As a college professor, I hear a lot of career concerns. As my students prepare to enter working lives that will last 50 years or more, practically all of them try to be futurists in choosing the skills in which to invest. If they pick an occupation that declines in the next half-century, they may deeply regret it. They know that a mid-life career change is difficult, so they want to make the right choice while they are very young.
From what my students tell me, there is a widespread fear of "commoditization" of jobs in the modern, information technology-driven global economy. They worry that in coming years even highly skilled people might be hired and fired indiscriminately, bought and sold like so many tons of copper or cases of frozen turkeys. Job satisfaction would suffer accordingly. After all, if the job requires nothing more than knowledge of existing technology, then it can be done by anyone anywhere in the world who has learned this technology, or, worse by some computer.
Indeed, while it is often thought that computers will replace only low-skilled jobs, my students remind me otherwise. Medical expertise is in some ways being replaced by computer-based diagnostic systems, and much of the work that engineers once did has been replaced by computer-assisted design systems. My students worry that such trends may continue, reducing job security, lowering rates of pay, and even eliminating some of the jobs altogether.
Some students, reckoning that it is better to buy and sell than to be bought and sold, conclude that they should be trained for careers in business, finance or possibly law. They want the kinds of skills that will keep them among the managers, rather than the managed, and some intuit greater job security and better career prospects at the international level of these fields. By contrast, my students often regard occupations like medicine or engineering -- involving highly specialized technical knowledge that does not prepare them to navigate the international economy -- as particularly vulnerable to commoditization.
Should students really be worried about commoditization? Labor economists have discerned some trends that may reinforce their fears, but that don't support the conclusions that students tend to draw.
In their recent book The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, using job descriptions that go back to 1960, carefully classify jobs according to the kinds of cognitive skills that they require. They were particularly interested in identifying jobs that were routine, even if complex and difficult, which could in principle be replaced by a sufficiently well-programmed computer. They then show evidence from the US that jobs involving both routine manual work and routine cognitive work have become much less plentiful in recent decades, and that these jobs have indeed tended to be replaced by computers.
In an important sense, their research confirms that my students are right to be worried. But these trends tended to persist within occupations, industries and educational attainment levels, thus providing little guidance concerning what occupation to choose or how much education to pursue. The important issue, according to Levy and Murnane, is that the most promising future careers will be those grounded in either expert thinking or complex communication skills.
Expert thinking means understanding how to deal with new and different problems that do not fit the mold of past problems. Complex communications skills entail understanding ideas, how to evaluate their social significance, and how to persuade -- tasks that no computer can accomplish.
As long as young people direct their efforts accordingly, they can acquire these skills in virtually any of the major courses of university study. Moreover, those who would like to devote their college years to acquiring technical skills in a narrow field that they love would be wrong to conclude that they must give up their dream.
Specializing in business, finance, or law does not really protect one from commoditization. People in these fields are ultimately bought and sold by corporate managers as much as people in technical fields. Hardly anyone makes it all the way to the top in the business world.
The important point for students to bear in mind is that they should motivate themselves to attain deep understanding, not rote memorization, of the subjects that they study, in order to fulfill the role of a true expert in whatever field they ultimately choose to pursue. At the same time, they should invest in acquiring the communications skills that will be similarly crucial to a successful career.
Achieving this kind of education probably means pursuing what one naturally finds interesting and engaging, whether that is finance or physiology. Students should stop worrying so much, immerse themselves in the field they love, and learn to appreciate the people who populate it. What may appear to them to be an unaffordable luxury is really a necessity that they can't afford to reject.
Robert Shiller is professor of economics at Yale University, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, which he co-founded, and author of Irrational Exuberance and The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
I came to Taiwan to pursue my degree thinking that Taiwanese are “friendly,” but I was welcomed by Taiwanese classmates laughing at my friend’s name, Maria (瑪莉亞). At the time, I could not understand why they were mocking the name of Jesus’ mother. Later, I learned that “Maria” had become a stereotype — a shorthand for Filipino migrant workers. That was because many Filipino women in Taiwan, especially those who became house helpers, happen to have that name. With the rapidly increasing number of foreigners coming to Taiwan to work or study, more Taiwanese are interacting, socializing and forming relationships with
Earlier signs suggest that US President Donald Trump’s policy on Taiwan is set to move in a more resolute direction, as his administration begins to take a tougher approach toward America’s main challenger at the global level, China. Despite its deepening economic woes, China continues to flex its muscles, including conducting provocative military drills off Taiwan, Australia and Vietnam recently. A recent Trump-signed memorandum on America’s investment policy was more about the China threat than about anything else. Singling out the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a foreign adversary directing investments in American companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies, it said
The recent termination of Tibetan-language broadcasts by Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a significant setback for Tibetans both in Tibet and across the global diaspora. The broadcasts have long served as a vital lifeline, providing uncensored news, cultural preservation and a sense of connection for a community often isolated by geopolitical realities. For Tibetans living under Chinese rule, access to independent information is severely restricted. The Chinese government tightly controls media and censors content that challenges its narrative. VOA and RFA broadcasts have been among the few sources of uncensored news available to Tibetans, offering insights
“If you do not work in semiconductors, you are nothing in this country.” That is what an 18-year-old told me after my speech at the Kaohsiung International Youth Forum. It was a heartbreaking comment — one that highlights how Taiwan ignores the potential of the creative industry and the soft power that it generates. We all know what an Asian nation can achieve in that field. Japan led the way decades ago. South Korea followed with the enormous success of “hallyu” — also known as the Korean wave, referring to the global rise and spread of South Korean culture. Now Thailand
RSS