The Future of…Youth

Wasim El-HaJ

Jan Owen, CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA), demonstrated her prowess in enterprising and presentation skills today as she made statistics seem thrilling to a throng of careers advisers and business partners. It’s just as well too, seeing as her foundation’s analysis of job advertisements since 2015 highlight employers are increasingly seeking skills such as digital literacy, bilingualism, critical thinking, creativity and presentation skills.

The following graphs were extracted from FYA’s The New Basics report (Downloadable here) and reflects recent trends in job advertisements.

If you’re a parent, teacher, lecturer or employer, how well do you believe your child, student or employee has been prepared for a World of Work that calls for innovation and adaptation. In Darwin’s theory of natural selection, selective pressures act on a population to preference a particular genetic trait (like a long beaked finch over a short beaked finch in some places), to the utter demise of the less-suited other.

Adapt to survive. How well adapted are our students for this world of change, and how flexible are they to adapt to changes that are coming (and unknown)?

A few months ago I wrote an article (click here) on the importance of employers to allow for this creativity and innovation – a double standard does seem to  exist in this era where employers often seek creativity but still want to streamline and homogenise their workplaces.

Owen spoke of three key “selective pressures” impacting on the future of careers:

1. Automation
2. Globalisation
3. Flexibility 

Our 4.3 million young Australians between the age of 12-26 years will be competing for global positions against 750 million youth in the same age bracket in nearby Asia. How can we best prepare our youth for their best chance to succeed? Are our public and private schools doing that? Is university still seen as the path to success?

I met with an intelligent former student of mine who completed his university degree last year, and as he put it, he “did everything right” and expected things would just fall into place…a job would naturally arise. Alas, that hasn’t happened, and he has found that to get a position, one must have “experience” despite having just graduated from university.

The Commonwealth-backed Higher Apprenticeships program – coupled with application training through FYA’s Higher Pathways program – is a promising alternative to a theoretical degree, providing formal training in a traineeship-style setting, while a student is paid a decent income and developing essential business contacts to form a professional network ahead of completion of a diploma level -or higher-degree. While I am delighted by this initiative, I doubt FYA alone will able to shift the deficiency I believe exists in our schools and universities. My hope is that it will prompt schools and universities to see the worth of industry experience. I know some universities, like the University of Technology Sydney, now incorporate internships as part of their engineering degrees, which would definitely give an edge to their graduates over those from universities with purely theoretical degrees. It is great to know how to do something, but even better to have done it before.

Who would you employ: someone who says they can do a task with theoretical results, or someone who shows you they have done it before and reports on the results?

Owen highlighted that we currently have the lowest group of students finishing high school with a second language in 50 years! Considering bilingualism is so highly regarded by employers, what does this say about the planning of society  for the changing world culture? It was evident today, when four of my peers spent a considerable amount of time ignoring the presenters and rudely having a private – and audible – conversation, that some, in education, do not see the significance of the points made here. It was amusing later when the very same four wanted to know more and were were frustrated and angry that they did not have all the facts immediately. Adapting is essential, and some want no change. Prominent researchers in the career development field, Jim Bright & Robert Pryor, highlight the struggle of career development practice to incorporate the effects of change and change, in line with the chaos theory of careers (Pryor & Bright, 2003). As career development practitioners, we are expected to “help individuals adapt to and manage change and transition” and “help individuals understand and accept that change and transition are normal parts of life” (Career Industry Council of Australia, 2011). The Australian Blueprint for Career Development also recognises this need to adapt to change in their statement: “Career development by its very nature is a unique, fluid, creative and individual process.” (MCEECDYA, 2010, p14). Are we, at the forefront of change, adapting and teaching our youth to expect change and learn to respond rather than react to it?

Whether we choose to ignore change for a period of time, or accept it as a matter of fact, it is inevitable that we will experience change in our careers.

On the topic of change, FYA’s report also mentioned a bunch of other statistics, such as 70% of current jobs being affected by automation, however that does not necessarily mean job losses as is often perceived. Think of the number of computer technician jobs and app and game development jobs that arose as a result of the computer and smartphone.

Change can cause some jobs to become obsolete while others arise, for those who have the skills, determination and adaptability to carry their skills forward in the great new world, which the future shall always be!

Remember, where the sun sets, it is simultaneously rising elsewhere.

 

Link to FYA’s research reports: https://www.fya.org.au/our-research/#report-downloads