Education is essential to a work world undergoing rapid change as it keeps pace with the digital revolution. This necessary evolution poses a two-fold challenge involving the academic world on the one hand – from pre-school through university – and the economy on the other.
The global scenario is clearly complex, but Italy is facing some specific difficulties. First and foremost, the country has a demographic problem that is already generating a gap between employment demand and supply. No less important is the deepening of fractures within areas in an overall national picture that no longer sees a wide North/South divide; rather it is as if there were many norths and souths differentiated in terms of competitiveness, income and innovation.
Digital technology – particularly artificial intelligence – thus risks becoming a multiplier of inequalities if it is not accompanied by accurate educational and corporate choices. In particular, the decision to use AI as a co-pilot, capable of sustaining the role of human capital, presents some critical aspects: if not supported by adequate understanding and training, investing in it becomes inefficient, which leads to opting for solutions that replace rather than help people.
Experience in this field reveals where the heart of the problem lies: a lack of digital skilling. Italy is not alone on this front, where what the new technologies need above all are analytic and critical capacities. AI can supply an infinite amount of information but is incapable of problem-solving; it therefore becomes fundamental for those who use it to pose the right questions in order to maximize the technology’s potential and raise the level of their own skills.
So, education must offer not only mere rudiments, which could easily be supplanted in a few months by digital developments. Its objective must be to prepare young people for jobs that do not even exist yet that involve technologies as yet not invented to resolve problems that have yet to be formulated. Thus, it is necessary to offer students method along with that capacity for “learning to learn” that has always been pivotal to the development of critical thinking.
In this sense, the digital transition must be fueled – in academia but even more so in business – by a continuous “learning by doing” in which people interface with technologies, familiarizing themselves with them to then optimize their own critical capacities to come up with new solutions.
As is already abundantly clear, a scenario such as this is having a strong impact on school and training systems. On the one hand, some traditional systems – such as Italy’s, with its historic foundation in the basics – must further reinforce their strong points. In this rapidly changing world, it is precisely that grounding in a wide range of disciplines that will help orient students, researchers and professionals.
On the other hand, however, these entrenched foundations must necessarily respond to the need for a truly transdisciplinary approach, understood as a paradigm shift leading to fully incorporating disciplines within an open system. For individuals and organizations alike, such a radical adjustment is neither simple to comprehend nor easy to apply.
Added to all this is the complexity of an educational universe that over recent years has seen the ushering in of digital technology through Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). Such courses are forcing traditional universities to reassess their role in a rapidly globalizing higher education market. AI is making these tools even more effective by allowing for solutions tailored to a variety of students. This leads to fewer “mass” courses and more targeted ones, with a view to reconciling high quality with remote access to content as well as tutoring.
The evolution of the university world must, then, confront a considerable rise in corporate “academies”, something that is becoming increasingly pivotal to the upskilling and reskilling being demanded by the work world. The university therefore – true to its foundational task to transform research into instruments – becomes one leg on a formative journey that stretches across a lifetime (life-long learning), building an ongoing dialogue with other fields. After all, fruitful interaction among the various agents of formation remains the winning ticket to ensuring that transdisciplinary preparation not only generates individual growth but leads to opportunities to develop territories and value chains for the good of the overall economic system.