I have written previously on this blog regarding the parlous state of education when it comes to equipping us and our children with the necessary skills for the 21st century.
It was just a matter of time before this became a commercial opportunity. Recently, Steve Wozniak, the other Apple guy, announced he is starting Woz U, saying “Our goal is to educate and train people in employable digital skills without putting them into years of debt” (see the full release here). It looks to me like it will try to plug the 21st century education challenge gap between MOOCs offering great content but no acceptable qualification (at least where my experience of talent acquisition expectations are concerned) and traditional universities offering not such great content but great pieces of paper to hang on the wall. Also, there’s that mounting student debt thing.
So Mr Wozniak’s desire to educate more of the many is, I believe, a good step towards dealing with the the types of skills we will need tomorrow (and I expect more profit-motivated speculators to wade into education soon). Which is lovely if you happen to live in the US. And of little value if you happen to live outside or in a developing economy. But it seems there are steps being taken to address this too. Muhammad Yunus, father of micro-finance, wrote a piece recently in which he talks about a company called Endless. Endless a stated mission to “enable people to harness the power of computing everywhere” and they have developed a low cost (around US$79 apiece) PC that comes preloaded with useful software and lots of Wikipedia data, giving access to users of the power of digitised data without the need for an internet connection.
When it comes to the future, much (most?) of what is being written about education, the impact of robotics and AI, the job and income polarisation, and so on, are really just tales about the US, and sometimes the EU. But mass education should mean all the masses, not just the privileged few. Yunnus sees this expansion into the developing world as a great opportunity for profit and not-for-profit endeavours. He concludes his essay by saying “You can probably see why I label technology the second megapower*. It will play a critical role in helping us build the new world we seek—provided we harness it, not solely for the purpose of generating individual wealth or corporate profits, but in the service of all humankind.” I like this inclusive approach to both technology’s reach and education. Thinking more diversely about the challenges of tomorrow will help us to better deal with them. And that includes the spread of education.
*In case you’re interested, he believes that certain “megapowers” are crucial to world transformation and lists these in his book A World of Three Zeros as: young people, old people, technology, good governance, and human rights.