Mirjam Neelen & Paul A. Kirschner

Paul had the opportunity, through a fellowship of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), to take a first, research-informed, step to solve the great societal and economic dilemma on how to educate and train the youth of today for a (employment) future where professions that they’re being trained/educated for a) probably won’t exist much longer and b) don’t even exist yet and we have no idea what they’ll look like. Let’s see what the exact problem is first.

The problem

The opening paragraph of The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016, p. 3) states:

Disruptive changes to business models will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. Many of the major drivers of transformation currently affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact…