Will you still need a college education in 2040?
Summary
According to Ryan Craig, cofounder and managing partner of University Ventures, a fund that invests in education companies (including Techtonic), we’re going to see the biggest shifts among nonselective colleges—that is, colleges with acceptance rates of 50% and higher. “Two decades ago, there was this general thought [among colleges], our job is not to be vocational institutions,” says Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president and CEO of the Society of Human Resources Management. Combined with declining enrollment due to the falling U.S. birth rate, colleges will have no choice but to focus on more practical-based training and change their curriculum to meet the demands of employers, he says. Specialists will be more valued than generalists The rise of the gig economy and contract work in roles that were once the purview of traditional employment is one of the main ways that technology has changed the job landscape. Micah Rowland, the COO of Fountain, a recruitment platform for gig and hourly workers, believes that we’ll continue to see this trend in 20 years’ time.