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![[PDF] Future Skills: The future of Learning and Higher Education | Notebook or My Personal Learning Network | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/QdDRiThvDX_9olKjr4CusDl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Future Skills has contributed to a decisive change of the public discussion about higher education, which we refer to as the Future Skills Turn. To examine this turnand its implications for the future of higher education is the purpose of this book. As a concept, Future Skills has gained an importance similar to that which emerged in the seventies of the last century from ideas such as equal opportunities or science orientation in European education. Such guiding principles usually do not appear as precisely tailored and empirically operationalized concepts, but rather as conceptual condensations of broadly diversified bundles of arguments and objectives – equally in the public, the political and the scientific discourse.
The starting point for the enormous career of the Future Skills concept is the insight that current concepts of higher education do not meet the urgent needs of our societies with convincing future concepts. Neither they are fit to help sus-tain our environment nor associated social or economic challenges. While social challenges are exacerbated by an accelerating process of globalization and digital advancement, at the same time these are the very forces that enable a multitude of new options for human development. In this situation of digital acceleration, the characteristic feature is that of uncertainty and the inevitable necessity is that of creative responsibility. It is a platitude that the future is unpredictable, however we must be prepared to shape it.
In ten to twelve years’ time, children who attend primary school next year will be entering vocational training or higher education, and in fifteen years’ time they will be the new professionals who as young citizens take over the responsibility in our society. We know little about this future. In the year 2060-2065 they are likely to retire, end their employment and/ or cease working. About this future we do not know anything. Our schools must prepare them for jobs that do not yet exist, for technologies and applications that have not yet been invented, for living in a society 2I Future Skills – The Key to Changing Higher Educationwhose social structures we cannot foresee today, and for dealing with challenges that are not yet discernible. It is our shared responsibility to make the most of the opportunities and find ways to deal with this uncertain future. It is about nothing more and nothing less than the preservation of our planet and our livelihoods.
Via Edumorfosis, juandoming
