EIT Digital “The Future of Digital Skills Education” is part of the EIT Digital Makers & Shapers series.
In this new report, EIT Digital assesses in particular digital skills and specialisation issues, taking into account the wider education and training offer presented by both the public and private sectors, identifying the main gaps and building on future scenarios.
After analysing the main trends in the public and private training offer, the report identifies four main shortcomings:
- Clear fragmentation of access to digital skills across Europe
- On average, European academic institutions focusing on specialised digital skills are slowly changing their curricula and adapting to labour market dynamics.
- Lack of supply from the private sector to address the average level of digital skills
- Offers by tech giants and specialised private sector structures tend to focus on their own labour market needs and are exclusive
According to EIT Digital, these main gaps can lead to four extreme scenarios based on different future developments in the supply of general and specialised digital skills in both the public and private sectors: ‘Digital selectivity’, ‘digital plenitude’, ‘digital development’ and ‘digital deprivation’.
3 recommendations to improve digital skills education
Based on foresight scenarios, the report contains three recommendations that can help move forward in the best “digital plenishment” scenario:
1. The whole European public education system at all levels urgently needs to modernise largely outdated digital education programmes.
2. Dispersed private initiatives in digital education should move towards a complementary, broader and better coordinated global offer of digital skills initiatives.
3. To improve the overall quality, efficiency and effectiveness, pan-European digital skills initiatives, networks and ecosystems need to be better coordinated.
A full analysis can be found on the EIT digital website.