THE FUTURE IS NOW According to Brookings Senior Fellow Dr. Michael Hansen, "Most core education jobs are fairly well insulated from replacement by technology." Hansen notes that data suggests less than 20 percent of teaching jobs can be automated. Bus drivers? Maybe not so lucky. The big opportunity, Hansen predicts, will come in education services. Pulling data on potential work automation from recent reports by McKinsey and Oxford researchers, Hansen compares obvious targets for automation—cafeteria workers—with ones that may surprise: librarians are high on the list. According to Hansen, more than 40 percent of librarian jobs can be automated. What does that mean for the future of school staff? We may never see low student teacher ratios, which peaked before the 2008 recession, again.
