The future of our children.
by Alessandro Cacciato - The choice of the path of study to ensure a future full of satisfaction for their children is a classic dilemma of parents. This decision today more than ever takes on a central importance for the children who are forming in this historical period, since they will live on their own skin the profound and real change in the world of work fueled by the fourth industrial revolution.
Fear of failure
What is required of parents and children is the change of mentality, to forget the social climbs of the last century guaranteed by the classic degrees: we must look beyond. Many families live the miedo of the noise - in Spanish indicates the fear of failure - which poses incredible obstacles for the engagement of young people towards self entrepreneurship. We are paying dearly for the lack of a widespread entrepreneurial mentality, a real big absentee in the school and university system.
High school superstar
Analyzing the data of the MIUR on new enrollments in high schools in the school year 2017/2018, the miedo of the fracasso returns to the protagonist. 53.4% of the students chose high school, 30.4% were technical institutes while professional institutes stopped at 16%, the latter with a 1.3% decrease compared to the previous year. So here is the cross-section of our society that pushes young people to study paths that provide a tendency for a springboard towards the university.
More and more NEET
The Neet are those people who have finished their studies, have not found a job and have stopped looking for it. The report on employment and social developments in Europe of the Bank of Italy in September 2016 gives us a very different picture from parents' expectations.
Italy has the lowest incidence of graduates on the population, in fact, out of a hundred young people between 25 and 34 years only twenty-four have a university degree. This figure indicates the low number of students enrolling at the university just completed secondary school or a high rate of neglect. The feeling is therefore that the race to enroll in high schools can potentially enrich the ranks of the neet.
Unlike technical and vocational schools, high school students are not familiar with any trade, if they have discarded or failed the university experience, they tend to be more exposed to inactivity. In fact, there are many neet in Italy, 19.9%, almost one in five young people between the ages of 15 and 24.
Entrepreneurial culture
The lack of a widespread entrepreneurial culture can also be seen in the use of micro-credit. Of the € 53 million made available in the Crescere Imprenditori project , just seven were spent - in 2017 - due to the lack of requests.
How can we choose our future?
A help, at least for the choice of study paths, could come from the analysis of the results of the Excelsior information system developed by Unioncamere and the Ministry of Labor, which annually, through the interview of about 100,000 companies with at least one employee, returns analytical needs for the current year.
Jobs available for unavailable workers
In the table we see that in 2016 the professions available with unobtainable candidates are almost totally in the technical sectors, both for graduates and graduates.
My reflection continues with the data from the World Economic Forum, which recently drafted its vision on the work of the future. The most curious, and in a certain sense alarming, is that 65% of the children who now attend elementary schools will go on to do a non-existent profession. This is also why we need to put our parents' dreams in the attic to see their children employed in "noble" professions but now out of history.
The European Commission has calculated that by 2020, 900,000 jobs will remain vacant due to a lack of professionalism. On the other hand, it seems that within three years robots and intelligent machines will steal 5 million jobs and those jobs that will not be canceled will undergo a profound transformation, no one excluded.
Deep changes and loss of jobs
In 2033, according to data from the World Economic Forum, with the entry into operation of new machines, jobs will be lost in the agricultural and fishing sectors, but also in commerce, even though in Italy we continue to invest in shopping centers.
Other sectors that will lose jobs between 2015 and 2020 will be:
Administration and office - 4.759
Manufacturing and production - 1.609
Construction and extraction - 497
Art and design, sport, media - 151
Installation and maintenance - 109
Legal sector - 40
(by type of work, in thousands)
The works of the future
Some of the most requested professions from 2020 will be:
New questions
Is the ruling class adequate to handle this epochal change?
The population is aging because of the decline in births and with it the ruling class, to which the retirement date has been postponed. Politicians and super bureaucrats, however, are called to interpret and decide on a hypertechnological future, although they have been formed in the analogical era and the result is plain to see: 30% of citizens do not have digital skills, in schools there are 1 computer each 8 students and government investments in research and development reach a measly 1.3% of GDP against a European average of 2% with Germany rising to 2.9%.
The lack of meritocracy in the public administration finally weighs heavily on this new era that focuses on talent.
