Education and Technological Unemployment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

• In Event: 51.063 - Education and Technological Unemployment: Dilemmas and Possibilities

Abstract

This presentation explores the rapidly growing body of research around technological unemployment and asks: What is the role of higher education in the digital age when technological unemployment becomes the rule rather than the exception?
Drawing from (Peters and Jandrić, 2018a) the presentation shows that educationalization of technological unemployment is based on the concept of human capital. Its main protagonist, homo economicus, is founded in three main assumptions: rationality, which implies making market-based decisions about one’s education; individuality, which implies that these decisions should be directed towards own benefit; and self-interest, which implies that people need to take care of (and be responsible about) their own education (Peters and Jandrić, 2018a). In many cases, homo economicus can indeed turn the game of technological development in their own favor. For instance, these days it is generally accepted that pursuing a career in STEM fields can significantly improve one’s chances in the global work market (see Langdon, McKittrick, Beede, Khan, and Doms, 2011). In the long run, however, the paper shows that educational solutions based on the concepts of human capital and homo economicus are unable to resolve the problem of technological unemployment, and concludes that contemporary education requires a non-suprecessionist approach based on the figure of homo collaborans which fundamentally rethinks the concepts of work, education, and research.
Based on these conclusions, the presentation blends recent insights into cognitive capitalism (Peters and Bulut, 2011), the present and future of work (e.g. Dyer-Witheford, 2001), and theories of innovation in the age of the digital reason (Schwab, 2016). It combines the ‘open model of the digital university’ and the model of ‘creative university as digital public university’ with recent insights into technological unemployment and develops the non-supercessionist ‘model of education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (Peters and Jandrić, 2018b) which may serve as a useful point of departure for further discussions in the field.

References
Dyer-Witheford, N. (2001). Empire, Immaterial Labor, the New Combinations, and the Global Worker. Rethinking Marxism 13(Fall/Winter): 70–80.
Langdon, D.; McKittrick, G.; Beede, D.; Khan, B.; & Doms, M. (2011). STEM: Good Jobs Now and for the Future. U.S. Department of Commerce: Economics and Statistics Administration Issue Brief #03-11. (accessed 30 October 2016).
Peters, M. A. & Bulut, E. (2011). (Eds.) Cognitive capitalism, education, and digital labor. New York: Peter Lang.
Peters, M. A. & Jandrić, P. (2018a). The Digital University: A Dialogue and Manifesto. New York: Peter Lang. 
Peters, M. A. & Jandrić, P. (2018b). Education and technological unemployment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In S. Crump; A. Drew, & G. Redding (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Higher Education Systems and University Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
Schwab, K. (2016). The fourth industrial revolution, Davos 2016. (accessed 30 October 2016).

Author

• Michael Peters, Beijing Normal University