World Economic Forum – Germany has way more industrial robots than the US, but they haven’t caused job losses – Written by Jill Petzinger, and published in collaboration with Quartz.

The rise of the robots, coming first for our jobs, then may be our lives, is a growing concern in today’s increasingly automated world. Just today (Oct. 10), the World Bank chief said the world is on a “crash course” to automate millions of jobs. But a recent report from Germany paints a less dramatic picture: Europe’s strongest economy and manufacturing powerhouse has quadrupled the amount of industrial robots it has installed in the last 20 years, without causing human redundancies.

In 1994, Germany installed almost two industrial robots per thousand workers, four times as many as in the US. By 2014, there were 7.6 robots per thousand German workers, compared to 1.6 in the US. In the country’s thriving auto industry, 60–100 additional robots were installed per thousand workers in 2014, compared to 1994.

Researchers from the Universities of Würzburg, Mannheim, and the Düsseldorf Heinrich-Heine University examined 20 years of employment data to figure out how much of an effect the growth of industrial manufacturing has had on the German labor market.

They found that despite the significant growth in the use of robots, they hadn’t made any dent in aggregate German employment. “Once industry structures and demographics are taken into account, we find effects close to zero,” the researchers said in the report.

Robots are changing career dynamics

While industrial robots haven’t reduced the total number of jobs in the German economy, the study found that on average one robot replaces two manufacturing jobs. Between 1994 and 2014, roughly 275,000 full-time manufacturing jobs were not created because of robots.

“It’s not like jobs were destroyed, in the sense that a manufacturing robot is installed and then the workers are fired because of the robots—that never really happened in Germany,” study co-author Jens Südekum, from Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics, told Quartz. “What happened instead is that in industries where they had more robots, they just created fewer jobs for entrants.”

“In a sense the robots blocked the entry into manufacturing jobs.” “Typically around 25% of young labor market workers went into manufacturing and the rest did something else, and now more workers have immediately started in the service sector—so in a sense the robots blocked the entry into manufacturing jobs.”

The study also found that those who are already in jobs where they were more exposed to automation, were significantly more likely to keep their jobs, though some ended up doing different roles from before. The big downside for some medium-skilled workers, who did manual, routine work, was that it meant taking pay cuts.

“This is where these wage results come in, what we find is that no one was really fired because of a robot, but many swallowed wage cuts. And this has mostly affected medium-skilled workers who did manual routine tasks.” Around 75% of manufacturing workers are medium skilled, and the wage cuts have so far been moderate, he says.

“The robots really fueled inequality.” But Germany hasn’t got it perfect. One core reason for why Germans haven’t been fired in favor of robot, is the country’s famously powerful unions and work councils, which have are often keen to accept flexible wages on behalf of workers, to maintain high employment levels.

“Unions of course have a very strong say in wage setting in Germany,” Südekum says. “It’s known that they are more willing than unions in other countries to accept wage cuts to ensure jobs are secured.”

While robots have increased productivity and profits, and not driven people into unemployment (yet), they haven’t been good news for blue collar workers in Germany.

“The robots really fueled inequality, because they benefitted the wages of highly skilled people—like managers and scientists, people with university education—they even gained higher wages because of the robots, but the bulk of medium-skilled production workers suffered.”

World Economic Forum – The world’s top two universities are now in the UK not the US. – Written by Chris Parr, Digital and communities editor, Times Higher Education

The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge have taken the top two places in the 2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the first time in the rankings’ 13-year history.

It’s the first time that the US has not had a university in first or second place. However, despite small movements at the very top of the table where Cambridge leapfrogged the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University to claim second place, the top 10 universities have held pretty firm. Only Berkeley, equal 10th last year, has departed to be replaced by the University of Pennsylvania.

If you look at just the top 200 universities (equivalent to roughly the top 1% of higher education institutions in the world), then the US, even with missing out on the top two spots, has comfortably the highest number of representatives. In fact, with 62 universities in this elite group, it has double the number of the next most represented nation, the UK with 31.

However, despite the US’s domination in terms of overall numbers, there are signs that its grip on the table is slipping. This year, 59 of those 61 US institutions in the top 200 faced a drop in their research income per academic – and the future of federal research funding under the Trump administration is in doubt. Twenty-nine of the US’ top 200 representatives dropped down the table when compared to last year.

The US is not the only country facing potential funding challenges. The UK’s position within the EU research community – a key source of funding, particularly through flagship programs such as Horizon 2020 – is at risk following the Brexit vote. Australia may suffer in future years if its government goes ahead with plans to cut funding by 2.5%, which would mean a AUS$2.8 billion fall in income across the higher education sector.

It is universities in Asia that could benefit from the uncertainty and, once again, the 2018 World University Rankings provide evidence of the continent’s rise – particularly in the East.

Mainland China has acquired three more universities in the elite top 200 this year and is now the joint 6th, most-represented nation. Peking University has risen two places to join 27th in the rankings, putting it on a par with New York University and the University of Edinburgh. Tsinghua University, meanwhile, has climbed five places to 30th, overtaking the likes of the University of Melbourne and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Asia’s top university, the National University of Singapore, has risen two places to joint 22nd. This means there are now three Asian universities in the top 30 for the first time under the current methodology.​

There are warning signs for other parts of Asia, however. South Korea – which has invested heavily in higher education – does have four universities in the top 200, but three of these institutions slipped down the rankings this year. Taiwan took a knock too with its top institution – the National Taiwan University – clinging on at joint 198th.

Japan’s top institution, the University of Tokyo, has fallen from 39th to 46th place, however, both Kyoto University (joint 74th) and Osaka University (in the 201-250 band ) managed to make gains.

What is interesting when looking at the overall 2018 rankings picture is that none of the 1,000 universities ranked is considered outstanding across all five “pillars” underlying the methodology: teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook. Indeed not one institution makes the top 50 in all five when considered in isolation.

Achieving success relies on finding the right balance. Traditionally, the most successful universities have been located in the long-established higher education powerhouse regions: North America, Western Europe and to a lesser extent Australia. However, the 2018 results once again show that parts of Asia are certainly catching up.

The THE World University Rankings are the only global rankings that judge research-intensive universities across all their core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The calculation of the rankings has been subject to independent audit by professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

 

World Economic Forum -Education must foster creativity – and fight inequality – Written by Hao Jingfang.

Nowadays, two of the most frequently discussed topics in the media are perhaps the growing gap between rich and poor, and the challenges presented by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
These two problems are mentioned in my sci-fi novelette Folding Beijing, and people still haven’t found satisfactory solutions to them.
The causes of the widening social gap are various: globalization, the financial system, political policies, and, the most important one, the replacement of workers by automation.
As AI becomes more advanced, it is expected that it will replace more and more jobs now done by humans, increasing joblessness and social inequality.
These problems are not easy to solve.
Social welfare can help people survive, but it cannot help create hope.

Education as key
If countries cannot make proper preparations for these challenges, they may face extremely difficult challenges in having to deal with joblessness and social crises.
Only education can provide the tools to tackle the problem of inequality in the future.

Requirements for jobs in the age of AI are quite different to those in the industrial era.
Programmatic, repeatable work will be increasingly replaced by AI; while new jobs will require much more creative thinking, something that in many countries is not normally the main focus of the educational system.
What, then, should education do to solve the problem of inequality and lack of creativity?
In my view, the most important thing is to produce and share educational programmes that promote creativity.
First, we need a group of professionals who can lead the design of innovative educational programmes, including the content and teaching methods.
These should allow students to learn in explorative, creative ways, and focus on promoting the habits of self-learning and independent thinking, and make creative thinking the most important goal.

Education as commodity
Second, these innovative programmes should be shared broadly, by all children.
Nowadays, in many countries, education has become a high-price commodity, serving as the tool of an elite group to keep their social status advantages.
This undoubtedly exacerbates the problem of social inequality.
In addition to innovation in educational content, it is equally important to improve sharing mechanisms if we are to make progress.
We need to help all children, whatever their families’ status, to have the same opportunities to train and develop their creative thinking.

Can creativity be taught?
Traditionally, people have often considered creativity to be a set of special talents belonging to a few individuals; they saw it as a sign of genius, as a gift, and something brought about through inspiration.
However, new psychological studies suggest there are some common traits in the creative thinking processes.
One prominent feature is the feasible transition between divergent thinking and convergent thinking, which can be practised in classes.
The capacity to identify and then solve problems can be practised as well.
These traits can be trained through designed programmes. Teachers can ask more open questions, encourage students to give independent solutions, let them learn in creative ways, and establish virtuous cycles of explore-study-create in class.

Can this educational innovation be inclusive?
Traditionally, high-quality education has depended on face-to-face teaching by distinguished teachers, and so it was more or less restricted to prestigious campuses.
With new technologies, however, high-quality education can be promoted in a much broader way.
Internet courses can offer people free or low-price education, online applications, and AI techniques can help students learn by themselves; and this new teacher-training system can help spread innovative classes at relatively low cost. Only by these new paths, can all children share the advantages of educational innovation.

My own plans
Educational equality and educational innovation will be, I believe, the most important social issues in the future.
I hope to contribute my own energy into this meaningful process.
As a result, my friends and I have launched a new programme called “WePlan”, in order to explore programmes that promote creative thinking and share these new explorations with all kids in an inclusive way.
Our hope is that children from all families can share high-quality educational resources, and so share a future together.

The author

Hao Jingfang is a Chinese science fiction writer. She won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for « Folding Beijing », translated by Ken Liu, at the 2016 Hugo Awards. She became the first Chinese woman to win a Hugo Award.
Hao works as a macroeconomics researcher at China Development Research Foundation, in Beijing, China.
Hao Jingfang was born in Tianjin, on July 27 1984. In 2002, as a high school student, she won the first prize at the 4th national high school « New Concept » writing. After high school, she studied, then worked, at Tsinghua University, where she obtained a doctoral degree in 2013, in the area of physics.