In the last 10 years, there has been unprecedented growth in all facets of our global society. People who use to connect with each other on voice phones, can now connect on video calls, people who use to refer to Encyclopedia to acquire any information, now use Wikipedia.

Advance technologies like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Nanotechnology are not only taking away logic-based jobs, but have also started to impact the creative job market.

Technology is changing the way we think, work and live in our society. These changes are happening all around us with a speed which we can never imagine. On one side, where technology is making our world smaller and on the other it is substituting for human mind, as never before. Not far are the days when Machines will be ruling the world.

The relevance and existence of global education system – schools and colleges – is under a severe threat. Already all information is available to the next generation on their technology platforms, this has initiated a debate on the existing education system and its relevance in today’s time.

Despite of attending their classes in schools and colleges, Gen- Y in today’s time is acquiring most of the information for their academics from internet and so are their teachers. There are children who have written ‘To hell with school…’ on their Facebook status, haven’t gone to school for days and years, but are writing games for big gaming companies. There are children who are studying in grade six and doing advance coding in Python. How are they doing all this? Where are they learning all this from?

Youtube recently announced to fund $20 million for education content, Why? It is because, Youtube is the most used technology platform for training, learning and personal development. Online courses are slowly taking away the market share from traditional educational institutes.

In India e-learning market size was $ 247 million with about 1.6 million users in 2016, this has expected to reach $1.96 billion with about 9.6 Million users by 2021 (Source: VC Circle). Do you still think we need to ask where is this new generation learning from?

Our belief system still forces young minds to walk in the same rut. Government education policies instead of thinking forward, are rather looking behind and adamant to practice old age education system in the name of preserving culture. Our best of the technical colleges, are struggling to get faculty with new and contemporary technology skills.

Course structures are unable to match pace with the changes in our society. They seem to have tied a knot in the iron rod.

You know the best part. Gen-Y doesn’t bother to wait for the change, as they themselves are the Change. They are fast to acquire skills and capabilities required to achieve what they want in life.

Their best friend is technology which provides them access to all information, skills, certifications, faculty and related career opportunities. This has empowered them and therefore, the need for going to schools and colleges is also going down. The schools and colleges which in today’s time have stringent admissions criteria shall strive to get students to their campus in the future.

It is high time that the government and related education bodies should go back to their drawing boards and do a research on the changes in society with a futuristic view. The changes that technology is bringing to the society should be considered and the next generation should be supported to explore new avenues to not only acquire skills and capabilities of their choice, but also be given a relaxation in the way they want to do it.

We all have to learn to walk in pace with the changes happening to our society or else we will be left behind. There is a pertinent need to untie the knot in this iron rod as otherwise, it will catch rust and become irrelevant for any further use.

The writer is Achal Sharma, author of CorePeelers: A Journey To You Core. He is also a coach and a speaker