The Future of Adult Learning: The 10 Years Ahead

What is Adult Learning to begin with?

The systematic effort on the part of an adult to pursue and acquire new knowledge, skills, aptitude or other attitudes through formal, non-formal or informal channels.

Changing Nature of Work

Within the next 10 years, most jobs you can think of, within first world countries, that do not require non-linear or graduate level thinking, will be automated out of existence thanks to various technologies and the synergies of those technologies at their evolved stages, if not their convergence such as but not limited to:

1. Smart Software / Applications

2. Smart Information Systems

3. Virtual Bots (read Artificial Intelligence)

4. Robotic Hardware (read physical Robots)

5. IoT / IoE

6. Other automated or automation hardware

A good illustration of the realities to come within the 10 years ahead, is the fact, that the same sort of IT support an organisation requires, requires a fraction of the manpower today, of what was required 10 years ago. 10 years from now, that same amount of support will require even less manpower.

Whether it is the Accounting Profession, or the IT Profession, technology, is changing the way work is done, because of what technology will do, what will have to remain a human prerogative and the new types of work that will emerge through that evolution.

Besides automating jobs or tasks, technology is enabling new business models to come into existence to either challenge or replace established ones, such as a-commerce. This changes the mix of competencies organisations would require as well as the spread and use. One by-product example, is the forced, if not voluntary, shift from an employee-centric society to an entrepreneur-centric society.

The trouble with an entrepreneur-society from a competency map perspective, is that as compared to an employee-centric society, is that it will be far more innovation driven and therefore, in itself, create a cycle of disruption, displacement and need for renewal or adaptation at a greater frequency. 

Whether we are for this change, or against it, it is rapidly happening, and most of humanity has been caught off-guard by its pace as of 2016. The pace of change over the next 10 years however, will be much more rapid, by many multi-folds. The first to be impacted, will be the First World Nations, and their working populations. Against such a vanguard, the need to acquire new, but more relevant competencies, regularly and constantly, to remain relevant, becomes a more pressing imperative than ever before. Also, relative to before, in history, the future of competency acquisition demands focus on the future, rather than the present.

Implications on the Future of Adult Learning

And so we get to the point. The future of Adult Learning is not about acquiring knowledge, skills, aptitude or other attributes or competencies to keep up or stay relevant with the times. The future of Adult Learning is about being equipped with competencies, before the necessities for them arrive, by first forecasting what competencies are likely to become necessary or relevant ahead, so that the adult is prepared, when a change demands their adaptation to it. And because the history of the period 2016-2025 is by the 2040s and 2050s going to be read as the journey from the Age of Innovation to the Age of Automation, that future of adult learning where the focus is on the future is best embraced closer to 2016, than to 2025, for minimal negative impacts.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting include Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking, Scenario Planning and Organisational Future Proofing. Harish also has a background in HR Consulting, Executive Search, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Executive Coaching, Career Coaching, Assessment & Development Centres and Vocational Programme Management for Employability Enhancement.