What should my children study?

Some months ago, a good friend of mine who's got a son aged 17, threw this question to me in the context of a discussion about the future. If I could give him any advice, what should I suggest him to study?

Now, that's a difficult one. For parents in their 50's, the traditional educational models worked out pretty well. The world was somehow predictable, you could find an area that you liked or felt passionate about, and you could read those reports that said "demand for lawyers in the next 5 years will grow by 10%..."

The problem today is quite a different one. First, every academic discipline evolves so fast, that when students graduate after 4-5 years, a significant portion of what they have learned is obsolete. Is this giving them the preparation they need?

Second, with the current trends in globalization, the fact that you become a doctor in, say France, does not guarantee that you will be taking a job as a doctor in France. It may very well happen that off shoring trends, take out to India a portion of the jobs for doctors in France.

So, in other words, the situation has changed now. We must move from a view of predictable, static jobs that require well defined skills to be performed, to a much more fluid environment, in which the skills needed evolve very fast and where globalization increases competition for everyone. If we cannot predict where a market is going to be in 5 years, how could we possibly predict which skills are going to be needed?

OK, so what do you tell your friend? I confess that I did not know what to reply, but I tried:

- Make sure you find an education institution that gives him mastery in some discipline, but more importantly, where he learns how to learn. As a corolary of this, you probably want to suggest that he studies the less volatile disciplines such as math or philosophy.
- Make sure he understands his education as a continuous flow and he takes ownership of it. i.e., forget your traditional model of thinking that your title would give you a job. That will not work. In this context, developing his intellectual curiosity will be important.
- Make sure he is conscious of the global dynamics. Understanding who else can do your job at a lower cost is important.

I hope this was valid for him. And I also hope it will be valid for my kids (and yours)