With a lot of disruption taking place what is the workplace of the future going to look like ? Different trends are emerging like conversations around certificates versus capabilities . What is the future of the degree as we know it ? What is the future of work hours in a world where many people are more focused on deliverables rather than time spent in the office ?

What is the future of job titles as we know them in a world where people have opted for titles such as , Director of first Impressions instead of a receptionist , Director of Chaos instead of a service technician and even a Chief Getting S # it Done Officer instead of a Chief Executive Officer .

The launch by Google of the Google Career Certificate might just be one major nail in the coffin of conventional education and college degrees as we know it . The career certification program is basically a series of short term trainings in specific skills that will help people get high paying jobs . This bypasses the entire college system and could be one of the greatest threats to that outdated system we have been conditioned to .

Fatima Al Fihiri , the lady acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the founder of the worlds ’ first degree awarding University in 859AD ( the Al Kaourine University in Fez , Morocco ) was not a graduate . Neither were the instructors in this and many early institutions of the same nature . The primary way of passing knowledge down was through mentorship and apprenticeship . It was always an Elijah mentoring an Elisha .

If this was the original model , where then did this present model where people whose only knowledge of a subject is theoretical are charged with training others ? The ancient sages documented their knowledge in books and this is laudable and the right thing to do . However the books were never intended to be the replacement for mentorship and apprenticeship . They were intended to

The cycle of our success is complete only when we raise others to do what we do and to do it better than us . It therefore follows that the highest dimension of leadership is that where the leader works hard to make himself operationally irrelevant . When you do that you will never become irrelevant work hand in hand .

However this was not the case and so this gave rise to the intellectuals veering away from philosophical discussions and thought leadership to venturing into other disciplines for which they had no practical experience . This is how it is possible to have a business instructor who has never started a business before now charged with the responsibility of training people for business .

We live in a dynamic era and a very dynamic society where knowledge is being increased daily . When society grows faster than academia , then gaps will emerge . It is not only the content of what is being taught that is a problem . Even the context and delivery are problems . Knowledge is time barred . A person who was trained in the industrial era attempting to train people raised in the information era without retraining themselves is not practical .

Similarly a person who was trained in a pre-internet era attempting to train a person raised on the internet will just not work . The world is filled with people who have become experts by watching videos on YouTube and other social media platforms . This is the future . It has come and yet many are unaware .

What is a school ? It is the middle man between a learner and a teacher . We are about to see perhaps what will be one of the greatest and most radical transformations in history and it is high time .

If we look back the last half a century we will see that everything has changed . The

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The Street University : Upgrade Your Thinking