National prosperity and social wellbeing depend on Australia developing learning cultures capable of dealing with disruptive waves of change across the economy, according to UTS Vice Chancellor Attila Brungs.

Without a national effort to create continual re-skilling “large-scale disenfranchisement will lead to widespread societal breakdown” he warns in a paper for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

Government must fund career-long learning, business needs to invest in workforce training and education providers must adapt offerings, to; “to evolve new, shorter and more modular forms of learning and reskilling (including micro credentials), mandate internships, and continue to invest in online platforms, he proposes.

Getting this right will set Australians up to “be disruptors rather than disrupted.”

“The right approaches will enable us to create an agile, skilled workforce and an adaptive and engaged society that will be able to prosper and take advantages of emerging opportunities, growing our standard of living.”