Abstract:

There is a shortage of skilled workers all over the world. Highly specialized jobs require a complex bundle of hard and soft skills. This trend is being exacerbated by digitization and demographic developments. Universities must develop study programs that meet these personal and economic requirements by integrating the so-called future skills into their degree programs.

This paper outlines the need for universities to adapt their learning concepts to the new requirements and deals with the fundamental issue of a consistent definition of future skills, which can be useful in curriculum design and development. It discusses the challenges that universities face in this adaption process on the background of definitions of future skills, which are often nebulous, the experiences they have had in integrating future skills into their degree programs, and proposes solutions to overcome these shortcomings.

In particular, the paper describes and analyses future skills in the context of higher education (HE) and identifies best practices for integrating future skills into degree programs. In addressing future skills, some contextual issues and challenges in HE are analysed, e.g.

Impact of digitalization on work and education: Digitalization creates new jobs that require new competencies. They form the basis for targeted courses of study, but are neither defined in detail, nor from a practical point of view, nor analysed in their anthropological and pedagogical implications.

The new competence orientation in degree programs. Expert knowledge becomes obsolete within a few years and other skills are more important to learn, also e.g. lifelong learning, adaptive thinking, critical thinking, ethical leadership, self-reflection and personnel development becomes more necessary. But how to train adequately such skills, if not maieutical?

Universities as political organizations must react to societal and educational changes, while lecturers are often neither prepared to support learning processes nor to deal with strategic issues like the development of study programs.

In addition, the term future skills is discussed in detail. A brief historical overview of the development of competencies in vocational and higher education is provided, and current research on future skills is analysed. This paper claims that the recent popularity of future skills as the epiphenomenon of the latent social need of a radical change in the educational philosophy and provides an initial understanding of future skills. Our research shows the context sensitivity of future skills depending on different occupations and careers. There are some general future skills, but also some specific competencies for different occupations. And even more important: the general competencies become really tangible just in the combination and in the light of a specific occupation context or practical setting. These findings have a great impact on the development of university curricula.

A focus is on the needs of universities to adapt their learning approaches to the new requirements and on the analysis of the main challenges for universities during this adaptation process. It describes some experiences with integrating future skills into degree programs and proposes solutions to overcome these shortcomings. It outlines and discusses key elements such as train-the-trainer programs, required subject didactics, and necessary organizational and multidisciplinary efforts in modernizing HE.

Keywords:

Innovation, future skills, higher education, course of study design.