Training, Requalification, Alpine Campus

The AI transformation will not wait. Working people who equip themselves now gain a lead that will be hard to close later. The canton does not need to rival Zurich or Lausanne in AI research — it has neither the means nor the interest — but it does need to equip its active workforce quickly. The alpine campus sketched in the chapter is not a new physical institution: it is an articulated arrangement combining short modularity (hours or days, not semesters), hybrid delivery both in person and at a distance across several sites in the canton, occupational grounding (concrete cases by sector), French-German bilingualism, and low cost for the learner. Three tracks coexist: a common, large-scale literacy programme, training for the seniors who orchestrate (the strategic track of the arrangement), and a programme for vulnerable groups. On governance, the author leans toward a primary mandate for HES-SO Valais-Wallis, coupled with specific agreements. The underused Idiap Institute has a particular role: continuing-education modules for qualified workers, technical advice to the canton, applied R&D. The counterintuitive bet that must be owned publicly: equipping the seniors who orchestrate takes priority over equipping the juniors who execute.