Rethinking higher education in the 4IR: The case for a paradigm shift

Professor Arthur Mutambara

Why don’t we rethink higher education in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

There is clearly a case for a paradigm shift; it cannot be business as usual.

Why are we saying this?

Here is an outline of what we are going to talk about: what do we mean when we say the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

What is the history of industrial revolution?

What are some of the critical definitions we must grapple with when we engage the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

What are the new imperatives?

Coming to higher education, what is the new teaching philosophy we must adopt if we are going to be successful in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

What is the research philosophy we must adopt if we are going to be successful in this endeavour?

And also what is thing called the metaverse?

There is a new company called Multiverse; so do these entities, do these philosophies mean universities are obsolete?

What is the way forward? What is the future of universities?

Let us start with the end in mind. When we are done we must have clarity of the key drivers of this agenda. As Africans we must be thinking in terms of continental integration.

South Africa is too small an economy to succeed under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

We must talk about SADC, we must talk about ECOWAS, we must talk about the African continent – 1,4 billion Africans with a collective GDP of more than US$2 trillion.

The key driver being innovation and entrepreneurship.

We must produce a different kind of graduate if we are going to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This is the big picture of what we seek to achieve in this seminar. We must have a vision for higher education under the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Have a strategy to take us from where we are today to the promised land of a new education system a new higher education framework within the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

And then of course implementation, implementation and implementation. Prioritisation, sequencing, implementation, matrix of action, execution, monitoring and evaluation. We are saying, ideally a product of this work should be a new vision of higher education, a new strategy for higher education and an implementation matrix.

What we mean when we say the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we are simply saying it’s a global all-embracing technological transformation, which alters the way individuals, institutions and communities to do their businesses.

The scale and scope and speed is so fundamentally complex.

We saying it is impacting all disciplines, economies and industries and redefining the very meaning of humanity.

It’s a revolution.

Why a revolution?

The first one was about water and steel, the second one was about electric power and the third was about information technology.

Now we are dealing with the Fourth Industrial Revolution from 2011 going forward, building on the digital revolution.

We have fusing technologies and it is blurring the life between physical, digital and biological spheres.

That’s why we are calling it a revolution.

Why? Because of the velocity of changes. Why? Because of the scope of the changes. Why? Because of the system impact of the revolution, the growth of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in other 4IR technologies and their extensive deployment in education, commerce and governance.

This is why it is a revolution, it is changing every industry, every sphere of life.

What is the future of higher education within this context? What are the key drivers of the revolution?

Artificial intelligence, intelligence algorithms, augmented reality, human augmentation, big data, internet of things, internet of everything, nanotechnology, autonomous vehicles, drones and driverless cars.

These are the drivers of the revolution. 3D printing, biotechnology, material science, renewable energy, energy storage, robotics and mechatronics, quantum computing, cloud computing, block chain technologies, cryptocurrency.

It’s a revolution in commerce, a revolution in education, a revolution in media and medicine.

It can’t be business as usual in higher education given these changes.

We are saying every educator or an industrialist must understand what we mean by artificial intelligence, what we mean by machine intelligence.

This should be anybody’s business.

Artificial general intelligence that’s more complex than AI.

This is the intelligence of a machine that has the capacity to understand, learn any intellectual task that a human being can learn.

AGI is more complex than AI.

But we as educators as society, we must have an understanding of AI and the AGI.

Machine learning, we must know what that means.

Deep learning, robotics, the design and construction of machines that do things we normally ascribe to human beings; can we have this in a machine?

Navigation, path planning, inspection, quality control, speech recognition, intelligent connection of perception to action that’s all.

We are saying we must have rudimentary understand these aspects.

Big data affects every sector- finance, education and agriculture.

We must understand what we mean by big data because it is affecting every industry.

Nanotechnology will affect every industry and every sector of our lives.

As educators, as industrialists, as members of society, let us have a rudimentary understanding of nanotechnology.

When we say internet of things we mean interconnection and control via the internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects and appliances, enabling them to send and receive data.

A wider concept that refers to devices and consumer products connected through the internet.

We must have an understanding this and reimagine higher education given these technologies.

Augmented reality, mechatronics the synergistic integration of electronic and computer science to produce optimum products.

You can’t have your traditional engineering education when you are addressing mechatronics.

Here is what we mean by mechatronics right at the centre of control systems.

The way we teach right now is not adequate for us to address the field of mechatronics, things have to be done differently.

Human augmentation, of course, people must not be scared of this, we can have robots and human beings working together what we call human augmentation of human 2.0. There are limits and fear of course.

Can we build a machine that has empathy, that shows shame, that shows embarrassment, love and sympathy?

Not yet but this is work in progress.

Can we have emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence in a machine? Can we have intentionality in a machine?

Can we have robot that says I am prepared to defy the designer or I will go against the designer, I will go against the software – intentionality in a machine; super intelligence.

By this I am saying building a machine that possesses intelligence that by far surpasses that of the brightest and most gifted human being.

Can we do this? Not yet but, its work in progress.

These are some of the spheres in the field of AI, in the field of robotics – super intelligence, where a machine possesses more knowledge than the brightest or gifted human being.

We are also dealing with what are called hard AI problems; to develop more capable and more general AI that is safe and earns public trust.

Leverage AI to address humanity’s greatest challenges like climate change and poverty alleviation to the benefit of all.

Developed, deploy, use and compete for AI responsibly.

These are some of the challenges we are dealing with.

How can we co-evolve societal systems and what it takes to be human in the age of AI?

These are what are called the hard AI problems.

And you can see in those problems, there are opportunities and challenges which can only be addressed in a multiple disciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, and not in silos.

We want lawyers, economists, sociologists, philosophers, engineers to work together on climate change and to work together on poverty alleviation.

The opportunities and challenges require the collaboration across disciplines and we are aiming at solving hard scientific and technical problems in terms of what society requires and needs.

Covid-19 has been terrible, it has led to so many deaths and devastation of our societies.

However, it has also been an opportunity.

It has led to the acceleration of adoption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, acceleration of digital transformation and online vs in-person activities.

Some people who had never done anything online are now working online, thanks to Covid-19.

Online activities are going to continue beyond Covid-19.

Hybrid events are here to stay, even if there is no more Covid around the world, we are going to continue with online activities.

We are going to continue with hybrid events. Why? Because hybrid events are effective than in-person events.

No, we are not going back to a pre-Covid existence.

The Covid phenomena has changed the way we operate in the world, but more specifically in higher education.

Now we have heard people talk about the new normal, we want to challenge that and say do not refer to the new normal anymore. We have waves of unrelenting disruptions, now we have a war in Ukraine, an ever-changing environment and a constant battle for survival. We neither know nor agree on what the new normal means.

Today’s new normal is not the tomorrow’s new normal.

Hence, a new normal becomes a misnomer.

So from tonight, we have banned the use of the expression new normal.

What we want is the next normal; a more dynamic and transient perspective that is more appropriate in an ever-changing environment.

So, we must talk about the next normal as opposed to the new normal.

That’s what we are pushing.

Given what we have said so far, cannot be business as usual. If you are going to have effective higher education, impactful higher education, we need new content.

What are you teaching the student? What are the platforms of education? What are the tools of education?

The content has to change and the platforms have to change.

It cannot be business as usual.

Your products from university are they employable? Does industry find them useful?

So employability becomes a big factor in the academy; entrepreneurship and innovation.

Why don’t we create entrepreneurs, job creators, business creators as opposed to workers?

The academy must take it upon itself to create job creators, to create entrepreneurs and innovators as opposed to workers and employees.

We must say as an academy, let us empower young people to acquire critical skills and competencies.

We are now saying show me what you can do, do not show me your certificate.

Don’t show me your BA from Harvard.

Show me what you can do.

That is the question in the digital economy.

They are not interested in the certificate from University of Johannesburg, from Cape Town or from Wits. What are your competencies?

What are your skills; show me what you can do.

This should be the modus operandi in the academy under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Blended learning, learning how to learn.

Can we teach our students to know how to learn?

Can we teach them to master how to think?

Can you give them problem solving capabilities? Can we give them structured thinking, trans-disciplinarity, multi-disciplinarity and cross disciplinarity?

It is not enough to say I am skilled in this particular area, why don’t we have the lawyers and engineers working together.

An engineer who understand philosophy, psychology and theology that’s what we want. A biologist who can write code, a biologist who can understand the internet of things.

A lawyer who can understand mechatronics, a lawyer who understands quantum computing.

An economist who understands philosophy, law and robotics.

That is the product we are pushing for in higher education and not your traditional engineer, biologist and lawyer, but a different kind of lawyer.

All this must be anchored in multi-disciplinary ecosystem which we should be pushing under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Creation of what we call renaissance man, UCT must produce the renaissance woman.

An engineer who understands philosophy, an engineer who understands the law.

A lawyer who understands coding. That is what we pushing for under this philosophy.

A different way of teaching. Making our products employable and making our products creators of jobs.

The production of entrepreneurs and job creators must be the number one objective of higher education; not workers, not employees and not certificates.

How many entrepreneurs have you produced today?

How many job creators have you produced?

These are the questions you must be asking in the academy; and ecosystem thinking, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, existential intelligence and spiritual intelligence.

Let us teach our young people these types of intelligence: acquisition of key competences, judgement, negotiations, cognitive capacity, flexibility and knowledge ownership and production of IP.

How many patents have you produced at UJ, Cambridge, University of Zimbabwe?

So the way we judge our universities must not be through journals, but through IP generation, through patterns generated by the universities.

That’s what we are pushing for under the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Metaverse must be a very interesting concept now; virtual reality space in which users can interact with computer generated environment and other users.

Many people are very familiar with Facebook and still use Facebook.

It has been change to Meta by Mark Zuckerberg.

What is he saying?

It’s a way to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect and find communities and businesses.

This is a new phenomenon where we are emphasising computer-generated environment and users interfacing with that computer-generated environment.

That’s what we call metaverse.

In the world of the metaverse, higher education cannot be the same.

We are talking about a digital twin of an industrial plant.

You have your manufacturing plant; you have a plant that does mining.

We have a digital twin of mine, which is a virtual environment designed to be an exact digital replica of the physical assets to allow for rapid off-plant monitoring and testing.

In this environment of the digital twin of the metaverse, higher education has to be different.

AI driven plant maintenance; AI driven asset management optimisation; AI driven building management systems.

All these things are being done in the metaverse or what we call digital environment.

What kind of graduate are we preparing for the metaverse?

That is the challenge we are trying to address today.

What are some of the jobs in the metaverse?

Meta-software engineer who deals with augmented reality platforms, engineers with expertise in life scale system design, networking, data storage, distribution, publishing, AI, information retrieval, natural language processing and user interface design.

How many engineers of this form are we producing in south Africa, Zimbabwe and in the United States?

It can’t be business as usual.

Industry requires a meta-software engineers and not your traditional software engineer.

Are you producing discord managers in our universities in South Africa or across Africa?

Discord is a social media platform favoured by many gamers and cryptocurrency operators.

We must have a way of producing the jobs of the metaverse.

A smart contract lawyer; this is not your clever lawyer who has 10 distinctions at matric or 25 points at A Level and gets a distinction or first class degree.

That kind of lawyer we are not interested in.

Now we want what we call a smart contract lawyer who can ensure that an agreement made in the metaverse is encoded in the block chain layer used for the transaction.

How many lawyers from UCT can do this?

How many lawyers from Harvard can do this?

So, in terms of the new world of Fourth Industrial Revolution where we have meta-software engineer, the discord manager and the smart contract lawyer. We have to do things differently altogether.

And some people are even saying maybe the universities are moribund, the universities are no longer necessary.

There is a company formed called Multiverse, it was formed by Euan Blair, who is a son to former prime minister Tony Blair.

What they are doing is to address directly the needs of industry and employers, so that they can have the skills and competences for the digital economy and not a degree.

Then they can match the candidate with industry, undercutting the university; disintermediating the university.

It is direct match of the employers and candidates with digital skills and competences.

So, maybe the university is now moribund, now obsolete.

This example of Multiverse and education start-up is outstanding alternative to university education and corporate training.

So unless and until we change higher education, it is going to become irrelevant.

And companies like Multiverse are going to be producing the products that industry is looking for.

Today’s problems are interconnected; they need to be addressed in a multidisciplinary approach.

All these are possible areas we can do in terms of research in the academy.

Law and technology, digital sovereignty, AI in medicine climate change and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a unified AI theory of everything.

As we conclude, we are saying we must rethink higher education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

We must understand the nature of the paradigm shift.

Again, no African country can really do well in the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a single nation. Let us push for continental integration, numbers and scale make a difference.

The Fourth industrial revolution is here to stay and we have no choice but to embrace it. And then we must embrace innovation and entrepreneurship, but more importantly, let us have a vision of higher education under the Fourth Industrial Revolution and have a clear strategy of how to get to the promised. And of course implementation, implementation and implementation.

Prof Mutambara made this presentation last Monday during a Webinar to discuss the use of new tools in higher education in light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

 

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