Report calls for urgent action to prepare students for AI-dominated workplaces

The launch of the report draws on results from YouGov polling that showed 74 per cent of British business leaders do not believe current graduates are prepared to succeed in a world driven by AI.

Unveiled at the House of Commons, the report marks the latest phase of the University’s Future Skills campaign, first launched in 2021, which is said to highlight the economic imperative of skills for innovation and their vital role in driving a thriving economy.

YouGov’s findings, taken from  more than 2,000 business leaders, 1,000 current full-time students and 2,000 members of the wider public, have revealed:

There has been a 10 per cent increase since 2022 in businesses saying they want graduates to have digital skills, yet only 7 per cent of businesses believe graduates currently joining the workforce are ‘adequately prepared’ for the impacts of AI.

Nearly half of all business leaders (44 per cent) think AI and other emerging technologies will have a ‘moderate’ or ‘fundamental’ change on their operating model over the next five years, with 79 per cent believing universities should teach skills for the future to counter this.

The report launch coincides with the roll out of a new model of education across the University this autumn, which has seen all new undergraduate course programmes including Future Skills modules, to teach creative problem solving and digital competency, for instance, with the aim of bettering graduates’ employability and contribution to workplaces and wider society.

In a statement, the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Steven Spier, said: “Young people being educated today will go on to do jobs that don’t yet exist, in sectors that we can barely imagine, using tools entirely alien in the current business environment.

“It is no longer simply enough for universities to offer narrow, subject-based knowledge to students in preparation for their future careers. Instead, we need to equip our graduates with the skills to navigate a turbulent world that will continue to be disrupted.

“There is additionally a real need to look at AI from a human-centered perspective as there will be a premium on human skills that cannot be easily replicated, such as creativity and critical thinking.”

Kingston University is calling for an overhaul of the national curriculum so it includes teaching of the graduate attributes that are central to its Future Skills programme, as well as urging the Department for Education to hand over the remit for higher education teaching and regulation to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Business and Trade, to give universities greater opportunities to innovate.

The report, Future Skills: The Kingston Approach, can be read in full here.