[tt] UMass Mag: Cashing In Her Chips: Jobs of the Future

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Cashing In Her Chips: Jobs of the Future
http://umassmag.com/2008/Spring_2008/features/jobs.html

How do we prepare today's students for tomorrow's
professions...especially the ones that don't yet exist?

Faye S. Wolfe

It's six o'clock on a fall evening, and the annual Majors Fair is in
full swing in the Campus Center ballroom. In the crowded aisles,
dozens of undergraduates do-si-do around each other and pause at
tables where representatives from an array of departments and
programs have set up shop. Meanwhile, down the hall, under buzzing
fluorescent lights, Assistant Director of Career Planning Caroline
Gould is encouraging a handful of young women who have yet to pick a
major to have visions--visions of themselves out of college and in
the workplace.

Sitting sideways in her chair and facing the half-dozen students,
Gould asks, "Who's taken one of those tests that identify your
aptitudes and interests? Gone to an informational interview? Done
job shadowing?" And the big one: "What's keeping you from deciding
on a major?"

One woman answers, "I'm afraid of being stuck with my choice for the
rest of my life."

"Study what you love; it gives you energy," Caroline Gould urges the
group. "If you can't see yourself doing just one thing forever,
remember that these days, people have three or four careers and
seven to nine major jobs in a lifetime."

If that comes as news to you, here's another surprising estimate: a
third of jobs that will be available in 10 years have yet to be
invented.

"They said the same thing when I was in high school in 1971--that we
would fill jobs that didn't yet exist," says Ira Bryck, director of
the UMass Family Business Center. And they were right, he adds:
"Who'd have thought how many consultants there would be, or life
coaches, or any number of people dealing with ideas instead of
products?"

Add to Bryck's list of new or newly mainstream jobs: web designers,
personal trainers, equitation therapists, bloggers, acupuncturists,
barristas--pulling espresso has become a career to the extent that
its practitioners have their own guild, conferences, and websites.
As for acupuncture, it may be more than 2,000 years old, but now
there's even acupuncture for pets.

On the flip side, some occupations--movie projectionists, for
one--have nearly disappeared, and others, having been transferred to
cheaper labor markets overseas, are as good as gone to Americans.
Freshmen trying to picture themselves in a profession might be
excused for pulling the bedcovers over their heads.

"The main certainty is that the future is more uncertain than ever,"
says Joel Martin, dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.
Like Bryck, he evinces wry wonder at the unforeseen changes that
have come about since the seventies--and some that have not: "When I
was growing up, the future was nuclear cars and measuring our speed
on the metric system."

Yet from where Martin sits--in his office in UMass's Victorian-era
South College building--the future looks bright. He sees it as
holding special promise for students of traditional subjects like
English literature because, "the future is so uncertain, the economy
is so dynamic." More than ever, tomorrow's workplace will be geared
toward "creative, innovative, resilient people with a sense of self
and a sense of purpose," in Martin's words, "who can interpret and
respond to novel circumstances, who can think critically."

Studying history, for example, "requires you in a focused,
disciplined, discrete way to immerse yourself in a set of problems,"
says Martin. That's valuable, he believes, "not because you're
necessarily going to be a historian, but because you're learning how
to investigate new realms of discourse, to navigate different
domains of knowledge." Through learning to work creatively and
collaboratively, CHFA students in the fine arts are also cultivating
skills useful in a variety of work settings. Martin believes, "Out
of anxiety can come a short-sighted, narrow perspective. The worst
possible tactic in such a time is to fixate on acquiring a limited
set of skills or job."

A highly successful entrepreneur in the field of broadband
technology, Dev Gupta '77G comes at the subject from a different
angle but shares Martin's way of thinking about how to teach to, or
learn for, the future. Gupta, who teaches undergraduate and graduate
courses in the College of Engineering, believes, "Education that is
canned and formulaic doesn't work. You're no longer able to say,
'I'll become this and I'll be secure.'"

Noting that when he started his first company in the early eighties,
faxes weren't yet in use, he says, "The future moves so rapidly, you
need to be always morphing yourself. It's hard to predict where
things will go, but if you're not a person who is willing to learn
and change, to accept that everything is changing, it will be
difficult. Self-discovery is a key aspect."

In a soft-spoken, rapid delivery, Gupta sketches out what's
happening in the global marketplace: "Large companies are
disappearing in many sectors... Geography is no protection or
advantage...The playing field is being leveled for American
workers...It's no longer a given that you will be worth three times
the wages paid to someone in India or China." Today's students need
to take all these developments into account, says Gupta. His career
advisory to them: "Only you are responsible for yourself. Five years
after graduation, when you are laid off for the first time, you will
feel the responsibility squarely on your own shoulders."

So what does an engineering student have to look forward to? Gupta
offers some predictions: "Engineers may become like doctors or
dentists. The equipment to set up shop for yourself has become
relatively cheap. For $50,000, you can set up a lab the way a
dentist sets up a practice and do state-of-the-art research.
Engineers might team up with people from all over the world to solve
specific problems and take on projects that are all over the world."

He also sees demand already growing for "designer cancer drugs that
are matched to an individual's genes, and artificial organs and
limbs," and explains that "because electronics can come in tiny
packages, there will be a growing industry around creating,
manufacturing, and supplying health-maintaining sensors and
monitors, devices on a doorway or in your bed, that check your blood
pressure and heart rate."

Over in the Isenberg School of Management, Professor Robert
Nakosteen sees these kinds of technological advances creating niches
for savvy business students, such as those who combine business
studies with learning about biology, health care and engineering.
That kind of education could lead, for instance, to a career in
pharmaceutical management--taking research to commercialization.
Those ISOM students planning to work on Wall Street, says Nakosteen,
will find exciting opportunities elsewhere; the financial services
industry is moving more and more of its operations offshore.
"Merging technical and management skills may be where the jobs of
the future will be," he says.

In recent years ISOM has expanded cross-disciplinary experiences for
its students. Beyond that, Nakosteen thinks that students are best
prepared for the future by being taught to think in a nonlinear way.
"I ask students to look at an argument from all sides, to unpeel the
layers."

Biology professor Elizabeth Connor is another campus proponent of
thinking differently, when it comes to preparing students for
careers in science. Connor says, "Science is a constantly growing
body of knowledge; people are discovering new things every day. [In
the life sciences at UMass Amherst] we're broadening our focus from
passing on a body of knowledge to teaching skills. As a result, our
students will be prepared not just for the snapshot of biology as it
is today, but for the excitement and innovations in biology that
will unfold over the decades of their careers."

Currently, undergraduates are being offered speaking roles. They
learn the scientific method in project-based courses, working in
small teams on real-life research questions, and in overhauled
lecture classes that have them answering questions and interacting
with the professor and each other through a class communication
system. They also get greater exposure to the physical and
quantitative sciences, in recognition of how research increasingly
spans traditional disciplines. The goal is to give life sciences
students, says Connor, "the set of skills that scientists use so
that they can address novel problems, figure out what they need to
know, and acquire new knowledge."

"There's an element of risk in being a scientist," Connor notes; the
fundamental work of science is tackling unanswered questions and
problems. For that reason, she says, "teaching science can't be
confined to the 'here are the facts, give them back to me' style of
teaching." Better to give them tough problems, to place students in
situations of "constructive discomfort"--to ask them to struggle and
allow them to fail.

There's an element of risk in choosing the road less taken, too. The
Bachelor's Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC) program
enables undergraduates to craft their own multidisciplinary
curricula rather than fit themselves into an existing major. In
doing so, they are betting that "studying what you love," as
Caroline Gould put it, will pay off in tangible and intangible ways.

It's already paid off for BDIC alumni who have made careers in such
once-uncommon vocations as storytelling, conservation management,
and venture capitalism. Recent concentrations have included writing
children's literature, primate conservation, and corporate fitness
and stress management. The program attracts students who seem to be
adept at anticipating trends and employment opportunities.

"I'd like the whole world to know that BDIC continuously produces
self-motivating graduates who think outside the box," says its new
director, history professor Dan Gordon. He envisions building BDIC
into an incubator for "super-interdisciplinary thinkers, people who
are comfortable in many fields and can address the high-level
problems that could stall our whole society." As an example, he
cites the need for individuals with the medical, philosophical, and
legal background to formulate sensible policies on stem-cell
research and genetic engineering.

BDIC coordinator Linda Roney thinks this isn't such a stretch for
BDIC students: "They typically are self-advocating and mature
intellectually. They have to apply two times to BDIC, first to take
the proposal class and then to enter the program itself. Their
admission is based on their proposals, which are judged for their
feasibility. They also need to be able to sell themselves to
professors so that they can get into classes."

Some BDIC graduates have already demonstrated salesmanship. About
one in 10, says Roney, has already started a business or company. A
percentage will go on to law, medical, or business school after
graduation, but their goal may be quite untraditional, to go into
environmental law, for example, or alternative medicine, or promote
"green" enterprises. Says Roney, "A lot of our students are
passionate about saving the world."

John Gerber, a professor in the College of Natural Resources and the
Environment, sees that passion, too. Many of his students wonder
about the future in a broad way, one that takes into account threats
like global warming.

"The question my students are asking is, 'How are we going to
live?'" he says. Behind the query is both hope and anxiety. "More
hope than anxiety, because they're young."

Sitting in the Blue Wall nursing a coffee from the Pura Vida coffee
bar (organic, fair trade, with a portion of the proceeds going to
good causes), Gerber unfolds today's Daily Collegian: "Look at the
front page." Before the reader are what he calls "harbingers of a
new world": headlines about the looming global water shortage, and a
symposium on wood, "the renewable resource." Gerber's aim is to help
students be ready for that new world. "What they need is not
training. It's preparation, guidance," he says of his approach to
teaching. "They have a yearning for the language and tools to live."

Some students expressed that yearning directly four years ago when
they told him that as much as they liked his class on sustainable
agriculture, they wanted more. The first time "Sustainable Living"
was offered, 35 students enrolled; now 300, representing 35 majors,
sign up. While covering many aspects of the big picture--energy,
food, health, waste management--Gerber also tries to help students
see where they might fit into the big picture. He teaches them
models for decision-making that get at big questions: What is
calling you? What do you love? What do you care about? What are your
gifts?

"The students' answers are often around family, community,
connection. They want to be seen by someone else," Gerber says,
adding, "We're tribal, we're looking for tribal connections, but
many of us find unsatisfying substitutes in alcohol, rioting,
shopping." He believes that these questions are inseparable from
career questions, and if students answer rather than ignore them,
down the road, they may "avoid the third heart attack and the second
divorce."

In a basement classroom in Goessman one afternoon, Gerber turns over
the question of what jobs of the future might look like to his
sustainable agriculture class. In small groups, the students put
their heads together, then present their ideas, by turns serious,
lighthearted, earnest, and ingenious. A small sampling: permaculture
consultants, rickshaw drivers, herbal landscapers, wood mill
operators, biodiesel processors, vermiculturists, urban rooftop
gardeners, microlenders, witch doctors, AAA bicycle workers, compost
toilet janitors, alternate transport specialists; population
controllers (this elicits a whoa! from the group), seed bank
managers, urban wildcrafters...

As the students run down their lists, occasionally Gerber interjects
comments that are funny, supportive, and practical. For example,
when someone suggests "campus sustainability coordinator," he points
out that having both social and technical skills is an asset when
working with different groups to get things done.

Gerber also offers his beliefs. Among them, anything that gets us to
"simple living" will be key to us having a future. Given that nature
has been recycling for 15 billion years, he notes, we should find
ways to follow suit. He promotes appropriate technology, matched to
local needs and local resources.

Gerber believes today's graduates will find their place, and their
livelihoods, in tomorrow's world--and maybe they'll save it: "There
is plenty of work to be done on this planet, but it requires people
coming together. Everyone knows what is right--I wouldn't be able to
do the work I do if I didn't believe that."