Learning after COVID-19 and the ICT career aspirations: Are students entering the AI era with weaker skills?
arXiv:2605.27391v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper examines whether students are entering the generative AI era with sufficiently strong educational foundations, focusing on the relationship between learning environments and changes in ICT related career aspirations across countries. The analysis uses country-level data from PISA 2018 and 2022, combining indicators of student autonomy, digital skills and teacher support. A mixed-method approach is applied, including descriptive statistics, regression analysis, clustering, latent representation learning (using Variational Autoencoder-
The paper leverages recent PISA data from 2018 and 2022 to examine the educational foundations of students entering the generative AI era, directly addressing concerns exacerbated by pandemic-era learning disruptions.
A potential decline in fundamental ICT skills among students could significantly impact future AI innovation, workforce readiness, and a nation's competitive standing in the rapidly evolving technological landscape.
The research provides quantitative evidence and analysis on how past learning environments, particularly during COVID-19, have shaped digital skills and career aspirations, indicating a potentially weaker talent pipeline for the AI future.
- · Educational technology providers focused on foundational skills
- · Countries with robust post-COVID educational recovery programs
- · Companies offering reskilling and upskilling for entry-level tech roles
- · Education systems that failed to adapt during COVID-19
- · Countries heavily reliant on a domestically generated AI workforce
- · Universities facing a less prepared student intake in STEM fields
A confirmed skills gap in ICT could lead to increased demand for remedial education and vocational training programs.
This skills deficiency might necessitate greater reliance on automation and AI tools to augment human capabilities, or lead to offshoring of certain tech tasks.
Long-term effects could include a widening technological divide between nations with strong educational foundations and those with persistent skills deficits, impacting global innovation hubs.
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Read at arXiv cs.AI