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AI adoption across the jobs value chain is causing a seismic shift in the education-to-jobs pipeline, with students, teachers and companies changing their behaviours.
Speaking at a public sector CEOs roundtable at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, Du Min, vice president of global public sector and president of higher education at Huawei, said AI is reshaping not just education but every industry.
“I think AI is not just redefining the education industry, it is redefining every industry and every corner of our daily lives,” said Min.
“For higher education, we have seen two arguments. On the one hand, we see lots of students graduating and ending up jobless. On the other hand, we see a lot of very young entrepreneurs starting their businesses while they are in university using the power of AI.”
Min’s insights are largely based on Huawei’s observations from the Chinese market, where the company has worked closely with the government to drive high levels of digitisation into the education system. While most of the outcomes are positive, there are drawbacks, too. Min said at the high school level, access to AI is causing a rift between children and their caregivers.
Shifting roles
“Most parents and teachers feel like, in recent years, children are not listening to them anymore. Parents feel like they cannot teach them anymore, while we see children being more creative and innovative based on the new technologies available to them,” said Min.
Min said teacher roles are shifting away from imparting specific pieces of knowledge as per a set syllabus towards mentorship, where they often guide students through material that may be new to them, too.
These new methodologies are leading to better outcomes at the senior high school level. Min said some companies are choosing to absorb school leavers immediately after completing their K12 studies — the Chinese equivalent of South Africa’s matric — instead of waiting for them to complete a university education.
‘Broken’
“They are jumping out of the university system to do their training inside the company so they can start to serve the companies, real businesses, very quickly. The [prevailing philosophy] is that today’s [university system] is broken,” said Min.
The higher education system is also adapting to these changes by incorporating AI into the syllabus as well as the teaching environment. The kind of staff being hired is also changing, with specialists in AI from industry being engaged for lecturing roles. The tooling is evolving just as quickly as the people are. “We have thousands of companies introducing applications, software and AI agents into the education system,” said Min.
Read: Bold reforms needed to fix Stem education in South Africa
Similar trends are taking shape in Europe. Esade University, an exhibitor at the Four Years from Now conference that takes place alongside MWC, is a private higher education institution specifically focused on the impact of artificial intelligence on work and education. Most of Esade’s courses are traditional business courses offered at most universities with an AI or digital learning component infused.
“At Esade, we are committed to an education that teaches how to understand, apply and critically assess artificial intelligence, from a business, ethical and humanistic perspective,” said Daniel Traca, director-general at Esade.
Huawei is working with schools, universities and industry to build an education platform with tooling in the form of agents and other software to act as an adjunct to teaching and learning. Min said the objective of the platform is to shift away from the traditional paradigm where teachers stand in front of the classroom and students mostly sit in an effort to absorb information.
“Teaching must change so that children really understand the theories being taught to them. How do they work in real life? How are they applied in industry? We are building our platform so that industrial practice can easily be introduced into the universities and schools,” said Min. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
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