36th AGM and Conference of PSDE
Charter of Economy
Investment, Productivity & Employment

November 22-24, 2022

Assessing graduates’ readiness for jobs of today and tomorrow

Zahid Asghar
School of Economics
Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad zasghar@qau.edu.pk
zahedasghar
zahidasghar.com

Research Questions

Whether our graduates are well equiped with skills for jobs of today and tomorrow?

What type of learning eco-system can enable higher education institutions to prepare graduates work ready and continuous learners

3rd decade of the 21st century is being characterized as the ‘Talent wars’ perhaps eclipsing the conflict for resources, ideology, territory etc. Talent flows to the highest bidder. Talent thrives in economic and competitive environments. Israel and Japan living examples of our times.

First, the advancing digitalization of work has made highly educated workers more productive and less-educated workers easier to replace with machinery.

The theory we are talking about states that a so-called “youth bulge”, which describes an excess in the young population of a country, is the real (and main) hidden force behind political instability. The term was first used by Gary Fuller in 1995, then adopted by the renowned political scientist Samuel Huntington, and later extended and popularized by German sociologist and economist Gunnar Heinsohn in his book “Söhne und Weltmacht” (2003, new ed. 2019). The basic idea is that resources are limited and are owned and managed by (older) adults. This is also true for (political) power. Young people want a piece of the action. The bigger the imbalance, i.e. the more young people there are, the bigger the conflicts because more young people fight for their place in the economy and society.

It is a silicon valley era, people who manage (the techies, the innovators, the mentors) talent dominate all over things.

Reskilling and Upskilling

The Work of the Future David Autor

Enabling workers to remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace requires empowering them with excellent skills programs at all stages of life—in primary and secondary schools, in vocational and college programs, and in ongoing adult training programs.

According to Robert Solow (2022 Prefeace The Work of the Future)

• Maintaining a skilled and adaptable labor force : productivity.

• Easy access to education can function as an equalizing factor, although it is pretty clear that it does not perform this function very well in the US.

The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work Paperback – Illustrated, March 27, 2020 by Heather E. McGowan

Challenges

youth bulge, unemployment, low economic growth

Lower productivity, stagnant output

Traditional skills

Universities : Business as usual

Shift from old paradigm to new paradigm

New learning ecosystem

• Chasm between skills required and skill prevailing

• Digital revolution, gig economy and Silicon Valley era

• Employers placing higher values on work ready graduates

• Firms : buying talent instead of investing in talent

Questions

What sort of skilling and reskilling may help our burgeoning young population and labor force to unlock its potential?

How , what types and where long-term investment be made by the institutions in skilling, reskilling and upskilling of youth and working population should be made?

Pakistan

• 36% Pakistani Population under 14 years (WDI)

• 64% Pakistani Population under age 30 years

• skill-biased technical change

  • Skill inequality gap

• Opportunities to excel but requires skills

• 25 million aged 17-25, universities catering 2.5-3 million

• Skill inequality gap based on degree and its quality is huge

Haque and Nayab (2022)

“Are we prepared for this new world? Our education system our governance system all need to be realigned if we are to meet this new world. Many new opportunities will open only if the economy and the policy are both seriously reimagined.”

Survey Results

• Program of Study
• Awareness
• Preparedness

Table 1. Program of study

Characteristic	N = 2741
program
BS	107 (40%)
MPhil	112 (42%)
Other	20 (7.5%)
PhD	28 (10%)
Unknown	7
1 n (%)

Table 2: Awareness about AI, ML, Robotics and other disruption in future jobs
Response	n	%age
No , not yet	19	6.9
Probably, I'm not sure	30	10.9
Yes to a great extent	21	7.7
Yes to some extent	69	25.2
No answer	135	49.3

Table 3: How prepared one feels for job entry
How do you feel	Overall	BS	Mphil	PhD	Male	Female
Bored	2.6	0.9	4.5	3.6	4.3	0.8
confident	37.0	41.0	37.0	29.0	47.0	26.0
Excited	13.0	15.0	12.0	14.0	9.4	17.0
I know exactly what I want	11.0	15.0	6.3	21.0	9.4	14.0
Ready	7.8	8.4	9.0	7.1	5.8	10.0
Worried	27.0	20.0	32.0	25.0	24.0	32.0
Unknown	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0

Skills strengths

Chi-square

Career counseling

Do you think choice of degree would have been better if you were provided career counseling before admission to a university?

Response	%age
Yes	68.8%
No	13.4%
Maybe	17.9%

Do you think career counseling be mandatory?

Response	% response
Strongly agree	67.5%
Agree	26.3%
Nuetral	5.5%
Disagree	0.7%
Strongly Disagree	0%

Average earnings per month in USD by qualification

Qualification	Earnings (USD)
Matric	165.54
Intermediate	156.76
Bachelor	198.94
Masters	117.54
PhDs	350.00

Universities’ Role

Learning Ecosystem

Key Recommendations:

Weise(2020) Long Life Learning

“If we want to move from a future we dont want to a future we want, we have to consciously practice bold thinking to achieve the desired future.”

Expose graduates to a wide variety of skills, mentor them on reliable resources to learn/strengthen soft skills, and enable them to move on a continuous learning path.

Create opportunities for working learners for re-skilling and up-skilling through a flexible learning system.

Switch from factory forced model(where time is fixed but learning is variable) to fix learning outcomes with time as variable.

Talent, Technology and Tolerance {background-color=“#264653”}