Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
I believe that the most important skills that young people need to work now and in the future are the ability to work in teams, communication and communication skills, flexibility and adapting to change, in addition to digital skills, computer use, and knowledge of a second language besides Arabic. Some people think that this is outside the scope of majors such as medicine, engineering, law, military colleges, and practical colleges, as one of the young men commented.
I said to him: No, my son, these skills are needed by the doctor, the engineer, the lawyer, the officer, the teacher, and all specializations.
Another young woman said: It is said that a large number of jobs today will disappear and new jobs will appear, which will make it more difficult for job seekers than it is now?
I said: In terms of numbers, this may be true, as there are indeed jobs that will disappear during the next five years, and most of these jobs are dominated by a repetitive pattern, but in return thousands more new jobs will be created, and this means expanding the available job segment, not decreasing it.
Whoever could not work as a taxi driver in the past can now work as an Uber driver, and the driver’s task will develop into a mobile semi-secretary, and he will become more than just a driver and will need new skills, and whoever could not work in customer service at the workplace can now work in the same job from his home . Rather, today’s doctors have to work in a team, and go to the primary health care specialty, without which the new health insurance system will not succeed, which will allocate each number of the population to a group of primary care doctors who must have digital skills and communication, to perform a job that the future will need in a new way.
Some jobs will disappear, such as the job of entering information and data, because with the growth of digital management, this will be done by “automation” and collecting information through big data.
(Big Data)
Specializations will change completely whenever work platforms change, and I mention here specializations that we did not know before, such as virtual reality developers, self-driving car engineers, vertical agriculture specialists in cities, green transformation jobs, and others such as data analysts, computer systems analysts, information security specialists, makers and analysts. Coding, e-marketing and software designers.
Unfortunately, most of the new majors do not have educational curricula and training programs in universities. Rather, large companies prepare young people for them, not traditional educational institutions.
The essence of the art of the profession in law and medicine may continue, but the specifications of the future doctor and lawyer are changing now and will change tomorrow by virtue of the availability of knowledge and alternatives, the qualitative change of service seekers, the immediate review of professional decisions and the possibility of comparing them with international standards.
Distance education and training has also become a reality, without the need to buy land or rent buildings and spend billions, and micro-certificates appear and will appear.
(Nano degrees) that does not cost those who want large resources, and professional diplomas to raise the level of employee performance as long as its students have the necessary skills.
Technical education and vocational training develops so that the owner of these professions becomes equivalent within recognized limits in the skills that we are talking about in order to advance the profession and increase its respect in society and even its resources.
A young man looked at me and said: There are some words that have become frequent and many people may not know their meaning, so what do you mean, for example, by automation and digitization?
I said: I did not know the term “automation” until after reading a number of reports about the future of jobs and work in the future, and it is a modernized and Arabized term that means automation and refers to everything that works by itself without human intervention. “Automation” can be described as the use of computers and devices based on processors or controllers and software in various industrial, commercial and service sectors in order to ensure the flow of procedures and businesses in an accurate and correct automatic manner and with the least possible error. In short, “automation” is the art of making procedures and machines run and work automatically with greater efficiency, less time, and without human intervention.
As for “digitization”, it is the conversion of written, oral, audio and visual communication into digital electronic messages that everyone understands and can be saved and retrieved quickly and easily. We can say that everything in the ancient world required a written document to survive, otherwise it would perish. But the result of digitization now is higher efficiency in work, art, research and education, with lower costs, better control and unprecedented availability, which puts generations of our children and youth in front of opportunities that were not available to our parents and grandparents.
I return to your question about universities and granting degrees. Universities in their traditional form must change, because the labor market precedes them in development and innovation, otherwise they will lose their role in creating the future.
We should not think of higher education as a response to the current labor market situation, unemployment rates, or the state of a profession at a specific moment in time..However, it will remain this type of education that lays the foundations for the features of the future, and builds people who are capable of making development, not filling in The vacuum of needs only.. It is the education that builds the human being, the maker of opportunity and its realizer, and not only the beneficiary of it. It is the education that builds the normal personality that uses the data of the age for the benefit of humanity and not its destruction.
Therefore, the most important question is what do we consider universities in our vision, builders of civilization or just service providers, because that is what will make the difference.
From my point of view, universities need to know the reasons for change or the reasons for sticking to what science and society think are constants, and in order for them to do this, they must question what has been acquired and also test the different modes of thinking that exist in each society, and the university must take the risk of presenting Everything is unexpected and don’t take it easy to stay the way it is
A young man said: Do you mean by your words that universities embody the processes of change in society… This is what we do not see, Doctor, because we see universities running after
