The latest job skills report from Coursera captures some very interesting data points about the current jobs landscape.

Current Job Market Development in Automation

First, millions of jobs globally are estimated to be replaced by automation by 2025. Second, 40% of core skills are likely to change as a result of automation technologies. Both points are drawn from the World Economic Forum’s, The Future of Jobs Report 2020. Third, and interestingly, 149 million new technology-related jobs across the globe will be created and thus outpace those lost to automation by 2025. Lastly, 69% of companies globally today are reporting a shortage of qualified candidates.

Why you need to Upskill and Reskill for Automation

All of this adds up to a huge need for skilling, upskilling and reskilling a workforce to meet the job needs of today and tomorrow. And many of these job needs will be around emerging technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation that are driving the digital transformation beyond individual organizations and to entire industries. Indeed, as the Coursera report makes clear, business process management skills are listed in the top 10 fastest growing skills of 2022.

This is one of the reasons we believe in the importance of the Blue Prism Academia Program, a key offering within Blue Prism University. Our program includes courseware, software, training, and certification pathways. And it’s entirely FREE for universities of all stripes, so instructors can use it to teach their students about our market-leading technology and prepare them for those in-demand jobs within the global workplace.

Our skills-development program is designed to support a comprehensive, multi-week dedicated certification course in robotic process automation (RPA) — taught either in continuing education schools or standard undergraduate and graduate degree programs — or to be adapted by faculty to plug into their pre-existing standard courses (core or elective).

Launch of Bootcamp at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s  

With the former, check out the very exciting launch of Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (SAIT) RPA Bootcamp program. Working through this RPA bootcamp, students will acquire a foundational RPA skill set augmented with an understanding of strategy and industry best practices, preparing them for the evolving demands of the workforce as technology continues to transform the economy. Graduates from this program will bring immediate value to any company looking to implement or scale its RPA practices, not only for the local Alberta area but anywhere across the globe due in large part to COVID-19 and the emergence of organizations establishing the permanence of remote workforces. In other words, “the hyper-growth of remote working enables those same people to access high-quality jobs regardless of city, state, or even national boundaries.”

Regular degree programs, such as a business process management course, for example, can include elements of our program as a short module to teach RPA to their students. Our program is flexible and modular enough to enable faculty to teach their students RPA in whatever way they find most effective.

In a nutshell, our program enables academic institutions to:

• Offer a high-quality RPA curriculum that combines in-depth technical training and professional skills development for your students.
• Choose various courses to plug into your academic program as a short module (or longer course) and prepare your students for industry-strength certification.
• Support the latest IS2020 Competency Model for Undergraduate Programs in MIS curriculum (The Joint ACM/AIS IS2020 Task Force)
• Gain access to our full Enterprise Training License software.

To summarize, we believe the Blue Prism Academia Program helps to deliver on the promise of a better future of work by supporting academic partnerships that create pathways from skills development to job opportunities for students. This is all so we help them with the job-ready knowledge they need to succeed in a changing world.

If you’d like to learn more about our program and how to become a Blue Prism Academia Partner, register with us.