples’ radars out there.
