Future of Learning and Education

According to “A Scorecard for Humanity,” a report from the Copenhagen Consensus Center, our world gains every time an individual is educated, and our world pays a price when people go illiterate. In the future, those regions and nations of the world that manage to educate its people would gain, whereas those that do not pay much attention to this crucial aspect would continue to suffer losses, hidden in plain sight. Hence, by 2050, we suggest that though the world would have made tremendous progress in basic education, illiteracy would persist with almost 500 million uneducated in the world. Illiteracy shall be most concentrated in the regions of Africa and South Asia, whereas most other nations would move toward a total eradication. However, there would also be a systemic change in the higher education sector across the globe, as the age cohort of 18 to 24 years in Europe would shrink, but in South Asia and Africa, this would continue to grow. There would also be a disruption of the current pedagogic and regimental learning systems toward flatter, flexible, and open systems based on research in learning sciences. Technology would also come by to play a larger role, where education would be driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data—resulting in complete personalization of curriculum and methodology focusing on each individual's minute needs.