HP Innovation Journal Issue 12: Summer 2019 | Page 55

P E R P E T UA L E D U C AT I O N
would really encourage kids to get involved where they
can learn and earn something, and that absolutely trans-
forms what you really do. I think if you graduate from
a four-year institution, you will very quickly go through a
process of relearning things about 40 times during your
career. It’s the modes of provision of that additional
education that I think will really change. Having learning
centers that are connected to serve a population and a set
of employers, but then connecting that population with
the best knowledge and skills that you can find worldwide,
which will eventually be provided through technology
rather than through onsite faculty.
Can you give us an example
of why perpetual education
is already a necessity?
My son works for TNT Latin America, which has just been
acquired by AT&T. He oversees live performances and
transmission worldwide through dramatically changing
technology. His job is changing almost weekly. As the
corporate structure is changing, as technology is chang-
ing, as the entertainment industry is changing, if he isn’t
learning something overnight, daily, he’ll be out of a job.
So for a 15-year-old to have a sense of career projection
and say, “Well, I’m going to finish high school and then
I’ll maybe go to college, then I’ll maybe get a local job and
then I’ll do like my father did and have a job and I’ll get a
pension”—you’ve got to be kidding. And I don’t know
how you do that without having kids actually involved
and employed in a dynamic industry that again will give a
firsthand experience of all the skills needed, plus a support
network to provide upscaling. And that means again going
back to transforming what a role of a community college
or a four-year institution does, or what other providers do.
Essentially providing learning opportunities on the run.
Are there high stakes for
companies that don’t help develop
a future-ready workforce?
Oh, definitely. You can find high-end types, but you’ve got
a vast part of your workforce which in fact has no capacity
to compete in this kind of environment. So where are you
going to do business? You’ve got to have a commitment
to the broader education attainment of a population. You
simply cannot deal only with the high-end, highly selective
groups. Those are interesting, but you can no longer do
business simply through piecework manufacturing. That
population simply won’t be able to function in the way
business is being conducted.
How do issues like immigration and
climate change factor into reskilling?
Ireland was able to succeed not simply because of educating
the population of Ireland, but because it was really open to
a well-educated population from former Soviet Union coun-
tries. One of the things that the Russian Federation created
was a pretty competent population in math and science at
the secondary level. If you can do that, you can deal with
mobile populations that have that competence, but now
we’re getting to the stage in which it matters that the rest of
the population is educated, too.
This is also why issues of climate change in places like
Sub-Saharan Africa should be of major interest to corporate
leaders, because they’re really leading to mass movements
of populations as well as populations which will then have
to be a part of a viable workforce, so it’s in their interest to
deal with the education of migrant populations, because
they are the key to the future workforce that people need.
It’s really moving from cherry-picking and self-interest to a
commitment to systemic change.
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