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• The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training

As robots, automation and artificial intelligence perform more tasks and there is massive disruption of jobs, experts say a wider array of education and skills-building programs will be created to meet new demands. There are two uncertainties: Will well-prepared workers be able to keep up in the race with AI tools? And will market capitalism survive?

Table of contents.

• About this canvassing of experts
• Theme 1: The training ecosystem will evolve, with a mix of innovation in all education formats
• Theme 2: Learners must cultivate 21st‑century skills, capabilities and attributes
• Theme 3: New credentialing systems will arise as self‑directed learning expands
• Theme 4: Training and learning systems will not meet 21st‑century needs by 2026
• Theme 5: Jobs? What jobs? Technological forces will fundamentally change work and the economic landscape
• Acknowledgments

Machines are eating humans’ jobs talents. And it’s not just about jobs that are repetitive and low-skill. Automation, robotics, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent times have shown they can do equal or sometimes even better work than humans who are dermatologists , insurance claims adjusters , lawyers , seismic testers in oil fields , sports journalists and financial reporters , crew members on guided-missile destroyers , hiring managers , psychological testers , retail salespeople , and border patrol agents . Moreover, there is growing anxiety that technology developments on the near horizon will crush the jobs of the millions who drive cars and trucks, analyze medical tests and data , perform middle management chores , dispense medicine , trade stocks and evaluate markets , fight on battlefields , perform government functions , and even replace those who program software – that is, the creators of algorithms .

People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, and technology is already central. It will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead. Jonathan Grudin

Multiple studies have documented that  massive numbers of jobs are at risk as programmed devices – many of them smart, autonomous systems – continue their march into workplaces. A recent study by labor economists found that “one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent.” When Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center asked experts in 2014 whether AI and robotics would create more jobs than they would destroy, the verdict was evenly split : 48% of the respondents envisioned a future where more jobs are lost than created, while 52% said more jobs would be created than lost. Since that expert canvassing, the future of jobs has been at the top of the agenda at many major conferences globally .

Several policy and market-based solutions have been promoted to address the loss of employment and wages forecast by technologists and economists. A key idea emerging from many conversations, including one of the lynchpin discussions at the World Economic Forum in 2016, is that changes in educational and learning environments are necessary to help people stay employable in the labor force of the future. Among the six overall findings in a new 184-page report from the National Academies of Sciences, the experts recommended: “The education system will need to adapt to prepare individuals for the changing labor market. At the same time, recent IT advances offer new and potentially more widely accessible ways to access education.”

Jobholders themselves have internalized this insight: A 2016 Pew Research Center survey, “ The State of American Jobs ,” found that 87% of workers believe it will be essential for them to get training and develop new job skills throughout their work life in order to keep up with changes in the workplace. This survey noted that employment is much higher among jobs that require an average or above-average level of preparation (including education, experience and job training); average or above-average interpersonal, management and communication skills; and higher levels of analytical skills, such as critical thinking and computer skills.

A central question about the future, then, is whether formal and informal learning structures will evolve to meet the changing needs of people who wish to fulfill the workplace expectations of the future. Pew Research Center and Elon’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a large-scale canvassing of technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers and education leaders in the summer of 2016, asking them to weigh in on the likely future of workplace training.

Some 1,408 responded to the following question, sharing their expectations about what is likely to evolve by 2026:

In the next 10 years, do you think we will see the emergence of new educational and training programs that can successfully train large numbers of workers in the skills they will need to perform the jobs of the future?

The nonscientific canvassing found that 70% of these particular respondents said “yes” – such programs would emerge and be successful. A majority among the 30% who said “no” generally do not believe adaptation in teaching environments will be sufficient to teach new skills at the scale that is necessary to help workers keep abreast of the tech changes that will upend millions of jobs. (See “About this canvassing of experts” for further details about the limits of this sample.)

Participants were asked to explain their answers and offered the following prompts to consider:

• What are the most important skills needed to succeed in the workforce of the future?
• Which of these skills can be taught effectively via online systems – especially those that are self-directed – and other nontraditional settings?
• Which skills will be most difficult to teach at scale?
• Will employers be accepting of applicants who rely on new types of credentialing systems, or will they be viewed as less qualified than those who have attended traditional four-year and graduate programs?

Several common expectations were evident in these respondents’ answers, no matter how hopeful or fretful they were about the future of skills- and capabilities-training efforts. (It is important to note that many respondents listed human behaviors, attributes and competencies in describing desirable work skills. Although these aspects of psychology cannot be classified as “skills” and perhaps cannot be directly taught in any sort of training environment, we include these answers under the general heading of skills, capabilities and attributes.)

A diversifying education and credentialing ecosystem : Most of these experts expect the education marketplace – especially online learning platforms – to continue to change in an effort to accommodate the widespread needs.  Some predict employers will step up their own efforts to train and retrain workers. Many foresee a significant number of self-teaching  efforts by jobholders themselves as they take advantage of proliferating online opportunities.

Respondents see a new education and training ecosystem emerging in which some job preparation functions are performed by formal educational institutions in fairly traditional classroom settings, some elements are offered online, some are created by for-profit firms, some are free, some exploit augmented and virtual reality elements and gaming sensibilities, and a lot of real-time learning takes place in formats that job seekers pursue on their own.

A considerable number of respondents to this canvassing focused on the likelihood that the best education programs will teach people how to be lifelong learners. Accordingly, some say alternative credentialing mechanisms will arise to assess and vouch for the skills people acquire along the way.

A focus on nurturing unique human skills that artificial intelligence (AI) and machines seem unable to replicate : Many of these experts discussed in their responses the human talents they believe machines and automation may not be able to duplicate, noting that these should be the skills developed and nurtured by education and training programs to prepare people to work successfully alongside AI. These respondents suggest that workers of the future will learn to deeply cultivate and exploit creativity, collaborative activity, abstract and systems thinking, complex communication, and the ability to thrive in diverse environments.

[This also includes]

Another example is the response of Fredric Litto , a professor emeritus of communications and longtime distance-learning expert from the University of São Paulo: “We are now in the transitional stage of employers gradually reducing their prejudice in the hiring of those who studied at a distance, and moving in favor of such ‘graduates’ who, in the workplace, demonstrate greater proactiveness, initiative, discipline, collaborativeness – because they studied online.”

Other respondents mentioned traits including leadership, design thinking, “human meta communication,” deliberation, conflict resolution, and the capacity to motivate, mobilize and innovate. Still others spoke of more practical needs that could help workers in the medium term – to work with data and algorithms, to implement 3-D modeling and work with 3-D printers, or to implement the newly emerging capabilities in artificial intelligence and augmented and virtual reality. Jonathan Grudin , principal researcher at Microsoft, commented, “People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, and technology is already central. It will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead.”

Seriously? You’re asking about the workforce of the future? As if there’s going to be one? Anonymous scientific editor

[ Massive Open Online Courses ]

Several respondents argued that job training is not a primary concern at a time when accelerating change in market economies is creating massive economic divides that seem likely to leave many people behind. An anonymous scientific editor commented, “Seriously? You’re asking about the workforce of the future? As if there’s going to be one? … ‘Employers’ either run sweatshops abroad or hire people in the ‘first world’ to do jobs that they hate, while more and more unskilled and skilled people end up permanently on welfare or zero-hour contracts. And the relatively ‘job-secure’ qualified people who work in the ‘professions’ are probably a lot closer than they think they are to going over that same cliff. The details of how they earn their credentials aren’t going to be an issue.”

Most participants in this canvassing wrote detailed elaborations explaining their positions, though they were allowed to respond anonymously. Their well-considered comments provide insights about hopeful and concerning trends. These findings do not represent all possible points of view, but they do reveal a wide range of striking observations. Respondents collectively articulated five major themes that are introduced and briefly explained in the 29-page section below and then expanded upon in more-detailed sections . Some responses are lightly edited for style or due to length.

The following section presents a brief overview of the most evident themes extracted from the written responses, including a small selection of representative quotes supporting each point. Some responses are lightly edited for style or due to length.

These experts envision that the next decade will bring a more widely diversified world of education and training options in which various entities design and deliver different services to those who seek to learn. They expect that some innovation will be aimed at emphasizing the development of human talents that machines cannot match and at helping humans partner with technology. They say some parts of the ecosystem will concentrate on delivering real-time learning to workers, often in formats that are self-taught.

Commonly occurring ideas among the responses in this category are collected below under headings reflecting subthemes.

More learning systems will migrate online. Some will be self-directed and some offered or required by employers; others will be hybrid online/real-world classes. Workers will be expected to learn continuously

Most experts seem to have faith that rapid technological development and a rising wariness of coming impacts of the AI/robotics revolution are going to spur the public, private and governmental actions needed for education and training systems to be adapted to deliver more flexible, open, adaptable, resilient, certifiable and useful lifelong learning.

Educators have always found new ways of training the next generation of students for the jobs of the future, and this generation will be no different. Justin Reich

Michael Wollowski , an associate professor of computer science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, commented, “We will definitely see a vast increase in educational and training programs. We will also see what might be called on-demand or on-the-job kind of training programs. (We kind of have to, as with continued automation, we will need to retrain a large portion of the workforce.) I strongly believe employers will subscribe to this idea wholeheartedly; it increases the overall education of their workforce, which benefits their bottom line. Nevertheless, I am a big believer in the college experience, which I see as a way to learn what you are all about, as a person and in your field of study. The confidence in your own self and your abilities cannot be learned in a short course. It takes life experience, or four years at a tough college. At a good college, you are challenged to be your best – this is very resource-intensive and cannot be scaled at this time.”

Justin Reich , executive director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Teaching Systems Lab, observed, “Educators have always found new ways of training the next generation of students for the jobs of the future, and this generation will be no different. Our established systems of job training, primarily community colleges and state universities, will continue to play a crucial role, though catastrophically declining public support for these institutions will raise serious challenges.”

David Karger , a professor of computer science at MIT, wrote, “Most of what we now call online learning is little more than glorified textbooks, but the future is very promising. … No matter how good our online teaching systems become, the current four-year college model will remain dominant for quite some time. … Online teaching will increase the reach of the top universities, which will put pressure on lesser universities to demonstrate value. One potential future would be for those universities to abandon the idea that they have faculty teaching their own courses and instead consist entirely of a cadre of (less well paid) teaching assistants who provide support for the students who are taking courses online.”

A few respondents said already established institutions cannot be as fully successful as new initiatives. Jerry Michalski, founder at REX, commented, “Today’s educational and training institutions are a shambles. They take too long to teach impractical skills and knowledge not connected to the real world, and when they try to tackle critical thinking for a longer time scale, they mostly fail. The sprouts of the next generation of learning tools are already visible. Within the decade, the new shoots will overtake the wilting vines, and we will see all sorts of new initiatives, mostly outside these schooling, academic and training institutions, which are mostly beyond repair. People will shift to them because they work, because they are far less expensive and because they are always available.”

An anonymous respondent echoed the sentiment of quite a few others who do not think it is possible to advance and enhance online education and training much in the next decade, writing, “These programs have a cost, and too few are willing to sacrifice for these programs.” More such arguments are included in later sections of this report.

Online courses will get a big boost from advances in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI)

Some respondents expressed confidence in the best of current online education and training options, saying online course options are cost-effective, evolving for the better, and game-changing because they are globally accessible. Those with the most optimism expect great progress will be made in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and AI. While some say 2026 will still be “early days” for this tech, many are excited about its prospects for enhancing learning in the next decade.

Already, today there are quite effective online training and education systems, but they are not being implemented to their full potential. Edward Friedman

The president of a technology LLC wrote, “Training, teaching are all going online, partly because of high costs of campus education.”

Richard Adler , distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, predicted, “AI, voice-response, telepresence VR and gamification techniques will come together to create powerful new learning environments capable of personalizing and accelerating learning across a broad range of fields.”

Ray Schroeder , associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois, Springfield, commented, “It is projected that those entering the workforce today will pursue four or five different careers (not just jobs) over their lifetime. These career changes will require retooling, training and education. The adult learners will not be able to visit physical campuses to access this learning; they will learn online. I expect that we will see the further development of artificially intelligent teaching specialists such as ‘Jill Watson’ at Georgia Tech , the virtual graduate assistant who was thought to be human by an entire class of computer science students. I anticipate the further development and distribution of holoportation technologies such as those developed by Microsoft using HoloLens for real-time, three-dimensional augmented reality. These teaching tools will enable highly sophisticated interactions and engagement with students at a distance. They will further fuel the scaling of learning to reach even more massive online classes.”

Fredric Litto , an professor emeritus of communications and longtime distance-learning expert from the University of São Paulo, replied, “There is no field of work that cannot be learned, totally or in great part, in well-organized and administered online programs, either in traditional ‘course’ formats, or in self-directed, independent learning opportunities, supplemented, when appropriate, by face-to-face, hands-on, practice situations.”

Tawny Schlieski , research director at Intel and president of the Oregon Story Board, explained, “New technologies of human/computer interaction like augmented and virtual reality offer the possibility of entirely new mechanisms of education. … Augmented and virtual reality tools … make learning more experiential, they engage students with physical movement, and they enable interactive and responsive instructional assets. As these tools evolve over the next decade, the academics we work with expect to see radical change in training and workforce development, which will roll into (although probably against a longer timeline) more traditional institutions of higher learning.”

Universities still have special roles to play in preparing people for life, but some are likely to diversify and differentiate

Many respondents said real-world, campus-based higher education will continue to thrive during the next decade. They generally expect that no other educational experience can match residential universities’ capabilities for fully immersive, person-to-person learning, as well as mentoring and socializing functions, before 2026. They said a residential university education helps build intangible skills that are not replicable online and thus deepens the skills base of those who can afford to pay for such an education, but they expect that job-specific training will be managed by employers on the job and via novel approaches. Some say major universities’ core online course content, developed with all of the new-tech bells and whistles, will be marketed globally and adopted as baseline learning in smaller higher education locales, where online elements from major MOOCs can be optimally paired in hybrid learning with in-person mentoring activities.

The most important skills to have in life are gained through interpersonal experiences and the liberal arts. … Human bodies in close proximity to other human bodies stimulate real compassion, empathy, vulnerability and social-emotional intelligence. Frank Elavsky

Uta Russmann , communications/marketing/sales professor at the FHWien University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, Austria, said, “In the future, more and more jobs will require highly sophisticated people whose skills cannot be trained in ‘mass’ online programs. Traditional four-year and graduate programs will better prepare people for jobs in the future, as such an education gives people a general understanding and knowledge about their field, and here people learn how to approach new things, ask questions and find answers, deal with new situations, etc. – all this is needed to adjust to ongoing changes in work life. Special skills for a particular job will be learned on the job.”

Frank Elavsky , data and policy analyst at Acumen LLC, responded, “The most important skills to have in life are gained through interpersonal experiences and the liberal arts. … Human bodies in close proximity to other human bodies stimulate real compassion, empathy, vulnerability and social-emotional intelligence. These skills are imperative to focus on, as the future is in danger of losing these skillsets from the workforce. Many people have gained these skills throughout history without any kind of formal schooling, but with the growing emphasis on virtual and digital mediums of production, education and commerce, people will have less and less exposure to other humans in person and other human perspectives.”

[education]

Dana Klisanin , psychologist/futurist at Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, wrote, “Educational institutions that succeed will use the tools of social media and game design to grant students’ access to teachers from all over the world and increase their motivation to succeed. … Online educational programs will influence the credentialing systems of traditional institutions, and online institutions will increasingly offer meet-ups and mingles such that a true hybrid educational approach emerges.”

Will training for skills most important in the jobs of the future work well in large-scale settings by 2026? Respondents in this canvassing overwhelmingly said yes, anticipating that improvements in such education would continue. However, many believe the most vital skills are not easy to teach, learn or evaluate in any education or training setting available today.

Tough-to-teach intangible skills, capabilities and attributes such as emotional intelligence, curiosity, creativity, adaptability, resilience and critical thinking will be most highly valued

Dozens of descriptive terms were applied by respondents as they noted the skills, capabilities and attributes they see as important in workers’ lives in the next decade.

The skills needed to succeed in today’s world and the future are curiosity, creativity, taking initiative, multi-disciplinary thinking and empathy. These skills, interestingly, are the skills specific to human beings that machines and robots cannot do … Tiffany Shlain

While coding and other “hard skills” were listed as being easiest to teach to a large group in an online setting, “soft,” “human” skills were seen by most respondents as crucial for survival in the age of AI and robotics.

Devin Fidler , research director at the Institute for the Future, predicted, “As basic automation and machine learning move toward becoming commodities, uniquely human skills will become more valuable. There will be an increasing economic incentive to develop mass training that better unlocks this value.”

Susan Price , a digital architect at Continuum Analytics, commented, “Increasingly, machines will perform tasks they are better suited to perform than humans, such as computation, data analysis and logic. Functions requiring emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, and creative judgment and discernment will expand and be increasingly valued in our culture.”

Tiffany Shlain , filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards, wrote, “The skills needed to succeed in today’s world and the future are curiosity, creativity, taking initiative, multi-disciplinary thinking and empathy. These skills, interestingly, are the skills specific to human beings that machines and robots cannot do, and you can be taught to strengthen these skills through education. I look forward to seeing innovative live and online programs that can teach these at scale.”

Ben Shneiderman, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, observed, “Students can be trained to be more innovative, creative and active initiators of novel ideas. Skills of writing, speaking and making videos are important, but fundamental skills of critical thinking, community building, teamwork, deliberation/dialogue and conflict resolution will be powerful. A mindset of persistence and the necessary passion to succeed are also critical.”

Louisa Heinrich , founder at Superhuman Limited, commented, “Lateral and system-thinking skills are increasingly critical for success in an ever-changing global landscape, and these will need to be re-prioritised at all levels of education.”

An anonymous technologist commented, “Programming and problem solving, learning how to work with artificial intelligence and robotics will become more important, and more and more workers will be replaced by software/hardware-based ‘workers.’ Automation will reduce the need for the current workforce, and the divide between the upper class and the lower class will continue to eat the middle class.”

Some who are pessimistic about the future of human work due to advances in capable AI and robotics mocked the current push in the U.S. to train more people in technical skills. An anonymous respondent commented, “Teach a billion people to program and you’ll end up with 900,000,000 unemployed programmers.”

An anonymous program director for a major U.S. technology funding organization predicted, “We will see training for the jobs of the past, and for service jobs. The jobs of the future will not need large numbers of workers with a fixed set of skills – most things that we can train large numbers of workers for, we will also be able to train computers to do better.”

Among the many other skills mentioned were: process-oriented and system-oriented thinking; journalistic skills, including research, evaluation of multiple sources, writing and speaking; understanding algorithms, computational thinking , networking and programming; grasping law and policy; an evidence-based way of looking at the world; time management; conflict resolution; decision-making; locating information in the flood of data; storytelling using data; and influencing and consensus building. A few people mentioned that young adults need to be taught how to have face-to-face interaction, including one who said they “seem to be sorely lacking in these skills and can only interact with a cellphone or laptop.”

Practical experiential learning via apprenticeships and mentoring will advance

Because so many intricacies of the workplace – the human, soft and hard – are learned on the job, respondents said they expect apprenticeships and forms of mentoring will regain value and evolve along with the 21st‑century workplace.

D. Yvette Wohn , assistant professor of information systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, wrote, “Formalized apprenticeships that require both technical skills and interpersonal interaction will become more important.”

Ian O’Byrne , an assistant professor of literacy education at the College of Charleston, replied, “In the future we’ll see more opportunities for online, personalized learning. This will include open, online learning experiences (e.g., MOOCs) where individuals can lurk and build up capacity or quench interests. I also believe that we’ll see a rise in the offering of premium or pay content that creates a space where one-to-one learning and interaction will allow mentors to guide learners while providing critical feedback. We will identify opportunities to build a digital version of the apprenticeship learning models that have existed in the past. Alternative credentials and digital badges will provide more granular opportunities to document and archive learning over time from traditional and nontraditional learning sources. Through evolving technologies (e.g., blockchain), this may provide opportunities for learners to document and frame their own learning pathways.”

An instructional designer with 19 years of experience commented, “The pattern I’m seeing is toward individualized learning – almost on the level of tutoring or apprenticeship. We’ve seen again and again that the broader the audience focus, the less the course seems to deliver. As for what the skills of the future are, they’ll be specialized to their fields with a university degree assumed to be a certificate in the ability to learn more about a particular subject specialty. You may get a degree in computer software development, but the truth is that you still need to be taught how to write software for, say, the mortgage company or insurance company that hires you. The key to the future will be flexibility and personal motivation to learn and tinker with new things.”

Theme 3: New credentialing systems will arise as self-directed learning expands

As they anticipate the appearance of effective new learning environments and advances in digital accountability systems, many of these experts believe fresh certification programs will be created to attest to workers’ participation in training programs and the mastery of skills. Some predict that many more workers will begin using online and app-based learning systems.

While the traditional college degree will still hold sway in 2026, more employers may accept alternate credentialing systems, as learning options and their measures evolve

Charlie Firestone , communications and society program executive director and vice president at The Aspen Institute, replied, “There will be a move toward more precise and better credentialing for skills and competencies, e.g., badging and similar techniques. Employers will accept these more as they prove probative. And online learning will be more prevalent, even as an adjunct to formal classroom learning. New industries such as green energy and telemedicine will increase new employment opportunities. Despite all of these measures, the loss of jobs from artificial intelligence and robotics will exceed any retraining program, at least in the short run.”

Sam Punnett , research officer at TableRock Media, wrote, “I suspect employers will recognize the new credentialing systems. Particularly those certificates awarded for studies in emerging disciplines (currently data science appears ‘all the rage’) and those that reflect an upgrade of previously acquired skills. Traditional credentials will continue to hold value, but I believe they will be considered in light of a candidates perceived ability in ‘learning how to learn.’ The four-year degree and subsequent graduate studies will continue to be less of a guaranty towards employment without work experience. … Certificates are being viewed more favourably, and many universities are lagging in their connection between their pedagogies and working-world requirements.”

William J. Ward , a university communications professor, @DR4WARD, commented, “Higher Education is doing a poor job of preparing students with the skills they need to succeed in the workforce. Online and credentialing systems are more transparent and do a better job on delivering skills. People with new types of credentialing systems are seen as more qualified than traditional four-year and graduate programs.”

The proof of competency may be in the real-world work portfolios

Many workplaces place a higher value on real-world work portfolios than they do on a degree or certification, yet their hiring systems – including AI bots programmed to scan resumés – still use the commonly accepted credentials as a basis for interviewing candidates. Some respondents hope to see change.

Schools today turn out widget makers who can make widgets all the same. They are built on producing single right answers rather than creative solutions. Jeff Jarvis

A software engineering and system administration professional commented, “The reliability of the traditional educational system is already being questioned – in some fields it’s considered common sense that certifications and degrees mean little, and that a portfolio, references, and hands-on interviews are much more important for assessing a candidate’s ability. The unfortunate reality is that many HR departments still post job listings saying degrees and certifications are required, as a way of screening candidates. Both of those cost a lot of money, and neither mean a lot for a candidate’s competence. I hope this will change (both job listings and quality of degrees/certifications), but don’t see it happening soon.”

Meryl Krieger , career specialist at Indiana University, Bloomington’s Jacobs School, replied, “Credentialing systems will involve portfolios as much as resumés – resumés simply are too two-dimensional to properly communicate someone’s skillset. Three-dimensional materials – in essence, job reels – that demonstrate expertise will be the ultimate demonstration of an individual worker’s skills. I see credentialing as a piece of a very complex set of criteria; these will also incorporate an individual’s ability to communicate and work with teams (huge in employer requests for new employees), which can more readily be documented and tracked through online portfolio tools than through traditional resume formats. Thus, the educational and training programs of the future will become (in their best incarnations) sophisticated combinations of classroom and hands-on training programs. The specific models will necessarily be responding to individual industry requirements.”

Jeff Jarvis , a professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, wrote, “Schools today turn out widget makers who can make widgets all the same. They are built on producing single right answers rather than creative solutions. They are built on an outmoded attention economy: Pay us for 45 hours of your attention and we will certify your knowledge. I believe that many – not all – areas of instruction should shift to competency-based education in which the outcomes needed are made clear and students are given multiple paths to achieve those outcomes, and they are certified not based on tests and grades but instead on portfolios of their work demonstrating their knowledge.”

While the first three themes found among the responses to this canvassing were mostly hopeful about advances in education and training for 21st‑century jobs, a large share of responses from top experts reflect a significant degree of pessimism for various reasons. Some even say the future of jobs for humans is so baleful that capitalism may fail as an economic system. The next themes and subthemes examine these responses.

A large share of respondents predicted that online formats for knowledge transfer will not advance significantly in the next decade. The 30% who expressed pessimism were often deeply doubtful about the capabilities of current education systems to adapt , to pivot to respond to new challenges as quickly as necessary. Interestingly, being able to adapt and respond to looming challenges was seen by nearly everyone in this canvassing as one of the most highly prized future capabilities; these respondents especially agree that it is important, and they say that our human institutions – government, business, education – are not adapting efficiently and are letting us down. Many of them say that current K-12 or K-16 education programs are incapable of making adjustments within the next decade to serve the shifting needs of future jobs markets.

Among the other reasons listed by people who do not expect these kinds of transformative advances in job creation and job skill upgrading:

• It may not be possible to train workers for future skills, for many reasons, including that there will not be any jobs to train them for or that jobs change too quickly.
• There is no “political will,” nor is there evidence leaders will provide funding, for mass-scale improvement in training. Several observed that if education advances cannot be monetized with the appropriate profit margin, they are not moved forward.
• Many workers are incapable of taking on or unwilling to make the self-directed sacrifices they must to adjust their skills.
• The “soft” skills, capabilities and attitudes respondents assume will be necessary in future workers are difficult to teach en masse or at all, and they question how any teaching scheme can instill such sophisticated traits in large numbers of workers.

Some among the 70% of respondents who are mostly optimistic about the future of training for jobs also echoed one or more of the points above – mentioning these tension points while hoping for the best. Following are representative statements tied to these points and more from all respondents.

Within the next decade, education systems will not be up to the task of adapting to train or retrain people for the skills likely to be most prized in the future

Thomas Claburn , editor-at-large at Information Week, wrote, “I’m skeptical that educational and training programs can keep pace with technology.”

Traditional models train people to equate what they do with who they are (i.e., what do you want to be when you grow up) rather than to acquire critical thinking and flexible skills and attitudes that fit a rapidly changing world. Pamela Rutledge

Andrew Walls , managing vice president at Gartner, wrote, “Barring a neuroscience advance that enables us to embed knowledge and skills directly into brain tissue and muscle formation, there will be no quantum leap in our ability to ‘up-skill’ people. Learning takes time and practice, which means it requires money, lots of money, to significantly change the skill set of a large cohort.”

B. Remy Cross , assistant professor of sociology, Webster University, commented, “Lacking a significant breakthrough in machine learning that could lead to further breakthroughs in adaptive responses by a fully online system, it is too hard to adequately instruct large numbers of people in the kinds of soft skills that are anticipated as being in most demand. As manufacturing and many labor-intensive jobs move overseas or are fully mechanized, we will see a bulge in service jobs. These require good people skills, something that is often hard to train online.”

John Bell , software developer and teacher at Dartmouth College, replied, “Even today, access to information is not the limiting factor in skills education for anyone who can go online. … While there have been generational gains in the developments of online communities, a large-scale educational experience (either MOOC or on-demand broadcasts) will not be able to duplicate that.”

Stowe Boyd , managing director of Another Voice and a well-known thinker on work futures, discussed the intangibles of preparing humans to partner with AI and bot systems: “While we may see the creation and rollout of new training programs,” he observed, “it’s unclear whether they will be able to retrain those displaced from traditional sorts of work to fit into the workforce of the near future. Many of the ‘skills’ that will be needed are more like personality characteristics, like curiosity, or social skills that require enculturation to take hold. Individual training – like programming or learning how to cook – may not be what will be needed. And employers may play less of a role, especially as AI- and bot-augmented independent contracting may be the best path for many, rather than ‘a job.’ Homesteading in exurbia may be the answer for many, with ‘forty acres and a bot’ as a political campaign slogan of 2024.”

Luis Miron , a distinguished university professor and director of the Institute for Quality and Equity in Education at Loyola University in New Orleans, wrote, “Bluntly speaking, I have little confidence in the educational sector, K-16, having the capacity and vision to offer high-quality online educational programs capable of transforming the training needs of the wider society. The most important skills are advanced critical thinking and knowledge of globalization affecting diverse societies – culturally, religiously and politically.”

Show me the money: Many doubts hinge upon lack of political will and necessary funding

John Paine , a business analyst, commented, “The competing desires 1) to make educational activity available to all and 2) to monetize the bejeezus out of anything related to the internet will limit the effectiveness of any online learning systems in a more widespread context.”

Some people are incapable of or uninterested in self-directed learning

Among the future worker capabilities with the highest value in these respondents’ eyes are the ability to adapt, or “pivot,” and the motivation to up-skill as needed. Many respondents emphasized that the most crucial skill is that people have to learn how to learn and be self-motivated to keep learning.

My biggest concern with self-directed learning is that it requires a great deal of internal motivation. And I am not confident that individuals will find their way … David Berstein

Calton Pu , professor and junior chair in software at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote, “The most important skill is a meta-skill: the ability to adapt to changes. This ability to adapt is what distinguished Homo sapiens from other species through natural selection. As the rate of technological innovation intensifies, the workforce of the future will need to adapt to new technology and new markets. The people who can adapt the best (and fastest) will win. This view means that any given set of skills will become obsolete quickly as innovations change the various economic sectors: precision agriculture, manufacturing 4.0, precision medicine, just to name a few. Therefore, the challenge is not only to teach skills, but also how to adapt and learn new skills. Whether the traditional programs or new programs will be better at teaching adaptive learning remains to be seen.”

Cory Salveson , learning systems and analytics lead at RSM US, responded, “The nature of work today, and in future, is such that if people want to keep increasingly scarce well-paying jobs, they will need to educate themselves in an ongoing manner for their whole lives.”

Some of these experts say those who aren’t motivated to continue to learn and grow will be left behind.

Scott Amyx , CEO of Amyx+, said online training is advancing and will continue to evolve, but, “The education system is at an inflection point. Many ambitious federal and state programs have fizzled, to produce dismal to no statistical change in the caliber of K-12 education. … It’s those less-educated and less-skilled who are most sensitive to technological displacement. Online mediums and self-directed approaches may be limited in effectiveness with certain labor segments unless supplemented by human coaching and support systems.”

Among the 30% of respondents who said they did not think things would turn out well in the future were those who said the trajectory of technology will overwhelm labor markets, killing more jobs than it creates. They foresee a society where AI programs and machines do most of the work and raise questions about people’s sense of identity, the socio-economic divisions that already distress them, their ability to pay for basic needs, their ability to use the growing amount of “leisure time” constructively and the impact of all of this on economic systems. It should also be noted that many among the 70% who expect positive change in the next decade also expressed some of these concerns.

There will be many millions more people and millions fewer jobs in the future

The problem of future jobs is not one of skills training – it is one of diminishing jobs. How will we cope with a workforce that is simply irrelevant? Jennifer Zickerman

Glenn Ricart , Internet Hall of Fame member and founder and chief technology officer of US Ignite, said, “Up to the present time, automation largely has been replacing physical drudgery and repetitive motion – things that can and should improve the quality of people’s work lives. But in the next decade or two, there is likely to be a significant amount of technological innovation in machine intelligence and personal assistants that takes a real swipe out of the jobs we want humans to have in education, health care, transportation, agriculture and public safety. What are the ‘new jobs’ we want these people to have? If we haven’t been able to invent them in response to international trade pacts, why are we sure we will be able to create them in the future?”

Richard Stallman , Internet Hall of Fame member and president of the Free Software Foundation, commented, “I think this question has no answer. I think there won’t be jobs for most people a few decades from now, and that’s what really matters. As for the skills for the employed fraction of advanced countries, I think they will be difficult to teach. You could get better at them by practice, but you couldn’t study them much.”

Jennifer Zickerman , an entrepreneur, commented, “The problem of future jobs is not one of skills training – it is one of diminishing jobs. How will we cope with a workforce that is simply irrelevant?”

Capitalism itself is in real trouble

The question isn’t how to train people for nonexistent jobs, it’s how to share the wealth in a world where we don’t need most people to work. Nathaniel Borenstein

[that humans will have to be trained for future jobs]

Paul Davis , a director based in Australia, predicted, “Whilst such programs will be developed and rolled out on a large scale, I question their overall effectiveness. Algorithms, automation and robotics will result in capital no longer needing labor to progress the economic agenda. Labor becomes, in many ways, surplus to economic requirements. This … shift will dramatically transform the notion of economic growth and significantly disrupt social contracts; labor’s bargaining position will be dramatically weakened. The nature of this change may require the world to shift to a ‘Post Economic Growth’ model to avoid societal dislocation and disruption.”

John Sniadowski , a systems architect, replied, “The skill sets which could have been taught will be superseded by AI and other robotic technology. By the time the training programs are widely available, the required skills will no longer be required. The whole emphasis of training must now be directed towards personal life skills development rather than the traditional working career-based approach. There is also the massive sociological economic impact of general automation and AI that must be addressed to redistribute wealth and focus life skills at lifelong learning.”

Tom Sommerville , agile coach, wrote, “Our greatest economic challenges over the next decade will be climate change and the wholesale loss of most jobs to automation. We urgently need to explore how to distribute the increasing wealth of complex goods and services our civilization produces to a populace that will be increasingly jobless in the traditional sense. The current trend of concentrating wealth in the hands of a diminishing number of ultra-rich individuals is unsustainable. All of this while dealing with the destabilizing effects of climate change and the adaptations necessary to mitigate its worst impacts.”

Some of these experts projected further out into the future, imagining a world where the machines themselves learn and overtake core human emotional and cognitive capacities.

Timothy C. Mack , managing principal at AAI Foresight, said, “In the area of skill-building, the wild card is the degree to which machine learning begins to supplant social, creative and emotive skill sets.”

Responses from additional key experts regarding the future of jobs and jobs training

This section features responses by several more of the many top analysts who participated in this canvassing. Following this wide-ranging set of comments on the topic, a much more expansive set of quotations directly tied to the set of four themes begins on Page 40.

‘There will be a parallel call for benefits, professional development and compensation that smooths out rough patches’ in an ‘on-demand labor life’

Baratunde Thurston , a director’s fellow at MIT Media Lab, Fast Company columnist and former digital director of The Onion, replied, “Online training and certification will grow significantly in part due to the high expense of formal higher education along with its declining payoffs for certain occupations. Why go $100,000 in debt for a four-year university, when you can take a more targeted course with more guaranteed income generation potential at the end? From the employer perspective, this type of learning will only grow. We are creating a system of on-demand labor akin to ‘cloud-based labor’ where companies ‘provision’ labor resources at will and release them at will, not by the year or month but by the job, labor unit, or small time unit, including minutes. The automation of human labor will grow significantly. And having a workforce trained in discrete and atomizable bits of skills will be seen as a benefit by employers. This of course is a terrible, soulless, insecure life for the workers, but since when did that really change anything? There will also be a parallel call for benefits, professional development, and compensation that smooths out the rough patches in this on-demand labor life, but such efforts will lag behind the exploitation of said labor because big business has more resources and big tech moves too fast for human-scale responses of accountability and responsibility. To quote Donald Trump, ‘Sad!’ ”

We will see much more personalized, adaptive forms of education

Doc Searls , journalist, speaker and director of Project VRM at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, wrote, “I don’t expect the evolution of work in the connected world to require ‘new educational and training programs.’ Instead, I expect we’ll see much more adaptive forms of education, especially of the self-made kind. Look at Linux and open-source development. The world runs on both now, and they employ millions of human beings. Many, or most, of the new open-source programmers building and running our world today are self-taught, or teach each other, to a higher degree than they are educated by formal schooling. Look at Khan Academy and the home-schooling movement, both of which in many ways outperform formal institutional education. The main qualification for programming work isn’t a degree. It’s proven capability. This model for employment of self and others will also spread to other professions. (By the way, I don’t like the term ‘job.’ It demeans work, and reduces the worker to a position in an org chart.) The great educator John Taylor Gatto , who won many awards for his teaching and rarely obeyed curricular requirements, says nearly all attempts to reform education make it worse. We are by nature learning animals. We are each also very different: both from each other and from who we were yesterday. As a society we need to take advantage of that, and nurture our natural hunger for knowledge and productive work while respecting and encouraging our diversity, a fundamental balancing feature of all nature, human and otherwise.”

‘We will likely see a radical economic disruption in education, using new tools and means’

Jeff Jarvis , professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, wrote, “At a roundtable on the future convened by Union Square Ventures a few years ago, I heard this economic goal presented: We need to see the marginal cost of teaching another student fall to zero to see true innovation come to education, allowing change to occur outside the tax-based (and thus safe) confines of public education. I don’t think we’ll ever reach zero; MOOCs are not the solution! But we will likely see a radical economic disruption in education – using new tools and means to learn and certify learning – and that is the way by which we will manage to train many more people in many new skills.”

The current education system is perpetuating the shortage of talent

[Advanced Placement]

The most important skill at the moment of the ‘Cambrian Explosion of robotics’ is adaptability

Amy Webb , futurist and CEO at the Future Today Institute, commented, “Gill Pratt, a former program manager of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), recently warned of a Cambrian Explosion of robotics . About 500,000 years ago, Earth experienced its first Cambrian Explosion – a period of rapid cellular evolution and diversification that resulted in the foundation of life as we know it today. We are clearly in the dawn of a new age, one that is marked not just by advanced machines but, rather, machines that are starting to learn how to think. Soon, those machines that can think will augment humankind, helping to unlock our creative and industrial potential. Some of the workforce will find itself displaced by automation. That includes anyone whose primary job functions are transactional (bank tellers, drivers, mortgage brokers). However, there are many fields that will begin to work alongside smart machines: doctors, journalists, teachers. The most important skill of any future worker will be adaptability. This current Cambrian Explosion of machines will mean diversification in our systems, our interfaces, our code. Workers who have the temperament and fortitude to quickly learn new menu screens, who can find information quickly, and the like will fare well. I do not see the wide-scale emergence of training programs during the next 10 years due to the emergence of smart machines alone. If there are unanticipated external events – environmental disasters, new pandemics and the like – that could devastate a country’s economy and significantly impact its workforce, which might catalyze the development of online learning opportunities.”

A lot of knowledge can be imparted by machines and doesn’t require ‘human interaction’

‘what should people know to be informed participants in a democracy’.

Judith Donath of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society replied:

[science, technology, engineering and mathematics]

‘Learning in private is selfish. Public learning is becoming the norm.’

[the innovative platforms]

Most of the focus will be on childhood education for the world

Brad Templeton , chair for computing at Singularity University, wrote, “We will see the start of these technologies, but they will not be widespread at the hard problem of adult retraining in 10 years. Instead, most focus will be on childhood education for the poorer sectors of the world. The most important skill, flexibility, won’t be taught easily this way, but must become a focus of K-12 education.”

Look at what MOOCs have done already

John Markoff , former senior writer at The New York Times, said, “We have now passed through the first generation of MOOCs, and a new generation of online learning technology is beginning to emerge. Udacity is a good example of the trajectory. Sebastian Thrun was one of the inventors of the MOOC concept. After starting a company to pursue the idea, he pivoted, focusing specifically on skill-oriented education that is coupled directly to the job market.”

The internet fosters innovation

Vint Cerf, vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google and an Internet Hall of Fame member, noted, “The internet can support remote training and learning. These need not be MOOCs. Even mobiles can be sources of education. I hope we will see more opportunities arising for sharing this kind of knowledge.”

The main teaching goal: ‘We will make you better than a robot. We let you cooperate with robots.’

Marcel Bullinga , trend watcher and keynote speaker @futurecheck, replied, “The future is cheap, and so is the future of education. I saw an ad already for $1,000 bachelor’s-level training – with an app, of course. Schools and universities will transform in the same way as shops have done in the past 10 years from analog/human-first to digital/mobile/AI-first. New online credential systems will first complement, then gradually replace the old ones. The skills of the future? Those are the skills a robot cannot master (yet). Leadership, design, human meta communication, critical thinking, motivating, cooperating, innovating. In my black-and-white moments I say: Skip all knowledge training in high schools. Main teaching goal: ‘We enable you to survive in an ever-changing world with ever-changing skills and not-yet-existing jobs of the future. We make you better than a robot. We let you cooperate with robots. We build your self-trust. We turn you into a decent, polite, social person. And most importantly, we do not mix education with religion – never.’”

Acceptance and quality of training programs ‘will map to existing systemic biases’

Anil Dash , entrepreneur, technologist, and advocate @AnilDash, predicted, “These credentials will start to become widespread, but acceptance and quality of the training programs will map to the existing systemic biases that inform current educational and career programs.”

The most essential deep learning will not come from online systems

Henning Schulzrinne , Internet Hall of Fame member and professor at Columbia University, wrote, “Training programs have had the problem that short-duration generic programs are often not very effective except as a way to incrementally add very specific skills (‘learn how to operate the new industry-specific tool X in a week’) to the existing repertoire. The subject-matter-specific part of a B.S. degree in a technical or scientific field takes at least two years, often more, and these are high-intensity, full-time years, often without other responsibilities such as family, mostly for students at an age where learning is still natural and easy. A large part of this time is spent not in a classroom but becoming fluent through monitored practice, including group work, internships and other high-intensity, high-interaction apprentice-like programs. It is hard to see how workers can afford to spend two years without income support while still fulfilling their ‘adult’ responsibilities such as taking care of their family or elderly parents. There are possibilities for adding limited skill sets to otherwise qualified workers, e.g., the ability to program in Python for somebody who already has an economics degree, increasing their ability to get their work done. The MOOC-style programs have shown themselves to be most effective for this ‘delta’ learning for practicing professionals, not turning a high school graduate into somebody who can compete with a college graduate.”

We may soon be at the point where ‘adaptive algorithms learn jobs faster than humans’

Jamais Cascio , distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future, responded, “We will certainly see attempts to devise training and education to match workers to new jobs, but for the most part they’re likely to fall victim to two related problems. 1) The difficulty of projecting what will be the ‘jobs of the future’ in a world where the targets keep shifting faster and faster. Jobs that seem viable may fall victim to a surprising development in automation (see, for example, filmmaking); new categories of work may not last long enough to support large numbers of employees. 2) We’re in an era of general-purpose computing, which means that our systems are not physically or procedurally limited to a narrow type of work. Automation and semi-automation (e.g., self-checkout stands) don’t need to completely eliminate a job to make it unable to support large numbers of workers. As learning systems improve, we will soon (if we’re not already) be at a point where adaptive algorithms can learn new jobs faster than humans.”

‘Very unlikely’ that a new training regime will be successful

Kate Crawford, a well-known internet researcher studying how people engage with networked technologies, wrote, “We clearly need new educational and training programs to address the deepening precarity of the labor market . But to make it ‘successful,’ in that the right training could be developed to make it possible that everyone will have jobs, is very unlikely.”

New information flows will require new ways to think about education and learning

Paul Jones , clinical professor and director at the University of North Carolina, replied, “We learn more today by training and information sipping than in the past. Training is useful but not the end of education – only a kind of education. As for sipping: you need not know the name of every bear to know you should avoid bears. Yet the continual construction of knowledge and cultures requires more from us. So far, training formally as in Kahn Academy and Lynda.com are unarguably effective for continual updates for basic skills. No programmer or developer could keep up without the informal training of Stack Overflow. Wikipedia hasn’t destroyed bar trivia, but it has made a dent in our conversational expertise. Who played guitar lead on “All or Nothing”? No need for debate. A little information sip will let us know. We’re fine and informed – but not educated or learned. But what is left out? Collaborative construction of knowledge in new areas, deeper investigation into known areas, and the discovery of entirely new areas of knowledge. This is our challenge: how to create wisdom from knowledge, not just jobs from training and information.”

‘We need to think about co-evolving work and workers’

Bob Frankston , internet pioneer and software innovator, commented, “This is a nuanced question. We trained generations of people to be ‘phone operators’ by making it easy to operate the phone (aka, dialing). Today programming is increasingly become a trade. The problem with many websites is not so much the training of the programmers as much as getting managers and C-level people who understand the new concepts of a world being redefined by software. And that’s even more true for policymakers. We need to think about co-evolving work and workers. And, as always, critical thinking will remain the biggest challenge.”

Beware the model of for-profit learning

Frank Pasquale , author of “The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information” and professor of law at the University of Maryland, said: “The biggest danger for the United States educational system is premature vocationalism. Rigorous science and humanities courses help students learn how to learn. Skills training all too often does not. Of course, it can complement core academic courses, and is likely to be part of a lifetime of learning for those switching occupations. But turning high school and college into narrow vocational education programs would make their graduates more vulnerable to robotic replacement, not less. We need to invest in higher education, shoring up support for traditional universities and colleges, lest they eventually become bastions for reproduction of an elite, leaving the rest of society to untested experiments or online programs. Online learning is a good complement for existing colleges – but cannot replace them. Online-only programs emphasize the upside of high-tech approaches, but rarely grapple with the downside. Big-data surveillance will track the work students do, ostensibly in order to customize learning. Get stuck on a lesson? Just keep interfacing with a keyboard, camera and perhaps haptic sensors. Or perhaps IM some reserve army of tutorial labor via digital labor platforms like Mechanical Turk or TaskRabbit. Want to prove you aren’t faking exams? Just let cameras record your every move and keystroke – perhaps your eye movements and facial expressions, too.

“With new platforms, Silicon Valley has lured some universities into giving away lectures for free. The colleges think they’re establishing good karma with the public, but disrupters hope for a more chaotic endgame: students deciding to watch free courses, then proving their credentials to certifiers who give out ‘badges’ to signify competence in a skill set. The certifiers most likely won’t be burdened with any of the teaching, research, community service, counseling (career or otherwise), recreation, social events, extracurriculars or other long-standing features of residential university communities. They will just verify that student X can do task Y. It could be a very profitable business. If students pay less for actual instruction by experts, they have more money to spend on badges. This is the for-profit model – shift money away from instruction and amenities and toward administrator salaries and marketing.

“Unburdened by legacy staff and faculty, ‘ed tech’ firms could muster a just-in-time workforce to develop new educational technologies. Investors could continue ‘unbundling’ the university into least-cost providers of content units, student surveillance, and badge-granting. That vision may draw capital, but it probably won’t be attractive to many students. There are serious worries about rapid centralization and reuse of student data by under-regulated firms. For instance, black-boxed instructional technology is often run by algorithms that can’t be accessed by the students it is assessing.”

School systems should leverage the same tools society and industry are using to transform their practice

The people creating new jobs don’t have time to think about what kind of workers they will need in the future.

Barry Chudakov , founder and principal at Sertain Research and StreamFuzion Corp., replied: “One serious drawback to fast-tracking needed educational and training programs: the people who are creating the jobs of the future have so little time to reflect and gain perspective on the people they will need – and how adding these people to their corporate culture changes that culture. These entrepreneurs are so busy building technology infrastructures, filing patents, testing beta incarnations of ideas and processes – not to mention navigating the thicket of regulations and restrictions that surround many emerging technologies and industries – that they simply don’t have time to look around and see the implications of the changes their companies are creating. …

“In the near future, we will explode the notion of education as a rite of passage for youth happening within the walls of an institution. Educational institutions will not disappear, but they will change in ways that make them almost unrecognizable by today’s models. … Just as Pokemon Go lifts people out of their chairs into real-world environments to explore imaginary captures, we will change learning from a passive to an active, dynamic experience. Three dynamics that will affect all learning and retraining efforts: 1) Newer tools are changing our sense of identity. 2) We are moving from the fixed point of view that the book gave us to a multiple, simultaneous narrative of flow in a networked environment. 3) Again, since what we think is what we think through, we are applying that logic of visual presentation to our presentation (and sense) of self. …

[ quantitative analyst ]

“The second, and much more important, skill needed to succeed in the workforce of the future will be the ability to find meaning and value in data combined with the problem, condition, or opportunity the data is outlining. Said simply, the greatest skill will be the ability to think through the cloud of facts, data, experience and strategic direction that products and services require. Design thinking or visual thinking will be a critical part of managing a data-driven world. Data mining and management can be taught effectively. Thinking, problem-solving, reflection and visioning are difficult to teach at scale.”

‘We need real education (not job-focused) and opportunities’ for diverse pathways

Elisabeth Gee , professor at Arizona State University and author of “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,” commented, “First, many jobs of the future won’t require workers with a lot of training. … Second, degrees and credentials have been increasingly promoted by institutions more driven by profit than an interest in preparing students in any meaningful way for employment. If the government doesn’t step in to restrict such institutions, we’ll continue to see students graduate with huge debt and little prospect of decent employment. Lastly, we don’t need large-scale training of workers – we need real education (not job-focused) and opportunities for people to pursue diverse pathways for career development and lifelong learning.”

The greatest thinker of the 21st century will understand more about how she thinks, learns

Patrick Tucker , technology editor at Defense One and author of “The Naked Future,” observed: “Online education offers the opportunity to gather data on student performance continuously, or telemetrically. … What telemetric education offers is the opportunity to continuously and constantly evaluate a student to gain a much more comprehensive understanding of ability, retention of information, even how other behaviors and factors such as time of day, other calendar items, nutrition, amount of time on Pokemon Go, influence learning. It offers a more true moving score. …

“Learning will become easier and much more of it will happen outside of school settings, all of which will diminish the importance of schools and teachers as we know them today. But platforms like Coursera can amplify the talents of gifted and effective instructors and reduce the cost of education in the coming decade for all. Some schools and colleges will thrive and prosper at a level not seen in their history. But they will do so only by transitioning away from today’s classroom model toward something else, like data-driven skills workshops at the high school level and startup incubators or problem-solving workshops at the college level. …

‘We need more of an emphasis on the fundamental purposes of education, not ‘skills’

David Golumbia , associate professor of digital studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, commented, “As an educator, I am completely unconvinced by the current rhetoric that says our educational system is unable to meet the needs of current or future workforces. This whole argument is a sham meant to attack the fundamental purpose and basis of education. Most empirical evidence shows that the premises of this question are incorrect: most ‘high-skilled’ jobs of the sort implied here have an oversupply of qualified talent. We need more of an emphasis on the fundamental purpose of education, not on ‘skills.’ ”

Few skills require personal instruction from an expert; all may be automated

Stephen Downes , researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, commented, “We will see educational and training programs that can successfully train large numbers of workers, because for the most part mechanisms will be in place that enable them to train themselves.

“There are very few skills that require specific and personal instruction from an expert to learn – frankly, I can’t think of any – which means that within 10 years we should at least be able to countenance the possibility that all, or nearly all, educational programs may be automated. Of course, they will continue to require the time and participation of the individual learner, and in many cases, social interaction with other learners, but the labor-intensive learning industry we have developed to this point will not be required.

“I see no major objections to this argument: 1) It may be argued that personal interaction is required in order to get to know a student, and therefore anticipate what they need. However, in 10 years it will be arguable (and probably demonstrable) that your own computer networks will know you better than any individual instructor could, even an instructor who worked with you your entire life. Sure, there are disasters like the Facebook news stream, but people are already amazed at how much Google knows about them. And we know that with enough data analytics can outperform humans even in complex tasks. 2) It may be argued that personal interaction is required in order to evaluate a student’s level of achievement. Most actual assessment (not to be confused with multiple-choice tests) in school or professional programs is based on expert recognition. The submitted behavior (an essay, performance in surgery, piloting an aircraft in a simulation) is not assessed according to whether a set of indicators is achieved (this would possibly be a necessary, but never a sufficient, condition). The expert looks at the overall behavior and assesses whether that competency has been met. The expert is serving as a proxy for the community at large. With modern communications technology, this proxy is no longer required.

“Through the course of any given day, as a person goes through various activities, they interact with dozens of other people, either in person or through online interaction. Each person responds to them in some way, not by testing them, but by (for example) engaging them in conversation, asking questions, following advice, etc. These responses, over time, form a comprehensive (and constantly changing) assessment of the person.”

What about the future of jobs training for ‘artilects’?

[ nonhuman artificial-intelligence ]

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How to Help Young People Transition Into Adulthood

With so much rapid-fire change in the world, the job of preparing our young people for the future has become increasingly daunting. The Institute of the Future issued a report in 2017 that declared that 85 percent of the jobs in 2030—when today’s second-graders will graduate high school—have not been invented yet. On top of that, we’re facing an unfolding crisis in the environment; rampant racial, ethnic, and gender inequities; the impending confluence of bioengineering and artificial intelligence; and escalating craziness on the geopolitical stage.

Over the past decade, I talked to thousands of educators grappling with the question of how to best prepare young people for the uncertain future. The vast majority agree that skills like critical thinking, resilience, creativity, systems thinking, and empathy are crucial and must be prioritized over compliance and standardized test scores. But, more recently, there’s a sense that young people need to gain real-world experience in navigating the unknown through some kind of authentic rite of passage—and more and more research is exploring what that might look like. 

For millennia, elders have led youth through scaffolded rites of passage. French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep analyzed rites of passage across cultures in history and found that they have a universal three-part structure—separation, liminality, and reincorporation—to help people make sense of great transition. A young person undergoing a coming-of-age rite of passage must leave her “normal world” (separation) and enter into a situation where she experiences the free-fall of being no longer a child but not yet an adult (liminality). Once the initiate has successfully mastered the liminal phase, she returns to the normal world as an adult (reincorporation), having “leveled up” with skills that are needed to function as a healthy member of the community.

But meaningful rites of passage are not as common today. In fact, 75 percent of people between the ages of 12 and 25 lack a clear sense of purpose and many young adults are intimidated by “adulting.” This led me to wonder: How might we combine what we know from psychology and education research with traditional rite-of-passage rituals to help youth practice dwelling in the unknown, while building up critical skills for the future?


Over the past two years, I have worked with individuals and small groups of graduate students and educators to prototype a more contemporary approach to rites of passage. The updated three steps we designed—now preparation , threshold , and reflection —revolve around a student-centered project that allows youth to deepen their self-knowledge while learning to be comfortable in the unknown. Dozens of young people have gone through this process, and I hope teachers, community leaders, and others can use this model to facilitate meaningful and impactful rites of passage to support the development of the youth in their communities.

1. Preparation: Student-centered project design

Rites of passage provide a safe and structured container for young people to undergo a metamorphic shift in identity from youth to adult. The goal of the first phase is for you (as a teacher, leader, or parent) and the initiates to develop a deeper understanding of themselves: their character strengths, interests, skills, and passions.

Student inventory. Ask students the following questions (inspired by Project Wayfinder and Angela Maiers ):


• What are your strengths? This can be skills such as math, drawing, or swimming, or dispositions such as patience, leadership, or the ability to focus. You can also have them take the free VIA Character Strengths Survey for Youth .
• What do you love to do? Note that many teens’ first answer will be something to do with video games or social media. Capture these ideas, but dig a little deeper to see what else is under there. Do they enjoy strategizing with friends in Fortnite ? Or creating beautiful images for Instagram? Once you’ve captured the digital stuff, be sure to find out what else they love in the “offline” world, just for balance.

• Is there anything that you wish you knew how to do? A skill or disposition that you want to develop? Again, see if you can find both digital and offline answers here.
• What issue or cause out in the world do you care about the most? Climate? Gun violence? Homelessness? Animal welfare? Government corruption? Talk to them about a few specific issues.

Brainstorm projects. Using the student’s answers to each question, begin to brainstorm project ideas that would be meaningful. Projects should be designed to use the initiate’s skills to help solve a community problem that he deeply cares about.

For instance, say you are working with a 19-year-old named Sam who loves to draw, write fiction, and make short videos with her friends. The VIA Character Strengths Survey shows she’s strong in social intelligence (which she knew) but also in bravery (which she didn’t!). She wants to learn business skills and how to make better videos. The daughter of immigrants, Sam is deeply troubled by the racist attacks to which she and her friends are increasingly subjected.

Sam and her mentor brainstorm some ideas for projects. For instance, she might make a short video interviewing three immigrants in her community about their experiences with racism. Or maybe she could illustrate t-shirts with messages of equity and inclusion, and set up a pop-up shop. A third idea might be to write, illustrate, self-publish, and sell a book of short stories about a teenage immigrant.

Discuss viability of project. Have your student review the projects and select a couple of favorites to evaluate what it will take to pull each off successfully. Will it require a lot of money or volunteers? What about location? What is the scope? Are there a lot of interdependencies? Involve the initiate in brainstorming solutions. Ultimately, as in the real world, the final project scope will be determined by a combination of will and resources.

Because it will be a ton of work to fill up an entire shop, and then organize a pop-up, Sam settles on the video project, which seems very doable within her three-month summer break.

Write a project plan. Written as much as possible by the student with support as needed from their mentor, a project plan should include real-world skills like calling venues, organizing volunteers, setting up a Kickstarter campaign, writing a basic budget, using social media for promotion, gathering sponsors, writing, and performing speeches. 

Sam’s project plan outlines in detail the content, production process, budget, and timeline for her documentary short. Using her mentor’s connections, Sam reaches out to a local nonprofit that has a video editing suite and asks if she can use it after-hours.

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Prepare for departure. Integral to the design of a rite of passage is that the initiate must leave the comfort of home and venture out into a new realm. This separation is baked into the experience of going away to college or summer sleepaway camp, but it can also be engineered in other ways: a summer or gap-year project, or over a holiday break.

The night before Sam is to shoot her first interview, her mentor and parents invite eight adults—family members, former teachers, and friends who know and love Sam—to an opening circle to witness her at the beginning of her journey. The room is illuminated with candles. Each adult speaks to Sam of her strengths and their belief in her, offering one piece of advice and one thing they appreciate about her. The adults have also made a short video of each of them repeating their wishes for her. Sam speaks of her intentions to learn more about filmmaking and to speak out against racism.

2. Threshold: Tasks must be hard (and relevant)

The ordeal will be a challenge. Students need to feel frustrated—pushed as close to the point of giving up as possible—or it won’t have the impact. 

This is the time when we as facilitators have to step out of the way and let the student work on her own, grapple with setbacks, and, yes, fail. If they show signs of withering, you can support independent problem solving wherever possible. There are several research-based practices you can share that will help build resilience and well-being during the ordeal and well into adulthood, as well.

Growth mindset . If she is not already skilled at learning from mistakes, remind your student that every failure is a learning opportunity. If she starts to internalize negative self-talk, such as “I will never be able to do this!,” remind her of the power of “yet”—as in, “You don’t know how to do this, yet. But you will get it.”

Three Good Things . This is a super simple and proven practice of writing down three good things that happened at the end of each day. Research shows that this can help us sustain a sense of happiness and fend off depressive symptoms for up to three months—an excellent practice to build while amid an ordeal. 

Three Good Things

A way to tune into the positive events in your life

Cultivate awareness . Have the initiate reflect on how he’s doing and identify any challenges with self-compassion. Bring any negative self-talk to awareness. Help the initiate become aware of what he does when he starts to experience the frustration of obstacles. Keeping a regular project journal can help facilitate this reflection.

Ethics . In the real world, we come up against ethical challenges all the time. Especially now with the ever-shifting sands of ethical standards in our public discourse, it is important that adults model respect, morality, and ethical decision making during an ordeal. It will be tempting for your student to make some unethical choices. You will want to make it safe and supportive to make the right choice. 

Awe. Awe, “numinosity,” or the sense that there is a larger force at work in the world is key to meaningful rites of passage, as research shows it is a positive way to catalyze the identity shift necessary to leave childhood and become fully adult. This can be designed into the experience by taking young people out into awe-inspiring nature for several days, creating a deck of personally meaningful cards as in Soul Collage , or reading the poetry of Rumi, Lucille Clifton, or Mary Oliver.

3. Reflection: Completion of project

Once the ordeal has concluded, it is time to celebrate the accomplishments of the initiate! Like the departure, this return is a time of celebration and welcoming back to the “normal world.” Many traditions have the initiate stand up in front of his peers and community and speak about the experience. This celebration can be big and formal, or small and intimate. The key is that the initiate should be able to answer the following questions:

• Why did you do this project?
• What did you hope to learn?
• What did you learn?
• What will you take with you?
• What is one of your best memories?

Ideally, there is time to help the initiate integrate the experience and set about planning for another self-designed goal. In Sam’s case, her family and mentor will invite the same adults to come over for a special screening of her video, and she will give a short introduction to the video offering her reflections.

Finding Purpose Across the Lifespan

This article is part of a GGSC initiative on “ Finding Purpose Across the Lifespan ,” supported by the John Templeton Foundation. In a series of articles, podcast episodes, and other resources, we’re exploring why and how to deepen your sense of purpose at different stages of life.

In traditional rites of passage, the initiate returns home as an adult, having been prepared for adult responsibilities—mind, body, and soul—through the ordeal. We don’t really have a similar expectation in our contemporary communities, and of course there are myriad reasons why young people are taking longer to find their footing as adults.

But we can certainly help young people deepen their self-knowledge and strengthen their sense of identity, develop real-world skills, and (most importantly) experience the state-change that comes with accomplishing a major stretch goal. We can provide a model for navigating the unknown as a means of strengthening their identity and engaging community support.

Indeed, I would like to live in a world where each child is initiated into adulthood—not to fit them into a prescribed societal box, but to help them understand who they are, why they’re here, and how they can share their gifts with the world.

About the Author

Betty Ray, M.A. , is an author, speaker, and consultant. She spent the better part of the last decade in senior editorial leadership roles at Edutopia, published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Now, her work explores the question: How might we design educational experiences that cultivate the inner life of young people so that they know their own purpose, and can apply that purpose to solving some of the most vexing problems we face today?

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Center for American Progress

Preparing American Students for the Workforce of the Future

• Report    PDF (116 KB)

Ensuring Every Student’s Readiness for College, Career, and Civic Life

CAP is embarking on a research effort that focuses on preparing students for civic life and the workforce of the future.

College, Career, and Civic Readiness, Education, Education, K-12, Workforce Development +1 More

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Mishka espey.

Senior Manager, Media Relations

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Madeline shepherd.

Senior Director, Government Affairs

The United States has failed to prepare all students for college and their careers. That failure has enormous consequences and has led to inequitable educational, economic, and civic opportunities that are disproportionately borne by Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students and workers. 1 These students’ and workers’ rates of dropout, remediation, under- and unemployment eclipse those of their white counterparts—not to mention the ever-widening wealth gap between whites and communities of color. These communities of color also vote at lower rates than whites, leading to a government that is less responsive to their needs. 2

Today, a new threat is already worsening these gaps. As the coronavirus pandemic devastates America’s health, economy, and workforce, a comprehensive recovery will likely be slower for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students and workers, whose jobs are less likely to offer remote work or employment benefits such as paid family or sick leave. Whether the threat is old or new, the remedy lies in addressing three systemic gaps in education. From early grades, students are not prepared across a wide range of skills; students are not exposed to a rich set of career preparation activities; and school accountability systems are not oriented around successful career and civic outcomes. 3

This issue brief lays out a framework for a K-12 education research agenda that will uncover policy solutions for how best to prepare students for college, career, and civic life in a rapidly changing workforce and society. Through a range of research reports, CAP will dig deeper into three systemic gaps in the education and workforce training systems that hinder students’ career and civic outcomes. Specifically, this research will address the lack of:

• Early exposure to career options, particularly in grades K-8
• Holistic preparation for college and careers in the future workforce and civic life across academic and socioemotional factors
• Orientation of school accountability systems around the outcomes of college and career readiness as well as the attainment of good jobs

At a minimum, the policy solutions to address these gaps will include the integration of laws, regulations, and funding for K-12 schools, higher education, and workforce development to build streamlined pathways to good jobs. They will involve the development of ecosystems of schools and local employers to expose teachers, students, and their families to a broad range of careers. And they will lead to the creation of local accountability systems that hold schools accountable for this more expansive approach to preparing students for the future.

Before discussing these three topics in more detail, this brief provides insight into CAP’s new research approach, which aims to be more responsive to community needs and desired solutions. Then, it highlights the importance of taking a systemic approach to preparing students for the future of work and civic life, as students need a broad range of skills and experiences that schools alone cannot provide.

Community conversations

CAP will embark on a series of community conversations across the country in areas with a high proportion of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous populations. These conversations will be a unique way to collect data about the needs and potential solutions for the communities this research is intended to affect. The conversations will focus on how community members define the future workforce; how they learn about new industries and occupations; how well their schools help students prepare for this future; and how their schools should be held accountable for preparing all students. CAP’s eventual policy recommendations will be informed by students, parents, educators, advocates, policymakers, and employers.

Why preparation for college, career, and civic life requires a cross-systems approach

When students are prepared across a broad range of knowledge, skills, and abilities, they not only get better jobs, but they also engage more actively as citizens—especially in activities such as voting and community participation—which leads to greater voice and influence in society. 4 However, schools by themselves cannot instill the complex set of skills and abilities that adequately prepare students for their careers and civic life. It will take resources and knowledge that come from broader parts of the community. For example, with employer engagement, education may more adequately reflect the career preparation and training needed for current and emerging local industries. Likewise, local community organizations can also be partners in engaging students civically.

Collaborations must center on preparing students for good jobs—the kind of jobs that afford economic security and participation in civic life as opposed to occupations that require few skills, pay low wages, or are vulnerable to outsourcing. Research shows that workers in good jobs are also more engaged as citizens and are better able to influence the laws and policies that affect their lives. 5 Achieving consensus on the defining characteristics of good preparation, good jobs, and good citizenship in the 21st century is a critical first step. Most states have definitions of college and career readiness. 6 However, these definitions often focus on college readiness, lack sufficient detail to guide daily interactions with students, and are not connected to good future jobs.

Without consensus on the skills needed to secure good jobs and become good citizens, schools and their local partners will not develop structured pathways for students to progress from education to training and, ultimately, careers.

What is a good job?

While characteristics such as benefits, pay, opportunities for advancement, and organizational culture contribute to what good jobs look like, there are other factors as well. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development defines good jobs as those in which employers adhere to three principles: 1) Good jobs exist within an ecosystem where high-quality jobs can flourish; 2) they prevent labor market exclusion and protect workers from risk; and 3) they adapt to the work of the future. 7 A recent Gallup Poll outlines 10 dimensions that characterize good jobs: level of pay; predictability and stability of pay; stability and predictability of hours; ability to work remotely; job security; employee benefits; career advancement; enjoyment of work; a sense of purpose; and the power to change unsatisfactory aspects of a job. 8

Early career preparation

The first topic in CAP’s future of work research agenda is early career preparation. CAP’s previous work shows that most schools lack the strategies and resources to expose students to careers and industries, especially in early grades. 9 The effects of this gap are enormous. Most students enroll in high school course pathways that lead to a dead end and leave students ineligible for their desired postsecondary options. 10 Moreover, factors outside of school—such as students’ socioeconomic status—end up playing a greater role in student choices when they are not sufficiently informed and guided in school.

Research shows that students’ life circumstances—including income level, gender, and immigrant status—have a stronger influence than their academic performance on their career aspirations and workforce outcomes. 11 Student perceptions about certain industries form when they are as young as 10 years old and remain unchanged at the age of 14. 12

These data are not surprising, as students’ circumstances also affect the quality of career preparation experiences that are available to them. Educators in the United States are only just starting to agree about the importance of early career preparation programs and what those programs should look like. 13

Educators and students in low-income communities lack opportunities to learn about jobs in the future workforce. The reasons vary by community, however, as many low-income communities lack a diverse pool of employers, and many low-income schools lack relationships with employers. This long-standing inequity creates an imperative for local employers to engage with schools to create a variety of high-quality education and career preparation opportunities beginning in early grades. These can include advising on curricula to reflect industry needs, hands-on learning, student advising or mentoring, excursions to job sites, and career talks. Because parental values and expectations also greatly influence students’ career choices, parents must be included in this effort. 14

Holistic preparation for college and careers in the future of work

The second topic of CAP’s future of work research agenda is holistic preparation for college and careers in the future workforce.

Research and practice have led to consensus on the different dimensions of readiness all students need for college and future careers. These include academic mastery across a range of subjects, technical training either in a specific field or in cross-cutting skills such as computer literacy, and 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and collaboration. 15 Most states include these in their definitions of college, career, and life readiness, and some elements of these definitions are included in states’ school accountability systems. 16 However, what’s missing are specific systems to develop these skills equitably across all students and ways to measure students’ attainment.

Nearly every aspect of how Americans work has changed over the past 50 years. 17 From the types of jobs we perform to how we perform them, there are ways in which we work today that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. This change in work and the types of jobs Americans perform looks different depending on one’s perspective, particularly to those historically locked out of the kind of jobs that promote economic prosperity. This will be even more true as advances in technology drive how we do business and as the digital divide widens. 18

Too many people will be left out of the future of work. They lack opportunity to develop the critical academic, technical, or cross-cutting skills that allow them to participate in this evolving workforce. For example, Black people are overrepresented in support roles—such as in food service, truck driving, and clerical roles—that are most often affected by advances in technology. 19 Across three cities—including Gary, Indiana; Columbia, South Carolina; and Long Beach, California—Latinos are sometimes at even higher risk of job loss due to automation. 20 Without addressing persistent deficiencies in preparation, the United States will continue to exacerbate the wealth and opportunity gap that is currently at its highest level in 50 years. Given the interdependent nature of the economy, these gaps hurt everybody.

Accountability for establishing and maintaining high-quality pathways to good jobs

The third topic in CAP’s research agenda is how to hold schools accountable for the outcomes of all students—starting in early grades—in the future workforce and civic life. Today’s school accountability systems focus too narrowly on reading and writing as measured by test scores. These systems incentivize schools to focus on test scores rather than the broad range of academic and social skills as well as career preparatory experiences that students need to be prepared for life and future work.

Early career preparation must be holistic—meaning it must support the development of academic knowledge and skills, technical skills, and 21st-century skills—in order to set students up to be competitive for future good jobs. Accountability for pathways to these jobs must involve formal and sustained collaboration among education and workforce systems. It must also include employers. This type of accountability extends far beyond what can be captured in test scores, which account for more than 50 percent of current school accountability systems. 21 Accountability systems drive administrator and educator behaviors, so the next generation of accountability systems must provide an incentive to drive behaviors that better prepare students for tomorrow’s workforce. 22

Educators and employers together must identify what systemic changes will result in the development of seamless pathways from education to training, and to good jobs of the future. They will likely need to measure the benchmarks discussed earlier such as early career preparation and holistic readiness. To address historic opportunity gaps, they will also need to measure how they use their resources to close such gaps both to improve the return on investment and to advocate for additional resources from local, state, and federal funding sources.

The disparate effects the coronavirus crisis has had on the U.S. economy emphasize the importance of building systems of accountability for pathways to good jobs. The mishandling of the crisis led to historic unemployment rates in most states in the months after March 2020. 23 Unemployment rates for Black and Latinx workers are usually higher than white workers, and they are currently double or triple their comparative rates from one year ago. 24 Together, Black and Latinx workers represent 36 percent of all essential workers in service industries, and many of these jobs offer low pay and no benefits. 25 Black and Latinx individuals also voted at rates that were, respectively, 6 and 18 percentage points lower than that of white voters. 26 Voter suppression and gerrymandering are historic causes of these low rates. There are also data linking income level with voter and civic participation. 27

The U.S. education and career training systems should produce better outcomes than they are currently producing. In order to do so, local communities must measure and be held accountable for instilling the dynamic set of skills and abilities that students will need to secure good jobs of the future. Some of these skills come from early and regular exposure to different industries, occupations, and working professionals. Education and training should also prepare students to engage civically, and measuring students’ abilities to do so should be a part of local accountability systems.

There are significant gaps in how schools prepare all students for good jobs in the future workforce. As noted in this brief, these gaps exist in three areas: early career preparation, holistic preparation, and accountability for establishing pathways to good jobs. CAP expects that communities know these gaps exist and want them remedied.

Ensuring that these critical elements are thoroughly addressed requires formal and sustained collaboration between schools, colleges, and local employers, with federal and state governments leading the way. CAP will propose critical changes to education and training laws and resources, as integrating these elements will help to sustain these collaborations. There are issues related to policies, budgets, and curricula that are governed independently but must be interwoven and aligned to ensure that seamless pathways are developed for students.

For many, this type of collaboration will present an entirely new way of working together—but if carried out with intentionality, it will result in a brighter future for all students.

Laura Jimenez is the director of standards and accountability for K-12 Education at the Center for American Progress.

• The New Teacher Project, “The Opportunity Myth” (New York: 2018), available at https://opportunitymyth.tntp.org ; Chad Stone and others, ”A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality” (Washington: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2020), available at https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality .
• Joshua Littenberg-Tobias and Allison K. Cohen, ”Diverging Paths: Understanding Racial Differences in Civic Engagement Among White, African American, and Latina/o Adolescents Using Structural Equation Modeling,” American Journal of Community Psychology 57 (2016): 102–117, available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajcp.12027 .
• Council of Chief State School Officers and Education Strategy Group, “Destination Known: Valuing College and Career Readiness in State Accountability Systems” (Washington: 2017) available at http://edstrategy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Destination-Known.pdf ; Livia Lam, ”A Design for Workforce Equity: Workforce Redesign for Quality Training and Employment: A Framing Paper” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2019), available at https://americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2019/10/16/475875/design-workforce-equity/ ; Krista Mattern and others, ”Broadening the Definition of College and Career Readiness: A Holistic Approach” (Iowa City, IA: ACT, 2014), available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED555591.pdf .
• Orin M. Levin-Waldman, ”Income Inequality and Disparities in Civic Participation in the New York City Metro Area,” Regional Labor Review 15 (2) (2012), available at https://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/academics/colleges/hclas/cld/cld-rlr-fall12-incomeinequality-waldman.pdf .
• Anne Mishkind, “Overview: State Definitions of College and Career Readiness” (Washington: College and Career Readiness and Success Center at American Institutes for Research, 2014), available at https://ccrscenter.org/sites/default/files/CCRS%20Defintions%20Brief_REV_1.pdf .
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Good Jobs for All in a Changing World of Work“ (Paris: 2018), available at https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/good-jobs-for-all-in-a-changing-world-of-work_9789264308817-en#page1 .
• Jonathan Rothwell and Steve Crabtree, ”Not Just a Job: New Evidence on the Quality of Work in the United States” (Washington: Gallup, 2019), available at https://www.omidyar.com/insights/not-just-job-new-evidence-quality-work-united-states .
• Meg Benner and Scott Sargrad, “Creating Strong Building Blocks for Every Student: How Middle Schools Can Lay the Foundation for Rigorous High School Pathways” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2020), available at https://americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2020/08/05/488493/creating-strong-building-blocks-every-student/ .
• Laura Jimenez and Scott Sargrad, “Are High School Diplomas Really a Ticket to College and Work?: An Audit of State High School Graduation Requirements” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/04/02/447717/high-school-diplomas/ .
• Anthony Mann and others, ”Dream Jobs? Teenagers’ Career Aspirations and the Future of Work” (Geneva: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2020), available at https://www.oecd.org/berlin/publikationen/Dream-Jobs.pdf .
• Kate Torii, ”Why school kids need more exposure to the world of work,” The Conversation, July 29, 2018, available at https://theconversation.com/why-school-kids-need-more-exposure-to-the-world-of-work-100590 .
• Advanced CTE and the Association for Career and Technical Education, ”Broadening the Path: Design Principles for Middle Grades CTE” (Washington: 2020), available at https://careertech.org/resource/broadening-path-middle-grades .
• Kristen Anne Jungen, ”Parental Influence and Career Choice: How Parents Affect the Career Aspirations of Their Children” (Menomonie, WI: University of Wisconsin-Stout, 2008) available at https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/42711/2008jungenk.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y .
• David T. Conley, ”Four Keys to College and Career Readiness,” Education Policy Task Force: Council of State Governments, October 21, 2011, available at http://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/system/files/conleyPDF.pdf .
• Mishkind, ”Overview: State Definitions of College and Career Readiness.”
• Andrew Lisa, ”50 ways the workforce has changed in 50 years,” Stacker, February 11, 2019, available at https://thestacker.com/stories/2481/50-ways-workforce-has-changed-50-years .
• Emily A. Vogels and others, “53% of Americans Say the Internet Has Been Essential During the COVID-19 Outbreak” (Washington: Pew Research Center, 2020), available at https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/04/30/53-of-americans-say-the-internet-has-been-essential-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/ .
• Kelemwork Cook and others, ”The guture of work in black America,” McKinsey and Company, October 4, 2019, available at https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-in-black-america .
• Casey Leins, ”Cities Struggle to Prepare African Americans, Latinos for the Future Workforce,” U.S. News and World Report, August 21, 2019, available at https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-08-21/cities-struggle-to-prepare-african-americans-latinos-for-the-future-workforce .
• Samantha Batel and Laura Jimenez, ”School Accountability in First-Round ESSA State Plans” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2017), available at https://americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2017/08/04/436963/school-accountability-first-round-essa-state-plans/ .
• Laura Jimenez and Scott Sargrad, ”A New Vision for School Accountability” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2017), available at https://americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2017/03/03/427156/a-new-vision-for-school-accountability/ .
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ”Local Area Unemployment Statistics,” available at https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/lauhsthl.htm (last accessed July 2020).
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ”Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey,” available at https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm (last accessed July 2020).
• Celine McNicholas and Margaret Poydock, “Who are essential workers?”, Economic Policy Institute, May 19, 2020, available at https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/ .
• Jens Manuel Krogstad and Mark Hugo Lopez, ”Black voter turnout fell in 2016, even as a record number of Americans cast ballots,” Pew Research Center, May 12, 2017, available at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ .
• Randall Akee, “Voting and Income,” Econofact, February 7, 2019, available at https://econofact.org/voting-and-income.

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• Career Advice
• Carpe Careers

Immerse Yourself With Intention

By  Laura N. Schram

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Most graduate students do not have the luxury of time to devote to lots of career exploration activities that aren’t directly relevant to their scholarly commitments (course work, dissertation writing, teaching and so on). The vast majority of graduate students can’t take time off to pursue an internship opportunity, and the few who are able to do so might take advantage of such an opportunity just once in their graduate careers. Yet, as Paula Di Rita Wishart noted in her previous “Carpe Careers” column on job experience , an internship is not the only way to explore your career interests in an experiential way and to make professional connections.

You can accomplish that by immersing yourself for a relatively short period of time in a new professional context. In immersives , as we call them at Rackham Graduate School, students spend a day or two learning more about the workplaces, projects, research and other opportunities involved in a specific career context. Immersives give students the chance to network with and visit an organization of interest to them, as well as to engage in its work.

For example, our immersive students conduct practice teaching for the university teaching and learning center, write short grant reviews at our state humanities council, participate in the local community foundation’s annual community meeting, or design a lesson plan for a university museum tour. Students typically participate in those experiences after they’ve narrowed their career interests a bit as a next step beyond informational interviewing. Or they use them as an opportunity to just dive in and explore something that piques their interest to see if it’s a good fit with their career values, interests and skills.

Similarly, after an exciting informational interview, you might want to engage in some kind of activity at an organization -- to participate in or even contribute to a community event, to provide advice or analysis on a specific project that intrigued you, or to attend a public advisory board meeting to see how an organization runs. You do not need a structured program to do this, and we frequently encourage students who have an organization they’ve already connected with in mind to design their own immersive.

That said, engaging in something like an immersive for several hours or even a day does not necessarily mean you’ll learn from the experience. Those of you who teach will know this from your experience as an instructor. You design a great active learning activity for your students, only to find when you assess their learning at the end of class that some of the students still didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t do the reading, they didn’t have some essential prior knowledge, they were distracted, or they were unmotivated and passively engaged in the activity. Whatever the reason, experience doesn’t always translate to learning.

For example, after spending a half day at a museum to learn more about museum research careers, one of our earliest immersive participants confided in me that she didn’t get the most out of the time she had there and felt it was a missed opportunity. What was missing?

As someone who has been shepherding students through these experiences for several years now, I would like to share four best practices I’ve learned to immerse yourself most productively so that you leave such experiences with greater career clarity and ideas about your next steps.

Engage Actively

If you want to go beyond the information you can gain from an informational interview, you need to do more than observe passively or ask questions. Students often fall back on shadowing to learn more about a job, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what task can you complete during a brief shadowing experience to get a firsthand sense of the skills needed for this work? You should offer to take on a concrete assignment for a specific project or activity, such as analyzing data or text, designing something, conducting topic research, or facilitating a small piece of a larger event.

Meet a Need

Of course, in your own career development, your primary goal is to gain marketable experience and clarity on your professional goals. However, a successful immersive typically results when a student thinks beyond their own professional needs and designs a mutually beneficial experience with an organization or a professional mentor. In our most impactful immersives, a student identifies a need that an organization has and contributes her expertise to meet that need. Organizations will be much more likely to let you sit in on an important meeting, volunteer at an exciting event or have access to information on an emerging project if you can contribute to their organizational goals and needs. As you think about where you might want to explore and engage in a short-term professional experience, ask yourself, “What distinct skills can I contribute that will meet this organization’s needs?”

The student I mentioned earlier who didn’t get the most out of her museum visit confessed to me that she just didn’t prepare. She didn’t research the organizational mission, she didn’t read the staff biographical profiles online, she didn’t think about whom she wanted to meet with individually while she was there and she didn’t investigate what museum research typically involves. You don’t need to invest a ton of time in preparing -- remember, the goal here is to gain a bit of experience in a field that piques your interest yet not spend significant time away from your scholarly work. But you should set aside one hour to apply your well-honed research skills to prepare for the experience so that you make the most out of the short time you have at an organization. Prepare questions, research the organization’s mission and staff, and read at least one relevant article about the field or organization.

Reflect on What You Learned

Just as preparation before an experience will help you to get the most out of immersing yourself, reflection afterward is extremely important in identifying lessons learned and next steps. Perhaps the experience crystallized an important insight for you, or you discovered an important skill that is required for the work that you need to develop further. You may even have discovered that the organization was not a good fit for some reason, in which case it is valuable to think through why and what that means for your interests going forward. Pick up your journal or open up your individual development plan -- wherever you are tracking notes or thoughts on your own career development -- and set aside time to reflect on the following questions:

• What stands out to you from your experience, and why is that important for your career clarity?
• What benefits did you gain (values engaged, skills acquired, knowledge learned) as a result of this experience?
• What do you see as your next step(s)?

Even better, I’d encourage you to process these questions together with a graduate career counselor, a professional mentor or a trusted peer to integrate the experience into your broader career development.

Immersives are an excellent way to get a taste of a career area that intrigues you. If you apply these four best practices, you will set yourself up to get the most out of the experience and make progress in your career exploration process.

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• Job Application Documents

How to Write a Job Application Essay

Last Updated: April 9, 2024 References

This article was co-authored by Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Shannon O'Brien is the Founder and Principal Advisor of Whole U. (a career and life strategy consultancy based in Boston, MA). Through advising, workshops and e-learning Whole U. empowers people to pursue their life's work and live a balanced, purposeful life. Shannon has been ranked as the #1 Career Coach and #1 Life Coach in Boston, MA by Yelp reviewers. She has been featured on Boston.com, Boldfacers, and the UR Business Network. She received a Master's of Technology, Innovation, & Education from Harvard University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 202,548 times.

Many employers now require a writing sample, or job application essay , to accompany all applications or résumés — even if writing is not a significant part of the position. The goal of the job application essay is to ensure that applicants have the right communication skills for the position offered. Sometimes, potential employers will provide a specific topic or series of questions for your essay to respond to. However, you may also be asked to provide an essay with no guidance whatsoever. Either way, approach the essay seriously so that it highlights the skills and assets you could bring to the company. [1] X Research source

Outlining Your Essay

• If you don't know much about the company, do a little research on it before you start writing. You might look at their website or do a general internet search with the name of the company to see if any news articles or other reports come up. Go beyond the four corners of the job listing so that you understand who will likely be reading your essay.
• If there's anything in the job listing or essay requirements that you don't understand, contact the employer and ask about them. Employers are often impressed by applicants who clarify the employer's intent rather than making assumptions.

• For example, if you're applying for a position in sales, you might want to write an essay about your ability to tailor your pitch to specific clients and close the deal. If you have the ability to be more creative, you might tailor your essay to "sell" yourself directly to the employer.

• For each of your points, think of a specific example you can relate briefly that illustrates the point. For example, if you've described yourself as a "team player," you might include an example of how you came in on your day off to complete some of the more monotonous tasks that no one else wanted to do so a project could be completed ahead of schedule.
• It's a good idea to have more than one example in your outline for each point, even if you only end up using one. That way, if you start writing something and it ends up not working as well as you thought it would, you'll have a back-up handy.
• Brainstorming can be difficult. If you find yourself churning over the same thoughts, stand up and take a break for a few minutes. Step outside or go for a walk to clear your head, then come back to it.

• For example, if you want to describe how you increased sales in a specific quarter, you would want to state specifically how much you increased sales. Your former employer may have sales figures that you could ask them for. You might also have that information in your records.
• Wherever possible, use specific numbers and dates rather than making general statements. It's okay to estimate, but make sure your estimate is conservative. Saying you led your sales team to the highest sales in a quarter is impressive — but only if it's true.

Completing Your Rough Draft

• Think of this paragraph as telling the hiring manager what you're going to tell them in the essay. Outline the points you're going to elaborate on in the essay that back up your theme or thesis statement.
• Sometimes it's best to go back and write your introduction after you've written the body of your essay. That way, you can make sure the introduction provides an outline that matches the body.

• If the employer listed specifically what should be included in your essay, follow their order, since that's what they'll be looking for when they read the essay.
• Write in the first person and make yourself the star of any anecdote you include as an example. Use action verbs to focus on what you did rather than focusing on what happened and how you reacted to it. [7] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source

• For example, if you're writing about your skills as a team player, you might note that you discuss doing routine work that others found monotonous so they had time to work on other parts of a project. You could use that detail to move on to a section describing how you're detail-oriented.

• For example, you might write "My business school education, skills as a team player, and focus on detail make me the best candidate to lead your sales team."

Finalizing Your Essay

• For example, you might start by looking solely at punctuation, then read through again focusing on spelling.
• If you find that you tend to repeat a particular error, go through your essay looking for that error specifically.
• If your grammar isn't particularly strong or you're writing in a language other than your native language, have someone else read over your essay as well.

• If you find that you stumble over a sentence while reading aloud, that's a sign that your writing could be clearer. Work with your text until you have something that you can read aloud with ease.

• If the prospective employer did not specify a length, try to keep your essay under 2 double-spaced pages. Remember that hiring managers are busy and don't have a lot of time to read a long, rambling essay.
• Eliminate all unnecessary words or sentences that aren't relevant to the subject of your essay. The majority of your sentences should be short, declarative sentences with action verbs.
• Apps such as Hemingway ( http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ ) or Grammarly ( https://app.grammarly.com/ ) can help you identify portions of your essay that are more difficult to read. Both of these apps have a free version that you can use to edit your text.

• Working backward is particularly helpful for noticing spelling mistakes, especially hard-to-catch homophone errors, because you're seeing the word out of context.

• It may also help to print your essay in a different font or font size than what you used to type it. This breaks your brain's familiarity with the text, which can make typos and other errors more noticeable. Just remember to change the font back after you print it.

Job Application Essay

Expert Q&A

• Give yourself plenty of time to work on your essay. Ideally, you should plan to work on it over the course of at least two days, so you have the time to set it aside after writing before you move to the editing and proofreading stage. [15] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Unless you're applying for a position in a political or religious organization, avoid including anything in your essay that identifies your political or religious preferences or beliefs. [16] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Avoid using humor, especially sarcasm or ironic humor, as it can be misconstrued in text. Additionally, humor may lead the hiring manager to believe that you aren't serious about the position. [17] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/writing-sample-job-application
• ↑ https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/04/30/essay-how-write-good-applications-jobs-or-grants
• ↑ Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM. Life & Career Coach. Expert Interview. 25 May 2021.
• ↑ https://www.govloop.com/community/blog/government-job-application-essays-made-easy/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/application-essays/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/editing-and-proofreading/
• ↑ https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/proofreading-tips
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/career-transitions/200906/the-dreaded-writing-sample

About This Article

Job application essays can seem scary, but they’re really just an opportunity for you to highlight your skills and explain why you’re suitable for the role. Read the job listing to find out what traits and skills the company is looking for, like time management, working under pressure, and leadership. If you don’t know much about the company, read through its website and do an online search to find articles about its work. In your introduction, you’ll want to to describe yourself and introduce the main points you’ll be making. Then, write a paragraph for each trait or skill. Use real life examples from previous jobs, your recent studies, or extracurricular activities to support your points. For example, you could highlight your leadership skills by talking about a time you led a group project that exceeded your targets. For more tips, including how to write a compelling conclusion for your job application essay, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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• How to write an argumentative essay | Examples & tips

How to Write an Argumentative Essay | Examples & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An argumentative essay expresses an extended argument for a particular thesis statement . The author takes a clearly defined stance on their subject and builds up an evidence-based case for it.

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When do you write an argumentative essay, approaches to argumentative essays, introducing your argument, the body: developing your argument, concluding your argument, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about argumentative essays.

You might be assigned an argumentative essay as a writing exercise in high school or in a composition class. The prompt will often ask you to argue for one of two positions, and may include terms like “argue” or “argument.” It will frequently take the form of a question.

The prompt may also be more open-ended in terms of the possible arguments you could make.

Argumentative writing at college level

At university, the vast majority of essays or papers you write will involve some form of argumentation. For example, both rhetorical analysis and literary analysis essays involve making arguments about texts.

In this context, you won’t necessarily be told to write an argumentative essay—but making an evidence-based argument is an essential goal of most academic writing, and this should be your default approach unless you’re told otherwise.

Examples of argumentative essay prompts

At a university level, all the prompts below imply an argumentative essay as the appropriate response.

Your research should lead you to develop a specific position on the topic. The essay then argues for that position and aims to convince the reader by presenting your evidence, evaluation and analysis.

• Don’t just list all the effects you can think of.
• Do develop a focused argument about the overall effect and why it matters, backed up by evidence from sources.
• Don’t just provide a selection of data on the measures’ effectiveness.
• Do build up your own argument about which kinds of measures have been most or least effective, and why.
• Don’t just analyze a random selection of doppelgänger characters.
• Do form an argument about specific texts, comparing and contrasting how they express their thematic concerns through doppelgänger characters.

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An argumentative essay should be objective in its approach; your arguments should rely on logic and evidence, not on exaggeration or appeals to emotion.

There are many possible approaches to argumentative essays, but there are two common models that can help you start outlining your arguments: The Toulmin model and the Rogerian model.

Toulmin arguments

The Toulmin model consists of four steps, which may be repeated as many times as necessary for the argument:

• Make a claim
• Provide the grounds (evidence) for the claim
• Explain the warrant (how the grounds support the claim)
• Discuss possible rebuttals to the claim, identifying the limits of the argument and showing that you have considered alternative perspectives

The Toulmin model is a common approach in academic essays. You don’t have to use these specific terms (grounds, warrants, rebuttals), but establishing a clear connection between your claims and the evidence supporting them is crucial in an argumentative essay.

Say you’re making an argument about the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination measures. You might:

• Claim that unconscious bias training does not have the desired results, and resources would be better spent on other approaches
• Cite data to support your claim
• Explain how the data indicates that the method is ineffective
• Anticipate objections to your claim based on other data, indicating whether these objections are valid, and if not, why not.

Rogerian arguments

The Rogerian model also consists of four steps you might repeat throughout your essay:

• Discuss what the opposing position gets right and why people might hold this position
• Highlight the problems with this position
• Present your own position , showing how it addresses these problems
• Suggest a possible compromise —what elements of your position would proponents of the opposing position benefit from adopting?

This model builds up a clear picture of both sides of an argument and seeks a compromise. It is particularly useful when people tend to disagree strongly on the issue discussed, allowing you to approach opposing arguments in good faith.

Say you want to argue that the internet has had a positive impact on education. You might:

• Acknowledge that students rely too much on websites like Wikipedia
• Argue that teachers view Wikipedia as more unreliable than it really is
• Suggest that Wikipedia’s system of citations can actually teach students about referencing
• Suggest critical engagement with Wikipedia as a possible assignment for teachers who are skeptical of its usefulness.

You don’t necessarily have to pick one of these models—you may even use elements of both in different parts of your essay—but it’s worth considering them if you struggle to structure your arguments.

Regardless of which approach you take, your essay should always be structured using an introduction , a body , and a conclusion .

Like other academic essays, an argumentative essay begins with an introduction . The introduction serves to capture the reader’s interest, provide background information, present your thesis statement , and (in longer essays) to summarize the structure of the body.

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how a typical introduction works.

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts is on the rise, and its role in learning is hotly debated. For many teachers who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its critical benefits for students and educators—as a uniquely comprehensive and accessible information source; a means of exposure to and engagement with different perspectives; and a highly flexible learning environment.

The body of an argumentative essay is where you develop your arguments in detail. Here you’ll present evidence, analysis, and reasoning to convince the reader that your thesis statement is true.

In the standard five-paragraph format for short essays, the body takes up three of your five paragraphs. In longer essays, it will be more paragraphs, and might be divided into sections with headings.

Each paragraph covers its own topic, introduced with a topic sentence . Each of these topics must contribute to your overall argument; don’t include irrelevant information.

This example paragraph takes a Rogerian approach: It first acknowledges the merits of the opposing position and then highlights problems with that position.

Hover over different parts of the example to see how a body paragraph is constructed.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

An argumentative essay ends with a conclusion that summarizes and reflects on the arguments made in the body.

No new arguments or evidence appear here, but in longer essays you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your argument and suggest topics for future research. In all conclusions, you should stress the relevance and importance of your argument.

Hover over the following example to see the typical elements of a conclusion.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

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• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The majority of the essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Unless otherwise specified, you can assume that the goal of any essay you’re asked to write is argumentative: To convince the reader of your position using evidence and reasoning.

In composition classes you might be given assignments that specifically test your ability to write an argumentative essay. Look out for prompts including instructions like “argue,” “assess,” or “discuss” to see if this is the goal.

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-warnings-from-democrats-about-project-2025-and-donald-trump

Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump

This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .

Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And it was front and center on Night 1.

WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC

“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.

“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.

Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.

Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.

Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.

PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.

Are Trump and Project 2025 connected?

To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)

The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.

Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.

WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors

However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.

Project 2025 wouldn’t ban abortion outright, but would curtail access

The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”

The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.

What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.

Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”

It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.

If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.

WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.

The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.

The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.

Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.

Project 2025 doesn’t call for cutting Social Security, but proposes some changes to Medicare

“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.

Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.

In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.

Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.

The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.

Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.

Project 2025 would eliminate the Education Department, which Trump supports

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.

Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.

In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.

What Project 2025, Trump would do on overtime pay

In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”

The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.

The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.

The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.

It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.

Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.

Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.

But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.

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