Education institutions must champion reskilling revolution

We are facing a reskilling emergency. According to the World Economic Forum, 42 percent of the core skills within roles on average are expected to change by 2022.

As jobs evolve within the next two years, so will the skills required to perform them. This is the reality that we have to adapt to, but we have yet to equip our people with the skills required for this new economy.

In April alone, the Malaysian unemployment rate spiked to five percent as the number of unemployed persons increased by 48.8 percent to almost 779 thousand.

Meaningful reskilling efforts must be made as the problems that we will face in this age of new norms are not just limited to job skills mismatch but also the possibility of a future without “jobs”.

Digital transformation is materialising faster than predicted due to the pandemic outbreak, and it stops for no one. Companies are understandably shifting towards process automation to build resilience against the new norms and workers who use to fill in those roles are falling in between the cracks.

There is no guarantee that this stops here. This is a conundrum that must not be ignored.

It is concerning to witness the deafening silence of tertiary education institutions who could have been the major drivers of a reskilling revolution during these tough times, especially when upcoming graduates are going to be most affected due to the lack of skills and experience needed to navigate through this uncertain future.

Success in the new normal starts with education and reskilling. It's not just about building new skills but rather creating a whole culture around learning and incentivising growth.

Knowledge gaps can be reduced when people are equipped with an active growth mindset, high emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and interpersonal communication skills. Universities and schools are in the best position to make this happen.

While the ministry and other important players in the government are focused on creating new protocols and standard operating procedures to restart the school semester, we have yet to see a clear recovery plan - another matter that is equally important if not more - being critically discussed and presented for the people.

We must start thinking about a recovery plan, and reskilling must be one of the cornerstones in such plans.

We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be lulled into the dreams of going back to how things were, neither should we wait for others to lead before we start to act.

Universities themselves could start championing the move towards reskilling without relying on the government to show them the way.

As the new future unfolds, we could expect a shift towards the areas centring on “high-tech, high-touch, and high-art”.

Individuals involved in user experience, artificial intelligence, and machine learning would be in a comfortable position for a long time. Demand for workers in healthcare, education, and social services sectors too would continue as face-to-face interactions between human beings are still much needed.

We could also still seek job-security and stability in high-art jobs such as painting, writing, and directing.

While artificial intelligence is incredibly smart, it will never match human creativity as true machine creativity cannot be derived from a system that solely takes input and performs mathematical functions.

Perhaps universities can now look into these areas and work with private entities that are already moving towards reskilling.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is often not the turbulence itself but rather to act against it with yesterday’s logic. To come out of these changing times unbeaten, we need forward-looking universities who are willing to act now.

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MOHAMED KHALED NORDIN is vice-president of Umno. - Mkini