Icdk outlook No. 04, May 2019 The Future of Education

3.1 
Drivers and signals of changing demands 
How can the future of work impact the content of education?
Potentially through two things: 1) The curriculum and 2) The ways of learning.
First, the curriculum and learning objectives on all levels of education might need 
to adapt to an information-based learning paradigm. Such a change could require 
an increased focus on the mentioned human skills and a lesser focus on routine-
based automatable skills. The increased focus on human skills is seen at many 
universities in the US.
The second change relates to ways of learning. The way new skills are taught is the 
actual “product” being delivered in education, and all levels of education, including 
14
Manyika et al. of McKinsey Global Institute, 2017 
15
VIVE and Albæk, 2018
16
VIVE and Albæk, 2018: 20 

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Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education 
14 
up- and reskilling, will potentially have to adapt to a new paradigm of learning, 
where learning is increasingly individualized and focused on the non-routine-based 
skills needed in the future
17
.
The drivers and signals of changing involves a consideration for new skills, and 
second looking at ways of learning in the information age. Compared to the ‘new 
alternatives’, this chapter has perspectives to all levels of education, from early 
childhood education to corporate re-skilling, as automation may have an impact 
both on the existing workforce but also on the workforce to come. These 
perspectives will be described in the final section as the main sections will stay 
centred around higher education. 
3.1.1 Skillsets for a non-automatable workforce 
Considering the future of work and its impact on the skillsets learned in the 
educational system, the main driver of change is the demand for skills set out by 
the industry. Even though education to many is more than producing a workforce, 
it can be argued that the sector historically has had to keep up with major societal 
changes. When an increasing number of tasks become automatable, it is thus 
equally important to focus on the skills where humans have a comparative 
advantage of machines, which is the skills known as “soft skills”. The signals of 
new demands, that industry leaders call for these skills in today’s workforce 
instead of e.g. Digital Skills, as figure 3 shows.