The future of education could be companies issuing digital tokens for the skills they deem most important.
by Tracey Follows
At September’s Transforming Education Summit at the UN General Assembly, New York, leaders from around the world met to confront what they called ‘a global learning crisis.’ Their goals: to help every child get their future back on track post pandemic; rebuild lost trust in public education systems; and persuade heads of state to commit to radical change.
The stated reason for this meeting was the fact that 1.6 billion students found themselves out of school globally at the peak of the pandemic.
According to the World Bank, this student generation could lose $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value (or about 14 per cent of today’s global GDP) as a result of those Covid school closures. The share of children in learning poverty has risen from 53% pre-pandemic to potentially as high as 70% globally. And even in the UK, it’s feared that around 10 million children will never return to school.
Are we really going to go back to the way we approached education pre-pandemic, or are we going to use it as an opportunity for change?
The truth is, even before students were put into lockdown and denied their usual learning experiences, skills needed for the workplace of the future were in peril. There is a growing mis-match between the skills that students are being taught at school, and the skills required for the world of work in the future.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 40 million skilled workers are needed worldwide to solve the global talent shortage, with 3 million new tech roles needed by 2025 in the UK alone.
Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and the generation that follows, Generation A (many of whom are yet to be born) will be able to work from anywhere in the world, thanks to remote working in a digitally immersive economy. Arguably, the current educational experience doesn’t adequately prepare them for the future, nor does it direct the most skilled students into the digital jobs where they’ll be needed most.
In fact, it would not surprise me in the least if we see corporate employers of the future, circumvent the usual education system and its qualifications, and start to offer their own credentialing systems that do measure for and reward the skills they think they want.
As the ability to tokenize learning experiences begins to gain momentum, it will be a natural shift for children to go from earning virtual gaming credentials to earning virtual learning credentials. Learn-to-earn web3 solutions work on a similar principle.
Hundo, for example, positions itself as the home of web3 for Gen Z, with a promise to replace CV qualifications with a digital skills wallet, containing tokens earned through the completion of masterclasses and other courses delivered virtually.
Read More:
https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/will-digital-credentials-replace-cvs/opinion/article/1802627
Courtesy: Management Today