Changes in the global market mean employers are increasingly aware of the need for staff who can blend their specialist knowledge and skillsets with experts from different fields, so as to achieve broader objectives. More than ever employers value, and expect, graduates who can demonstrate interdisciplinarity from day one, working effectively in a diverse team of specialists as employees increasingly interface with growing amounts of AI and automation within the workplace.
Indeed the workplace is progressively a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary space. It is where we are likely to intersect with co-workers, who compared with ourselves, have different academic backgrounds, with different lived experiences and are at different stages of their career. We also collaborate with them on often complex and multifaceted issues, which are themselves reflecting the ongoing changes of the future workplace, constantly augmented by technological developments.
Higher education institutions need to ask themselves how well they are preparing their students and graduates for the changing nature of work. If they really want to maximise their students’ and graduates’ likelihood of success within the workplace then they need to provide learning experiences where such intersectionality of differences are not only recognised but actively used in an interactive learning experience.
