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Gloomy Forecast for IT US Work Force
I know some will dismiss this as just lobbying by big business to bring in cheap labor on visas. But I know a lot of folks who have no direct stake in this issue, but who see recent graduates up close, who are deeply worried as well.

There is nothing automatic about our economic security and dominance. We are running on the skills and training of older workers in many cases - and if we don't get our educational system in order yesterday we will fall behind a lot faster than most Americans realize.

It's a WOT issue too. Anyone who's seen the composition of graduate student bodies in computer science and engineering knows we're in trouble. There's a reason China can boast an ability to attack our cyber infrastructure .....
The topic was education and the talk was not optimistic at the Institute for a Competitive Workforce's Sept. 25 workshop. A part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ICW drew several hundred participants to its event, held with the goal of promoting effective and sustainable business and education/work force partnerships.

"Our continued leadership is not inevitable and may not be sustainable," Fred Tipson, Microsoft's senior policy counsel, said in an afternoon panel discussion focused on upgrading the current and future work force's digital literacy and math and science skills. "The question is whether our work force or some other country's will be beneficiaries of new technology."

Tipson referred to America's ability to continue to produce high school and college graduates with the skills needed to be successful in today's technology work force as "dire."

Panel moderator James Whaley, president of the Siemens Foundation, added, "We can no longer assume the talent pipeline will be here."

To read about how some African countries are counting on technological education to help fight poverty, click here.

Judy Moog, national program director of the Verizon Foundation, gave the panel participants little reason to question Tipson or Whaley's statements. According to Moog, 70 percent of the nation's eighth graders are below sufficient levels in reading skills and "might well never catch up."

Moog also pointed out that in terms of "quality" of high school graduates, America has fallen to 19th out of 26 nations surveyed. Moreover, she said, nearly half the U.S. adult populationĀ—some 93 million peopleĀ—have very poor or marginal literacy skills.

"Literacy is the price of admission for competitiveness," she said. "People need to access a torrent of information over a vast array of devices. America isn't succeeding fast enough."

Tipson said Microsoft breaks down the issue into three phases: digital literacy, in which a person learns basic skills, digital fluency, meaning the skills are applied, and digital mastery, in which the first two steps are translated into advanced skills.

"We have a [digital] mastery gap, which is why we keep going outside the country to hire," he said. Microsoft is one of largest users of H-1B visas, a specialized-occupation temporary worker visa.

As for the future, only panelist Robert Leber of Northrop Grumman seemed optimistic, and then only if the business community gets behind efforts to support schools and training programs that emphasize digital literacy, math and science skills.

"The future is not young people, it's keeping the business community involved," Leber said. "Young people need a global view of what's coming, not a xenophobic view about what's happening in other countries."

Moog, too, rooted for business community involvement but characterized the progress made on literacy in the last 10 years as "sad." Whaley said a possible solution was a lifelong "earning account" that would allow to workers to periodically retool their job skills.

Microsoft's Tipson said glumly, "There is a stronger and stronger recognition we are not getting the job done."


Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=200506