By Matteo Quacquarelli, Vice President of Strategy and Analytics at QS Quacquarelli Symonds.
Across the globe, economies are grappling with skills and talent challenges. From talent saturation to workforce reskilling, each country is facing its own unique issues as it prepares for the evolution of the digital age.
The QS World Future Skills Index, just launched, offers a detailed breakdown of the globe’s higher education systems, their links with industries and how countries are preparing for the next industrial evolution. Using exclusive QS data, it identifies where economies and countries need to align their higher education outcomes with the needs of industry in three key areas – green, AI and digital.
The analysis delves into 81 economies and finds that UK higher education is currently one of the world’s best for cultivating students with the future skills business and industry are calling out for.
It measures four indicators linked to skills like AI proficiency, digital literacy and environmental sustainability that will form the bedrock of the industries of tomorrow.
Skills Fit measures how well countries are equipping graduates with the skills employers desire. In this, no country is currently better than the UK. Using data from both our own largest-of-its-kind QS Global Employer Survey and the World Bank Group, we identified that UK employers have the highest satisfaction rates with the skills graduates bring with them, anywhere in the world – but perhaps only for the time being.
Additionally, the UK received top marks in the Academic Readiness dimension, measuring the preparedness of a country in regard to the future of work. The UK’s success in the QS World University Rankings by Subject allowed it to flourish here.
However, the UK must not rest on its laurels. Higher education in other markets globally is innovating at a far more rapid rate than in the UK. The reputational strength of the UK – built on its history and tradition of delivering excellent teaching and learning – is unlikely to be the key driver of satisfaction going forward.
The UK was slightly less successful than its closest rivals in the areas of Future of Work and Economic Transformation.
Future of Work measures how well the job market is prepared to meet the growing demand for digital, AI and green skills, using 1Mentor data of over 280m job postings worldwide.
Economic Transformation analyzes whether a country has the infrastructure, investment power, and talent available to transition to industries driven by AI, digital transformation, green technologies and high-skilled work. This indicator used data from the World Bank Group, UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Education Policy Institute.
This lower score is reflective of the slow-to-no economic growth seen in the UK over the past decade and the tightening of the public purse strings strangling investment in R&D and new business innovation (evidenced by decline not only in public but also private sector funding in the UK).
The latest economic forecasts signal a further period of stagnation for the UK economy might be on the horizon.
Just as the importance of investment in future skills cannot be understated, nor can the importance of higher education in AI breakthroughs and innovation.
Funnelling research innovation down the value chain into industry has been the bedrock of economic innovation worldwide. Without Stanford University, there would be no Silicon Valley. In Germany, the universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen are key in the country’s Cyber Valley initiative. If Melbourne didn’t have its outstanding higher education institutions, the city would not hold the crown of tech capital of Australia.
The QS Future World Skills Index highlights the example of South Korea, where there is a correlation between increasing numbers of young adults attaining tertiary education and GDP growth.
The UK government’s new AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced earlier this week sets out a clear ambition strategy to maintain Britain’s position as one of the world’s AI superpowers and has been widely welcomed by industry.
The prime minister says his government will make it easier for experts to come to the UK via its talent visas and for future leaders to learn here. Tens of thousands of additional AI professionals will be needed by 2030, he has said.
The Government also wants to ‘increase its share of the world’s top 1,000 AI researchers’ and will launch an AI scholarship scheme to support 100 students to study in the UK.
While the UK was also top in Europe for talent creation, with 46,000 students graduating from an AI-relevant higher education program ahead of Germany in terms of absolute numbers with 32,000, the UK is still behind Finland on a per capita basis. Without specific policy and commitment, the UK risks losing its leading position.
The UK is missing ‘frontier conceptual, cutting-edge companies‘. DeepMind, the AI research laboratory, was one such company that was founded in the UK before being acquired by Google in 2014. But where was it established? The three co-founders meet while studying at University College London.
The new AI Growth Zones the government has announced, with the first starting in Culham, will need to engage universities up and down the country. Higher education must also be closely involved in the Digital and Technology Sector Plan, which is set to be published in the coming months.
The government has also previously pledged to become a green energy superpower. The QS Future World Skills Index suggests that both the UK’s job market and its higher education system is well set up to capitalise on that opportunity.
To succeed, government policy, the needs of industry and higher education curricula must all align to create an environment where the country can succeed and be future-ready.
Economies and higher education systems that invest in high-quality academic programmes in AI, digital and sustainability are setting themselves up for long-term success.
For the full QS World Future Skills Index: https://www.qs.com/reports-whitepapers/world-future-skills-index
The UK Spotlight is available here: https://www.qs.com/reports-whitepapers/uk-spotlight-qs-world-future-skills-index
