What should we be teaching the new generation of kids?

For 10 years, since my own transition from university to full-time media professional, there has been little to no progress by universities in preparing students for the realities of working in the advertising industry. Despite multiple feedback sessions and discussions with some truly hardworking and inspiring university lecturers, the curriculum itself continues to pigeonhole students into very specific and traditional 'Creative' or 'PR' ways of thinking. They teach barely anything about media. 

It's surprising, especially given the AI doom-mongering currently fueling advertising industry navel-gazing. The fact is, it's never been more important for universities to be teaching Creative, PR & Media collectively and equally. In the short-term, I'd argue that media presents the greatest job opportunities as Creative and PR disciplines grapple with the abandonment of their head-hour/count-heavy processes and remuneration models. The years spent conducting slave labour in excel, PPT and paint are rapidly disappearing. Regardless of discipline, our future grads won't have 5 years to 'get the hang of it'. They are going to be thrown head-first into a tech-forward world, expected to know more about marketing and make decisions way earlier than we ever did. 

It's because of this that universities need to be actively engaging with our sector. We have so many fantastic educational resources at an industry level, that could easily be transitioned into curriculum. I have the privilege of judging capstone students on their final presentations and what astounds me over the last few years is the lack of technology use cases for solving client briefs. Surely the curriculum should be preparing the future of our industry better than having them present back series of press releases, costings for an event, and ideas for a TVC for a NFP client who's briefed them on $50,000? 

The very real risk of our industry being commoditised out of jobs in the post-ai revolution is already here, yet we're educating based on models from 30 years ago. We should be teaching our younger compatriots how to master the technology now available to us. To retain the diversity of our own local advertising industry, that understands how we as Australian’s live and breath, our industry bodies like the MFA and IMAA need to think big, beyond 1-2 university partnerships to how we can support a broader curriculum. If we can't empower the next generation to harness the benefits of technology, then any vestiges of Australians’ advertising to Australian audiences, for Australian audiences, will disappear with them.