“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Education Is a Beginning, Not an Ending
For generations, we have treated education as something that happens early in life. Children attend school, some continue to college or university, others enter apprenticeships and the skilled trades, and eventually everyone is expected to emerge suitably equipped for work. That model served Canada reasonably well when technologies, occupations and industrial practices changed slowly. It is increasingly obsolete.
Education should no longer be viewed as a vaccination that we receive once and assume protects us for life. It is more like physical fitness. What you achieved twenty years ago matters, but it does not eliminate the need to exercise today.
A university degree, college diploma, professional designation or Red Seal certification remains enormously valuable. But it represents a foundation, not a finish line.
Knowledge Has a Shelf Life
The speed of technological change has transformed the economics of knowledge. Artificial intelligence, automation, cybersecurity, advanced analytics, renewable energy and new communications technologies are changing occupations that once appeared remarkably stable.
The World Economic Forum estimates that 39 percent of workers’ existing core skills will change or become outdated between 2025 and 2030. Employers identify AI and big data, technological literacy, analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility and curiosity among the capabilities becoming increasingly important. (World Economic Forum)
This does not mean that everything we know suddenly becomes useless. It means that knowledge behaves increasingly like software. The underlying platform may remain valuable, but it requires continual updates.
The Canadian evidence reinforces the point. OECD data show that Canadians with stronger literacy skills are considerably more likely to continue learning. In 2023, 74 percent of Canadian adults aged 25 to 64 with high literacy proficiency participated in formal or non-formal education or training, compared with only 32 percent of those with the lowest literacy proficiency. (OECD)
Learning produces more learning.
Adaptability Is the New Job Security
Previous generations often sought security by finding the right employer. Today’s worker increasingly creates security by remaining useful to many employers.
A graduate entering the Canadian workforce today should expect occupations, technologies, employers and perhaps entire careers to change during a working lifetime. Consequently, the most valuable professional characteristic may not be mastery of one particular technology. It may be the ability to learn the next one.
Canada recognizes this challenge. Employment and Social Development Canada identifies adaptability, digital skills, problem solving, communication, creativity, collaboration, reading, writing and numeracy as its nine Skills for Success. (Canada) The federal government also continues to invest billions of dollars through labour-market agreements and skills-development programs intended to help Canadians retrain and remain employable. (Canada)
The Responsibility Is Shared
We should nevertheless resist placing the entire burden on workers. Employers cannot complain about skills shortages while refusing to train people. Educational institutions cannot assume that issuing a credential concludes their relationship with learning. Governments must make retraining accessible, particularly for mid-career and older workers.
There is a warning here for Canada. OECD research found a particularly large Canadian gap in non-formal learning participation, with 62 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 participating compared with only 36 percent of those aged 55 to 65. (OECD) Experience therefore cannot become an excuse to stop learning.
Never Graduate From Curiosity
Perhaps the most dangerous sentence in professional life is, “I already know how to do my job.”
The better question is, “What will I need to know next?”
That raises some uncomfortable questions for all of us. When did you last deliberately learn something difficult? Does your employer genuinely reward learning, or merely talk about it? Should Canadian universities and colleges maintain stronger lifelong relationships with their graduates? And should professional competence increasingly require evidence of continuing education rather than simply a qualification earned decades earlier?
The future will not necessarily belong to the youngest, the most educated or even the most experienced.
It wills belong to those who remain curious enough to keep learning.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.