"Today, major technological breakthroughs occur within just a few
years, which approaches the typical time scale for completing a Ph.D. thesis. For the first
time in history, graduate students may soon face a situation where the technical skills that
they learned at the beginning of graduate school become obsolete when they graduate.
This implies that future graduate students may not be hired any longer for their specific
technical expertise but for more general talents, including their ability to think, how fast
they learn, and how they find and disseminate information to solve problems. An
exponential growth of technology will also select for those individuals who have an
aptitude to constantly learn and adjust. If this is to become the new paradigm for hiring
decisions, universities have to rethink how to best prepare their graduate students for this
new environment."