Educating for what lies ahead
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 states that 39 per cent of the current skill sets of workers may be disrupted or become redundant by 2030
Education has always been a bridge, from a stage of acquiring knowledge to a stage of adult responsibility and active participation in society. That purpose hasn’t changed. What has changed is the pace at which the world on the other side of that bridge keeps shifting. Technology has compressed the time from innovation to disruption. Artificial intelligence, automation and digitalisation are transforming industries faster than traditional cycles of education can keep up. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 states that 39 per cent of the current skill sets of workers may be disrupted or become redundant by 2030. AI and big data are among the fastest-growing skills, but so are creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility and lifelong learning.
This places a different kind of responsibility on education. The question is no longer only which jobs students should be prepared for by 2035. It is also how the tasks within those jobs will evolve, and whether students will have the ability to adapt as they do. Uncertainty is increasingly less an irregular interruption and more a defining feature of professional life. That is why employment cannot be an outcome at the end of education. It has to be built throughout the educational process.
Students need strong disciplinary knowledge, but also the ability to question, interpret, collaborate, solve unfamiliar problems and learn on a continuous basis. Education should equip them with the confidence to navigate situations that may not come with a playbook.
This transition becomes more crucial with AI. Education should not respond to AI by adding another technology module to the curriculum. Students need to learn how to work with intelligent systems while developing the human capabilities that will remain essential as work evolves: judgement, curiosity, empathy, ethical reasoning, creativity and critical thinking. And just as important, they need the confidence to keep learning when the skills they learn today aren’t worth as much tomorrow.
That also puts resilience, character and grit into the equation. Technical skills will matter, but so will the ability to cope with failure, ambiguity, shifting expectations and constant reinvention.
The 1996 Delors Report from UNESCO identified four pillars of education that endure: learning to know, to do, to be and to live together. They are relevant because they are not only oriented towards immediate occupational skills, but towards the development of the individual. Therefore, for educational institutions, the challenge is greater than curriculum revision. It takes leadership that builds cultures of adaptability, experimentation and lifelong learning in teachers and exposes students to real-world complexity long before they join the workforce.
Education can’t promise students will know their careers in 2035. But it can give them something more lasting: the knowledge, character and agency to manage uncertainty, collaborate with technology and keep evolving with the world around them. The goal is not to future-proof students but to make them future-capable.
The writer is the President, Chowgule Education Society; Views presented are personal.
