Degree or apprentice? How to futureproof your kids – the teenage years
When you were younger, university was either free or cheap, and the wisdom of accepting an offer was largely beyond doubt. Today, the equation facing our teenagers is more complicated – and the last thing they want to hear is how it was different in your day. It’s time to swat up on the futureproof approach to leaving home.
Has your child chosen which A-Levels to study? Booked their place at university? Are you, in the back of your mind, thinking about what kind of work would suit them, remembering how you, after a certain undergraduate haze, grabbed a degree and emerged to pursue a career which closely resembles – 20 or 30 years on – the job you are doing today?
We parents are marvellous social replicators. That’s the overwhelming conclusion of long-term child development studies. Middle-class parents by-and-large have successful middle-class children. But there’s a problem with that: some replication is now bad. When it comes to higher education and the world of work, for example, yesterday’s models are no longer fit for purpose. The linear progression from A-levels to universities to careers is being torn up.
There are now myriad ways into top jobs, some of which don’t involve going to university at all. Meanwhile, education is becoming a life-long process. The highest-flying students today have the choice between an Oxbridge degree leaving them with £50,000 of debt or a Google apprenticeship leaving them with £50,000 in the bank and a three-year career head start. Many have no difficulty opting for the latter.
Think very hard about putting pictures of your kids online. Because once facially recognised, that’s it. You can’t undo it
Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at LSE
It is we parents in our 40s and 50s who struggle to convince ourselves. For we are part of a generation encouraged at all costs to go to university. A quarter of a century ago, only 65 percent of children above the age of 16 were in full-time education. Today 86 per cent are. Today, only 5pc of 16 and 17 year olds have jobs. Two decades ago a full fifth of them did.
The difference is that a generation ago, children who didn’t stay in school after 16 were unlikely to go back to education later in life. And that was a barrier to high-profile, high-prestige, high-earning jobs. No longer. For our children, work might begin at 18, pause at 25 while they do a Masters, resume at 29. And their working lives are likely to be composites of a dozen or more different jobs.
Increasingly, those jobs will find them. With each day that passes, technology allows companies to outsource more work to freelancers. Company computer systems are housed not on physical hard drives in offices, but remotely, on “the cloud” – allowing them to be accessed from anywhere by people who might be employees for years, or just a day. There is every reason to believe that the gig economy, which we currently associate with Uber drivers or Deliveroo cyclists, will extend ever more widely. Competition for that economy’s work, then, will become infinitely broader.
And when companies choose their freelancers, data will lead them to the people with the highest competencies for a task, rather than the people who went to a certain school. Sexual and racial discrimination should become less prevalent – but there will be downsides. For example, that picture on Facebook of your son, mindlessly drunk after his graduation party, wearing only stockings and a suspender belt, will not bolster his case for competence.
You may have heard terrifying stories about life in China, where “social credit” scores can dictate individuals’ ability to catch a flight, book a hotel room, or get a loan. Forget to pay a bill on time, down goes your score. Keep a healthy savings account balance, watch it go up.
This may sound like a dystopia. In China, there are certainly nightmarish elements to the system: making disobliging comments about the Communist party online is no way to improve your rating. But if the thought control aspects of “social credit” will hopefully not transfer to these shores, reputational impact certainly will. In some ways it already has. Uber drivers, for example, rate their customers, just as you rate them. If your score as a customer dips too low, you may find it hard to get a ride.
Similarly, if your children's online reputation drops too low in future, they may find it hard to get work in a world where smart analytics tools will allow employers to scrutinise online information about them that is increasingly searchable. Experts today talk about creating a strong personal digital brand and then, above all, its “hygiene”.
“Think very carefully now about your child’s digital future and footprint,” says Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at LSE. “I might even say think very hard about taking pictures of your kids and putting them online. Because once you have had them facially recognised, that’s it. You can’t undo it.”
This is a particularly crucial issue for parents today, she says, because legislation to protect consumer rights online is highly likely within the next 10 years.
“Before that kicks in, we are living in a curious moment of unregulated madness in which the innovation is running far ahead of the tech.”
She likens a dodgy digital footprint today to a tattoo: permanent, and something most parents would rather their children did not have. “Get your child to 18 without a problematic digital record, then it’s down to them. I used to say that about tattoos. I would get my children to 18 without a tattoo. Because a digital marker is like a tattoo - something you can do instantly that is with you forever. We’ve never lived in a world where there’s been such a record.”
Screens for schools
Of course, nothing is straightforward. At the same moment experts like Prof Livingstone caution young people about using digital tools in their social lives, others are encouraging them to immerse themselves in digital possibilities in their academic lives.
At the moment provision is patchy and often poor. “Schools take 20 minutes to log on to computers, and ban phones,” says Mark Smith, CEO of Ada, the National College of Digital Skills. “How does that create an environment where children learn to work with computers?”
Perhaps that helps explain why only 12pc of business leaders in Britain believe school leavers and graduates have the digital skills they need. Such skills will not be bolstered either by the withdrawal this year of the GCSE in ICT.
The sweet spot is marrying the sciences and the arts – those are the people who will get snapped up
Mark Smith, CEO of Ada, the National College of Digital Skills
For parents of those teens at school now, the solution is clear. Make home the place you learn with tech. “You can’t do history game-based learning in the classroom, but I encourage it at home,” says Tom Rogers, Head of History at an international school in Vigo.
“Tech is perfectly suited for home learning and homework.”
It will also allow determined parents to find apps and online platforms where learning can be tailored to particular ways their children acquire knowledge. Such personalisation will mean parents hearing less from frustrated teens moaning: "I just can't do it!"
The partnership between kids and tech is essential because by the time today’s schoolchildren start their first jobs, work will be a place where man and machine work side-by-side. “The sweet spot is marrying the sciences and the arts – those are the people who will get snapped up,” says Smith. “Those doing graphics, for example, using computers to advance design. Harness your imagination then use tech to express it – that’s the best formula.”
He freely admits that the pace of technological change makes it hard to know what specific courses to teach. Instead he suggests, parents should think about fostering a mindset strong in “computational thinking”. This does not mean thinking “like a computer”, but rather thinking about a problem in ways that allow computers to help solve it. Typically, this means breaking problems down into components and thinking creatively, logically and often collaboratively about how to tackle each one.
“What employers will want is creative problem solvers,” Smith says. “What will set people apart is their ability to work alongside tech.”
Take Timothy Armoo, 23, who has just graduated from Warwick University with a degree in computer science. While there he set up and ran an advertising company, Fanbytes, from his bedroom. It uses social media “influencers” to ensure promotional videos are seen online by advertisers’ target audiences. Curiously, despite his degree, it was his founding partner who wrote the algorithm that identifies the best influencers. He, by contrast, brought an intuitive understanding of social-media audiences developed when he started a company in his teens and promoted it on Facebook.
“There are so many things that as a young person you don’t think are business skills,” he says, “But they are. Like building big Facebook pages. I was good at partnering with people who had big Facebook pages, I learned how to drive traffic. By 21 I had a deep understanding about how young people behave and how they can be marketed to.”
Building his business at a young age, then, required what he calls “a fusion of nerdy understanding of algorithms and an intuitive social understanding of people.” He brought the social understanding.
The future, he believes, “belongs to the makers” – like him. If parents really want to push their offspring into that entrepreneurial elite of tomorrow, he says, they should encourage their children to pick up skills that will allow them to “solve problems and make stuff. That’s where the value is tomorrow.” It’s a mindset which, at its most fundamental, helps explain the current growth in crafts and crafting businesses, essentially a mix of entrepreneurialism and uniquely human dexterity.
Just as parents once had to decide whether to push their children towards top universities, they will in future have to decide whether to push them towards an entrepreneurial future. Whether they should become a “maker”. According to AI-expert Mark Minevich, this is the key decision that influences what and how to study. “If you are going to be a user, a consumer of stuff, then it’s a good idea to be a generalist, to have a broad range to appreciate and interpret. But if you are going to be a creator, if you are going to build stuff, specialise. Be as expert as you can.”
The Masters and the apprentice
All of which requires parents to take a step back, and ask themselves what future will suit their child best? That hasn’t changed. What has is the number of different routes to that future. “When I grew up a traditional education was seen as the safe and the right thing to do,” says Julie Mercer, at head of education research at Deloitte. “But it’s very important that now we are parents, we are willing to accept new routes into employment.”
We may go back to the situation we had 30 years ago where only 10pc of school leavers go to university
Ian Pearson, futurologist
At Ada college, 40pc of the last crop of graduates chose to head to an apprenticeship rather than a university. Two, from a 6th form of 109, bypassed both, taking jobs paying more than £30k a year. Not bad when you are 18.
“It makes perfect sense to me that they get an initial degree through an apprenticeship, then perhaps do a Masters in their late 20s,” says Smith. “That’s the best time for campus-based learning. In your early 20s it’s largely about meeting people and having fun and there are better ways of doing that than spending £9k a year.”
The consequences for universities are likely to be profound. Already, many are making unconditional offers, and lowering offer grades to ensure student numbers (and accompanying fees) are sufficiently high.
Even futurologist Ian Pearson struggles to see how the current higher education model can be sustained in the future. “It’s hard to see what will happen to universities,” he says. “For a small number of people, deep knowledge learning will be appropriate. But we may go back to the situation we had 30 years ago where only 10 pc of school leavers go.”
The lesson for parents is clear: an education that is traditional and safe today may be risky and niche tomorrow.
'We must learn to work with, and be comfortable with, ambiguity'
Six tips for futureproofing your child during the later years of their education
Digital footprint:Chinese-style “social credit scores” are coming, in one form or another. They could influence your child’s ability to book a hotel room or secure a mortgage. So think carefully now about your child’s digital footprint. Once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.
Accept the new in education: Even if you went to Oxbridge, your child’s best route to happiness and a good job may lie in an apprenticeship. Be flexible about routes from education into work.
Find the tailored way: From medicine to education, personalisation will be the keyword of the future. Don’t say, “She hates maths”, say “She hates learning maths like this”. Increasingly, apps and online platforms will offer tailored solutions.
Quality not quantity:GCSEs have got harder. That rigour is useful, but many schools insist children do too many. Consider insisting your school does fewer and spend the extra time on building social capital – say, by getting children to read about current events, debate them among themselves and with invited guests. It’s exams plus social capital that will secure those jobs requiring the highest cognitive skills.
Demand digital: The ICT GCSE is being retired. That leaves computer science as the only digital GCSE. Ask your school how they are developing your child’s digital skills. The future will be about working with computers.
Hit the sweet spot: Futureproofed careers will marry human creativity and computing power, like graphic designers and architects. Harness your imagination, then use tech to express it.
