The disruption caused by the integration of technologies, Industry 4.0 (Mian, Salah, Ameen, Molduddin, & Alkhalefah, 2020, p. 1), is far and wide.  Cyber-physical systems occupy nearly every sector from agriculture (Liakos, Busato, Moshou, Pearson, & Bochtis, 2018) to healthcare (Matheny, Whicher, & Israni, 2019).  One of the major reasons for this is because the fourth industrial revolution “(4IR) capabilities create higher top and bottom value through faster design, novel products, reduced risks, elimination of waste, and so on” (Tassel, 2019).  

Early adopters, however, found that Industry 4.0 equipment retrofits and capital expenditures exceeded their means (Sanders, Elangeswaran, & Wulfsbert, 2016, p. 813).  Luckily, nearly as quickly as technology is proliferating through society, those costs reduced in a similar speed industry sees computer processors prices drop – permitting the adoption and acceleration of the integration into manufacturing facilities (Industrial IoT is booming thanks to a drop in sensor prices, n.d.).

Integration of Silo Sectors

In a similar fashion as the evolution from the first to the second industrial revolution, the third and fourth have and are changing the way humans interact, purchase products, and manufacture.  The “first industrial revolution marked the initiation of machine manufacturing.  Subsequently, the second industrial revolution [saw] a expeditious progress in the steel, automobile, and electronic industries” – off of which developed as a subset of the first industrial revolution (Mian, Salah, Ameen, Molduddin, & Alkhalefah, 2020, p. 2).  The “third industrial revolution experienced a metamorphosis into a digital world and renewable energies.  

Building on the arrival into the digital world, the 4IR represents the integration or “harmonization” (Mohd Adnan, Abd Karim, Haniff Mohd Tahir, Mustafa Kamal, & Muhyiddin Yusof, 2019, p. 331) of “cutting-edge technologies, comprising the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, virtual (and augmented) reality, simulation, three-dimensional (3D) printing, artificial intelligence (A.I.), data analytics, cybersecurity, smart factories, (or cities), [and] advanced robotics” (Mian, Salah, Ameen, Molduddin, & Alkhalefah, 2020, p. 2).  This integration of once silo-based sectors has forced higher education to evolve in a variety of areas, one of which is, and is going to be, its curriculum contents.  

From an industry perspective, those sectors began to integrate fairly quickly while higher education continued to adapt to the third industrial revolution and has remained, at the macro-level, satisfied with silos.  Commonly, students take a set of courses based on an HEI’s organizational structure.  For instance, business classes in the business department, information technology in the I.T. department, and manufacturing classes in advanced technology departments.  

Even with good-intentions by department’s attempt to cross-pollenate a student’s degree, each division/department’s faculty teach from a vertical perspective leaving the student to apply the integration – the key element to their future work environment – to themselves.  To match industry needs, courses need to contain content that, from the beginning, shows the integration of the technologies and purpose, use, and functionality in the real-life setting.  This action requires a new blending of internal departments, faculty professional development, and a blurring of departmental lines.  Surely, there is still a place for vertical training within, say, information technology for those highly skilled in such an area; however, even they will need to know how cyber-systems impact various sectors.  Using information technology as an example, it is in nearly every aspect of the 4IR.  The department nor the faculty can continue to operate in a silo with curriculum specific to the development of I.T. professionals.

Nine Critical Competencies

With the curriculum changes comes the skills or competencies necessary to navigate this rapidly-changing environment.  In the same fashion, as noted above, employees will no longer operate in silos either.  Consider the smart factory will have transitioned the worker from one that solely operates a press or machine to one that operates that machine that is connected to the machine’s manufacturer reports back to engineering for quality control, determines through A.I., what parts are necessary to keep it running, provides data to procurement for ordering, and possible management updates for operational proficiency.  

Early on, industry saw the need for employees to be trained on what was considered soft skills, communication, creativity, and problem-solving skills.  With further experience, these skills moved from important to critical to the success of the worker and the organization (Jang, 2015;2016, p. 284).  

Those skills expanded to include a total of “nine critical competencies” (Sheninger, 2019, p. 106).  Those competencies are (1) “creativity,” (2) “collaboration,” (3) “communication,” (4) “critical thinking and problem solving,” (5) “entrepreneurism,” (6) “global awareness,” (7) “technological proficiency,” (8) “digital media literacy,” and (9) “digital responsibility, citizenship, and footprints” (pp. 106-108).  

These competencies require new curriculum that will enable HEIs to prepare the student for the real-time working environment each will face no matter the level of skill, education, and position.

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