How Real-World Learning Could Help People Compete With Machines

When machines come for our jobs, we will need skills in communication, creativity, collaboration, and complex thinking to compete, says Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. It will take a completely different kind of education system, he says — not the current one, created at the height of the farm and factory economies — to prepare people for the future work force.

Consider the numbers: Economists say the United States has lost about five million manufacturing jobs since 2000, twice the losses of the 1980s and ’90s, as offshoring and machines have taken over routine labor. Meanwhile the economy has added tens of millions of service jobs, which require higher levels of education. But white-collar jobs are hardly safe, as artificial intelligence could oust workers from fields as diverse as radiology, accounting, and insurance. We face a churning, unstable labor market, in which everyone is vulnerable to replacement by a robot.

Mr. Aoun, a theoretical linguist by training, is a vocal advocate for Northeastern’s co-op model of education, with students working in real-world jobs related to their studies. Students need training in “humanics": a mixture of data science, technology, the liberal arts, and empathy, he writes in his new book, Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT), which came out about a year after he write a similarly titled article for The Chronicle. Colleges should take a broader lens on disciplines, he says, helping students connect disparate issues. He believes that those lessons come best outside the cloister of the classroom, in messy yet engaging real-world environments.

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Is the future about unexpected combinations?

Yes. “Humanics” is the integration of three literacies not only through curricula and combined majors but also through experiential learning. You can study creativity and entrepreneurship, but you have to practice them, which allows you to test yourself, to see where you are good, where you are not, where your passion is. It allows you to understand how to work with others. It allows you to practice systems thinking.

What are the consequences for higher education, which is dominated by disciplines?

What worked for us over the last 200 years is not going to work for us over the next 50 years. The rewards and grants are going to multidisciplinary, translational research that is impacting society. That, by definition, requires multiple disciplines. At the same time, students are asking for combined majors, for majors in different fields.

Whenever you have change, there are people who embrace change, people who resist it, and the large majority who wait and see. In higher education, we want to change the world, but we are somewhat reluctant when it comes to changing ourselves. Empower people who want to experiment and innovate. They become the ambassadors. They become the people who will carry the institution. If you believe in academic freedom, you have to allow this culture of experimentation, to make it part of what we do on a daily basis. One mistake would be to prevent it, but another mistake would be to ask everybody to do it.

How is the new environment pushing us back to an old model? Instead of memorization and classroom instruction, will we see more apprenticeships, open conversations under a tree, learning through play — forms that predate our modern idea of education?

In higher education, we introduce a dichotomy between learning to live and learning to earn a living. There is nothing sacred about the old, and there is nothing sacred about the new. What is sacred is the learner. Are we making learners robot-proof throughout their lives?

In many ways, the experiential component forces you to do what is needed. You hear about robotics competitions, and that’s advanced manufacturing. You don’t put up barriers, and you are not driven by a curriculum divorced from reality. You are discovering, you are shaping, and you’re making an impact. It’s not only the classroom instruction but the world instruction. The world is going to lead you on a journey where you have to integrate various components.

You say that machines and creative destruction will force people to become lifelong learners. Isn’t it exhausting for people to consider a future of having to constantly retool and reinvent themselves?

Yes, but it’s also exhilarating, because you have an opportunity to redefine yourself constantly. That’s the new reality. When I talk to our students, not only are they ready for that, but they embrace it, because they grew up in an environment where things started changing constantly.

If you look at your job as a 9-to-5 job, it means that you are not passionate. You are not excited about your job, but you are doing it because you have to. Lifelong learning provides the opportunities to discover new passions and also to live a meaningful life — not only at work, but to be a productive citizen.

Some people who have creative-class jobs will always be interested in their work, but other people just work to survive.

Those jobs are subject to automation. Everything that can be turned into a process is going to disappear. The opportunity for the human species is to focus on our human attributes and cultivate them. If we don’t do that, then we become obsolete.

Young people may be entrepreneurial and excited about a future of reinventing themselves, but reports also indicate that they’re anxious — and afraid of failure. You say failure is essential.

When I talk to people in other countries, I mention that failure is a learning process. They tell me that in their educational system and in their culture, failure is not something that has been accepted. On a global scale, we accept failure. We have the phrase “Fail, fail fast, and start again.” But do we accept failure in schools? The answer is no.

This is why the introduction of an experiential component is important, because not everything you’re going to start on an experiential level is going to work. We say here at Northeastern that there is no failed co-op. Why? Because if a co-op is not what you wanted, if it shows you that you don’t like a field, that’s success, too. That’s meaningful. Failure is a relative term.

Realistically, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

I see countries that are focusing a lot on education and lifelong learning. The U.K. is now discussing the possibility of asking each company to set aside a percentage of its margin to educate people, to upskill them or reskill them. When you look at China, the investments in education and in research are at an all-time high, and increasing.

In the United States, we have a system that is extremely diverse, which I value tremendously, because we have private institutions, public institutions, small colleges, community colleges. That allows us to innovate and experiment. In other countries, the minister of education determines what the curriculum is, or even what the research priorities are.

We should embrace experiential education, because it is a humbling experience. It leads you to be in tune with the reality, the changes, and the opportunities that exist. We run the risk of becoming like the railway industry, which said, We are focusing on railway transportation — and they missed the airline revolution.

In some ways, you are seeing that happening. You have companies starting universities. That’s not their core business. Why are they doing that? Because we are not meeting their needs. The opportunity for higher education is to embrace lifelong learning because the companies, when we talk to them, say, Look, this is not our core endeavor, but no one is meeting our needs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Scott Carlson is a senior writer who covers the cost and value of college. Email him at scott.carlson@chronicle.com.