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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION dangerous? Even if we could find these people and retrain them every 10 years, what sort of economic model sustains all this?
“ If you are a 47-year-old bus driver or coal miner or subway line worker or cashier or toll booth operator, you might want a leader that just promises to shut it all down. Build a wall and bring back the old kind of jobs.”
An increasingly influential element in this equation is wealth inequality, caused by the uneven distribution of the benefits of globalisation and of technology disruption. It is this process that has simultaneously seen the death of old industries and the rise of new ones, and it was significant in pushing Trumpism and similar movements into global leadership. Bleich is just one of the many experts that have expressed this opinion in recent months.
At the conference, UA unveiled a report that showed 84.4 per cent of industry-creating, and destroying, start-up founders in Australia have a university degree, demonstrating that universities do produce innovators.
Although, as demonstrated by the impact of companies like Uber on the taxi industry and Airbnb on hoteliers, innovation can be a zero sum game. The new industry takes away the jobs of the old while creating new ones.
The same can be said for globalisation and free trade between nations, where jobs that require manual labour, such as car manufacturing, are outsourced to countries where employers can pay cheaper wages.
As Bleich noted, and as numerous research reports have predicted, the workers in these industries are the first to be replaced by robots when it becomes cheaper for industries to do so. It is these people, he said, who are not receiving the benefits of technological innovation and a more connected world.
“ The future is already here – it just isn’ t evenly distributed,” Bleich said.“ All [ that the workers who have lost their livelihoods ] see are some elites in San Francisco trying to destroy you and your family.”
So in the face of these mammoth challenges, what can education do about it?
“ To successfully navigate this turn in our history, our education institutes will need to reboot, and train people for the new economy,” Bleich said.“ We need to rethink our educational model.”
Bleich warned that universities risked becoming“ less like waystations for youth but instead lifelong subscription services”.
Van Agtmael succinctly summarised all this change with the aphorism“ automation is the new China”.
The rust belts, Van Agtmael added – the communities that rely on traditional manufacturing industries – are forced to innovate simply because of the existential threat that technology disruption poses to their livelihoods.
And universities in North America and Europe are at the centre of it.
“ Rust belts are transforming themselves into brain belts by building on forgotten strengths,” Van Agtmael said.
Van Agtmael and Bakker outlined at the conference that these forgotten strengths are often in close proximity to a local university, which is often brimming with fantastic but siloed ideas.
Many of these cities and towns, like Portland and Pittsburgh in the US and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, are now research and innovation precincts, they said.
Professor Adam Shoemaker, Southern Cross University vicechancellor, also speculated that Adelaide, which has seen thousands of workers made redundant as car manufacturers move offshore, but which also houses the University of Adelaide, Flinders University and the University of South Australia, could be a city that becomes a brain belt.
Central-west NSW towns like Bathurst and Orange also have the conditions to become brain belts – they’ ve seen hundreds of whitegoods manufacturing jobs move offshore, but each houses a Charles Sturt University campus.
Bakker also advised that academics should be incentivised to work with business and not just publish work in academic journals. He also said they should not“ wait for the government” but do what they can with the resources they have.
Most of all, however, Van Agtmael said ideas must not remain sheltered in what he dubbed“ intellectual protectionism”. He added that innovation and prosperity change people’ s votes, often away from Trump-like politicians.
Furthermore, the incoming Universities Australia( UA) chair, professor Margaret Gardner, urged conference delegates to remember that universities“ are, and always will be, bigger than the nation state”.
She implored UA member institutions to rally against the waves of populist xenophobia and anti-globalism that have gripped the Western world.
Gardner, who is also Monash University vice-chancellor, outlined that this must be done through educating students who then go into the general public, and educating the staff who teach them. These two factors working in concert would create a culture of openness, she said.
“[ We must promote ] an understanding of the value of openness, an openness to the world and its ideas,” Gardner told delegates.
Australia can certainly put a dollar figure on staying open, at least when it comes to international education. That sector is Australia’ s third largest export, and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics it’ s worth $ 21.8 billion to the economy last year.
During an address to the National Press Club as part of the UA conference, the outgoing UA chair and Western Sydney University vice-chancellor, professor Barney Glover, hit a similar note to his successor, speaking about how universities must counter the age of post-truth with analysis, statistics, and real – not alternative – facts.
“ Agendas have displaced analysis” was how Glover summarised his thoughts on the quality of today’ s public discourse. But universities must also have an agenda of their own, Glover said. They“ cannot have any other agenda but the truth”.
However, Glover warned that the“ wisdom of the layperson” shouldn’ t be discounted. He said academic research must be understandable to the average person on the street, and not laden with professional, technical jargon when presented to the public. Glover also commented that universities and the vocational sector have a duty to retrain and educate those who have lost their livelihoods through technology and no fault of their own.
“ We have an important role to play to reconnect with graduates and with the community frequently during the course of their careers, because, let’ s face it, careers in the future are going to be very different from the careers [ of today ],” Glover said.“ They’ re going to take new twists and turns.“ We have to acknowledge that … the skills that the graduate might leave [ university ] with in the future may only last 10 years before you need retraining and support.” ■
See‘ Open for business’ page 10
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