Giving Compass' Take:

• David Cantor reports that schools are not keeping up with automation, hurting students. Low-income and female students are especially threatened by these shortcomings. 

• How can funders help schools catch up and stay ahead of the curve as emerging technologies continue to grow in power and prevalence? 

• Read about ways to prepare for the automation economy. 

The return on education is high. Male workers 25 and over with only a high school diploma had median weekly earnings of $810 in the second quarter of 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while those with bachelor’s degrees earned $1,372. Men who held an advanced degree had median weekly earnings of $1,808, although the median for women with advanced degrees was $500 less. These educational and gender disparities widened at higher income levels.

Advances in artificial intelligence and computing power have enabled industries to automate tasks that were central to many jobs previously open to high school degree holders or non-finishers, like the “predictable physical work” that was the foundation of manufacturing for generations. (The impact of automation on U.S. manufacturing loss is not straightforward, however.)

Automation will create new jobs and operate alongside people, as it does now, but some fear that it will outpace job creation. A 2013 study estimated that nearly half of the country’s jobs could be performed by smart machines within 20 years, while the Boston Consulting Group reported in 2016 that almost 40 percent of the automotive industry was already automated.

Smart machines also began to perform white-collar tasks that demand years of human training.

“AI is getting really good at reading radiology images,” tech entrepreneur Andrew Ng said at a conference last year, suggesting that new radiologists could expect “a perfectly good five-year career” before machines replace them.

Inequality shadows K-12 preparation for college and careers, especially for students from lower-income families, but also for women.

Read the full article about keeping up with automation by David Cantor at The 74.