Skills Obsolescence and Education Global Risks in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The thrust of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the pressure of industry stakeholders require employers to develop and implement new workforce strategies. In the engineering field, current requirements must address the additional challenges related to planned obsolescence in technology. This phenomenon has represented in recent years a triggering risk for other labor obsolescences, with devastating effects for many companies and educational institutions that were unprepared for these cataclysmic changes. The current panorama is frantic and especially damaging for educational institutions in Latin America, to the point that the worst facet of technology obsolescence, known as systematic, causes a kind of "mirror"obsolescence in academic programs in engineering institutions. The objectives of this Work-in-Progress study are to: (i) identify problems related to technological change skewed by skills in the technology sector labor markets and (ii) assess different initiatives that educational institutions in engineering have addressed, including Higher Education and Continuing Education. This document also briefly presents a statement of the implications for educational practice with focus on actions, possible frameworks of teaching and learning techniques, and a summary of the research preliminary results and findings.