A Suggested Strategic Roadmap for Public Egyptian Universities to Adopt and Adapt to the Requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Society 5.0 to Prepare Students for the Future Labor Market

Abstract

Currently, the world is facing an unprecedented challenge which is "youth bulge" with a high rate of unemployment. It is argued that the employability challenges will be compounded by the impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and Society 5.0, and "Open talent economy" is the new economy replacing traditional permanent employees with talented "free lancers" to perform the required work from anywhere in the world. Currently, institutions around the world prefer to employ those who have skills for specific projects. Gig economy primarily depends on two forms of work: "crowd work" and "work on-demand". In addition, in the last five years, "artificial intelligence" (AI) has begun to replace people in many of routine jobs, and will continue to replace people in new unimaginable jobs that may arise in the future due to the continuous developments of smart technologies. Accordingly, universities all over the world will face a new problem of preparing students for a new way of life and work with a somewhat uncertain future in the coming era that involves a new industrial revolution whose repercussions are unprecedented.Accordingly, there is increasing trend that calls for the necessity of preparing a flexible or liquid workforce able to constantly adapt itself to the requirements of fast-changing labor market, and establishing a culture of flexibility in moving between businesses according to the needs of the labor market which witnessed the emergence of new types of labor across the world. If universities failed to align employability competences with the requirements of 4IR and Society 5.0, the unemployment gap will increase. Thus, the main objective of this study is to propose a strategic roadmap for public Egyptian universities to adopt and adapt to the requirements of the fourth industrial revolution and society 5.0 to prepare students for the future labor market. To achieve this objective, the author adopted both descriptive and exploratory research design, and used mixed methods research approach. Since the requirements of 4IR and Society 5.0 and Gig economy do not depend on national educational institutions that operate in accordance with national standards, but reliance is on the standards set by transnational "digital institutions" and platform companies, so the national contexts will have minor influence on practices and structure of university education systems, therefore the suggested strategic proposal may be applied by many universities in different educational contexts.