In an era of overwhelming technological acceleration, has the age-old adage that college degrees secure higher-paying jobs become…fictitious? M.I.T. Sloan School of Management recently published a press release on its blog that explores the potential steps that educators and policymakers will have to take in order to keep future professionals from being rendered obsolete in the workplace. Will a degree prevent us from being swapped out for robots 5-10 years from now?
Technology’s function in wage growth and employment is being examined as part of a study entitled “Identifying the Multiple Skills in Skilled-Biased Technical Change” led by Frank MacCrory, an MIT Center for Digital Business postdoctoral associate, along with MIT Sloan Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and MIT Sloan research scientist George Westerman. The hope is that this research will assist policymakers, educators, and students to design more practical higher education routes with a greater emphasis on technology.
MacCrory elaborates in an interview conducted for an M.I.T. Sloan press release, “If you go to school and get a degree, you’re supposedly recession-proof. It is not that simple. It’s not like there’s one scale or thermometer going from low to high. Jobs have very different interactions with technology.”
Author Kurt Vonnegut
MacCrory’s research is being conducted from the perspective of “skill-biased technical change.” This term references the increased demand and efficacy of production technology, which tends to emphasize skilled rather than unskilled labor.
MacCrory compares this phenomenon to a “second industrial revolution.” He elaborates in the press release: “In the first revolution, we were replacing muscles with machines. Now we’re replacing the simple function of minds with machines. It’s catching people by surprise; it’s not just low-skill jobs that are vulnerable.”
In the past, “skill-biased technical change” typically inspired wage growth for the most highly educated segment of the population and significant wage decreases for those without at least a bachelor’s degree. MacCrory thinks it is clear that an education won’t ward off the effects of “skill-biased technical change” but warns, “this is not the time to be a relatively unskilled worker.”
MacCrory and co. reviewed changes in employment and wage data between 2006 and 2014 from U.S. Labor Department figures. After analyzing 514 occupations with “economically important affects on wages,” they narrowed down their findings to seven factors of skill MacCrory hopes policymakers and educators will emphasize when planning for the future:
- Physical (“strength, stamina, dexterity”)
- Equipment (“technical know-how”)
- Supervision (“getting things accomplished through peers”)
- Awareness (“comprehending the environment”)
- Perception (“ability to find a signal among noise”)
- Teamwork (“dealing with stressful situations and people”)
- Initiative (“ability to start and complete things”)
Researchers uncovered a link between higher-than-average wages and jobs that demand a high level of proficiency in two or more simultaneous categories. They found that perception, interpersonal, and initiative abilities have the greatest earning potential when augmented by IT. Supervision and equipment skills are not far behind.
MacCrory speculates that most industries will either be supplemented or replaced by increasingly sophisticated technology. In response MacCrory suggests that educators should “take a longer view when deciding how to train people for careers. There’s no point training someone for a job that isn’t going to exist in five years. Since technology shows no sign of slowing down, it makes sense to encourage policies that will position people to complement those advances.”