What skills will employers seek in graduates in future?

03 October 2020

Digitalisation, data exploitation and the development of artificial intelligence are driving a period of rapid and ever-increasing change and inequality across the world.

The global digital revolution has received added impetus from the impact of COVID-19, speeding up the transfer to online educational provision and shopping and to many other services being provided online.

This is rapidly changing the world of work at a time when universities across the globe are under pressure to improve the employability of their graduates while struggling to keep up with the sheer pace of change and the ever more complex skills and retraining that the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 will require.

They want to know what skills employers will demand in the future, how higher education institutions can adapt their provision or work with alternative providers to provide cross-cutting skills, and how they can ensure access to and achievement of those skills by all.

On 28 October, University World News, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, will be bringing together experts from new and traditional higher education providers, the tech industry and the World Bank to discuss these issues in a webinar on:

What will employability mean in the digital age and how should higher education adapt?

This free webinar is being held on 28 October 2020 at 10am in New York, 2pm in London (GMT) and 4pm in South Africa.

You can register to participate here.

The panel of speakers include:

Alejandro Caballero, principal education specialist at the Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC), a global development institution that has produced research into future skills demand among employers. Before IFC he worked for its sister organisation, the World Bank, working with governments in higher education and science, technology and innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is a frequent speaker at global events and a thought leader in the field of private education and on developing skills for the 21st century.

Sean Gallagher, founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, and executive professor of educational policy. Based in Boston, United States, he is a nationally recognised expert with 20 years of experience in higher education. Prior to Northeastern, Sean worked for nearly 10 years at Eduventures, advising executives at hundreds of universities, education companies, and investors. He is a thought leader on adapting higher education programmes and credentials to meet future employability demands, and author of The Future of University Credentials.

Riaz Moola, a South-Africa based tech entrepreneur who earned an undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence and computing at Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom and went on to research machine learning as a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge. In his early career he worked for Google on the development of Voice Search and the latest version of Android and has since set up his own company, Co-Grammar, a tech start-up dedicated to closing the global tech skills gap and which helps global companies test how they hire and train developers.

Nathalie Munyampenda, CEO of Kepler, which is building an innovative global model of accessible higher education and offering new pathways to employment through upskilling in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Over 90% of Kepler’s graduates are employed within six months of graduation. An advocate of African innovation and female leadership, she is former Managing Director at the Next Einstein Forum, where she helped build Africa’s community of scientists as well as pushing for science driven industrialisation through foresight and policy work.

The webinar is being hosted as part of our ongoing Transformative Leadership series, produced in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, which this month is focusing on Employability in the Digital Age.

Participation is free and everyone who registers will receive advance details of the event and a recording of the webinar after the event has taken place. You can register to participate here.

To see all our articles on Transformative Leadership, take a look at our Transformative Leadership hub which you can access here.

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