The best thing a university to do to train students for jobs that don't yet exist is to help them learn the critical thinking skills which will help them understand that a claim like "most children will be doing jobs that don't yet exist" is un-evidenced B.S.
So here's the skill I want students to have, to be able to take a claim like "65% of the jobs children will have don't yet exist" trace the claim to its source and then judge the validity of the claim. Let's try it with this one.
The Guardian story cites a UK Universities report for the 65% of jobs factoid. 
If you click through to the Universities UK report, they cite the World Economic Forum 2016 report. Sounds really convincing, but what is the World Economic Forum?
The World Economic Forum is a "public-private partnership" funded by companies like Accenture, BlackRock, Boston Consulting, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Google, Facebook, etc... corporations in every sector of the economy. They are not an governmental or academic institution.
The World Economic Forum is a front group/quasi think tank whose job it is to produce slick propaganda which furthers the aims of their corporate benefactors. They are not peer reviewed or fact checked. weforum.org/about/strategi…
Regardless, even a propaganda arm of major corporations can cite valid research. Let's see what's in that 2016 report. Here's the citation with the source below. reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs…
Here's what happens when you click on that link. site-closed.wikispaces.com Hmm...the source is no longer found...what to do?
I know, search for the authors and title on the Internet and see what I can find. Look! This seems close. Same authors, same theme, but guess what, the 65% claim isn't present. Also, it's kind of old, from 2010. theguardian.com/science/punctu…
Now I'm going to do some lateral searching and see what I can find. Turns out @matt_barnum writing for Chalkbeat ran down a bunch of the same info I've shared, and has even more context. His line to the 65% of jobs stat goes to the dead site too. chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/…
There's also some other guy who took on an even more absurd claim, that 85% of jobs haven't been invented yet who adds some additional context, including pointing out some of those promised innovations are maybe not so promising. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…
Even if you don't want to do that work, look at the phrasing in the World Economic Forum report, "By one popular estimate..." any clear thinking human should have their B.S. detector go off with that framing.
If students leave their schooling able to do what I've done in this thread, I think they'll be ready to tackle whatever the future may hold. Now, how do we get these people in the present who refuse to think critically about what they're putting out to the rest of the world?
How to practice that kind of thinking and demonstrate it through writing is a component of my recently released book which you can purchase direct from @JHUPress for 40% off through the holidays with the code HHOL. /plug jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/why-th…
