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| 2007-09-28 | |
"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 population—some 93 million people—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 |
| #24 Just to make clear: those are Mr. Wife's thoughts, not mine. On this subject I'm not qualified to have an opinion. I read the thread back to him just now, though. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-28 23:12 |
| #23 Call me an optimist, but I see this in a differing light. I'll agree that we're lacking upcoming students who'll give us these NEW leaps in technology right now. Yet, how many brains does it take to come up with new innovations (usually just one, or a handful, if you look at history). Names like Einstein, Bell, Ford, Ben Franklin, etc. single-handedly caused MOMENTOUS leaps in technology never thought possible before. And, I've begun to see a backlash to the US Education system in general, and the public schools specifically. All of my friends (married couples) have stay-at-home moms (with 2-3 kids each couple), and often the husband is an engineer. You have the No Child Left Behind Act, which has already caused some VoTech schools here to swell in population. People still show an interest in engineering, just maybe not in the IT world. I've already noticed engineering "characteristics" in my own son, and he's less than 2 years old (loves to take things apart and study them, loves cars/trains/planes/etc.). I will definitely encourage him in this arena, as I know how fundamental engineering is to our society (just ask anyone in New Orleans about drinking water or sewer systems after Katrina). Sure, a lot of the IT world has gone overseas, but is that REALLY where future leaps in technology will occur. I receive almost daily updates on technological advances by "average Joes" here in the U.S. who are trying to get us off petroleum. They're studying fuel cells, thermal-solar power systems, plug-in electric cars, etc. Sure, these are all in 1 arena, but one I'd think we'd all agree is very important, if only to de-fund the jihadis. |
| Posted by: BA 2007-09-28 23:09 |
| #22 I hope not, 3dc. Not every last one, at any rate. But I hear you re: good people who were burned by corporate greed. That did happen and it is unconscionable. Our need is real, tho. We need all the innovation, energy and initiative we can generate: yours and that of others who can contribute. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 22:48 |
| #21 Actually I will take it one step further. Should we be lucky enough to ever have a Judgment day I would lobby the deity to place all MBAs in the lower reaches of hell. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-09-28 22:31 |
| #20 As somebody treated like hell by the outsourcing bastards I discouraged my children from having anything to do with the RIGGED engineering game. I still feel the same way and dream of the day when all HARVARD BIZ School and CHICAGO BIZ school jerks are outsourced! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-09-28 22:28 |
| #19 Granted. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 21:59 |
| #18 And IBM did a lousy job with DB2. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-28 21:54 |
| #17 if we do not ALSO attract into our grad programs US citizens whose allegiance is to THIS country, then we will find (as we already have in the case of China) that a dismaying portion of those foreign students may take their grad training home to innovate there instead. I am very unconcerned about this except in the case of China. China has an aggressive IP policy to drain our knowledge to their advantage and to coerce their brightest to do it by holding their families hostage. I would be happy to change my mind when shown evidence, but I don't think any country does this with near the success China does. But then I would never have let China into the WTO. But too many Clintonistas and WSJ types were made too rich to stop that train. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-28 21:53 |
| #16 Yup - you and I and TW are in violent agreement. (I would disagree with you on IBM, tho - a lot of their very successful innovations in areas like chip design and manufacturing were leveraged to great advantage within the company). However - if we do not ALSO attract into our grad programs US citizens whose allegiance is to THIS country, then we will find (as we already have in the case of China) that a dismaying portion of those foreign students may take their grad training home to innovate there instead. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 21:45 |
| #15 lotp, I'm happy to be in violent agreement if you'll agree that IBM, Bell Labs and Xerox PARC did a lousy job of exploiting their technical innovations to drive economic growth. It takes both. I also agree that it takes continued research to develop new technologies for the dropouts (:-)) to exploit. I'm just not sure I see a problem continuing to import engineering talent if our native born talent can find more productive opportunities elsewhere. I agree very much with TW in #8. We need to make the US the most attractive place for the brightest people to migrate. Unlike those who want to keep the furners out, I want to bring the bright ones in and keep the dumb ones out. We should have a concerted effort to raise our national IQ through predatory immigration practices. This not only helps us, it harms our enemies. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-28 21:38 |
| #14 NS, of your list none except to some degree Wozniak have innovated technically. Dell introduced the business model of IBM-compatible computers assembled from low-cost 3rd party manufactured parts. Jobs and Ellison are marketers. Gates bought or copied most of the key technologies that Microsoft has brought to market (although there are a few exceptions). Woz did show initiative in his early days with the blue boxes for stealing free long distance phone calls (when such calls were expensive) and he did do the basic design on the early Apples. Years later he finished that BSEE degree at Berkely, enrolled under a fake name. All have taken product to market and created both wealth for themselves and others. But they did so by exploiting research innovations done elsewhere. We're beginning to run out of that old pool of innovations to exploit. We actually began running out of them a decade ago, but people didn't realize that because so many products came to market in the IT world that there were scads of jobs for e.g. sysadmins. Until that became such a routine job that it got automated & outsourced. IBM did and does innovate core technologies. AT&T did in the old Bell Labs - I still cite some of the papers that came out of research there. Rodney Brooks' robotics lab at MIT spun off iRobot and some others that are doing well with defense funding right now. But we are very close to having exhausted that old supply of research waiting to be exploited by the Dells and Gates of the world. And without a serious cadre of new scientists and engineers we really are in serious danger of falling increasingly behind in global competition. That's not exaggeration, just sober fact. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 21:23 |
| #13 subsidize engineering schools and students can I suggest the $ in the National Endowment for the Arts budget? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-09-28 21:16 |
| #12 Problem is H1B gutted the industry. THey used cheap Indian labor to replace US IT workers. THe college kids wised up - they abandonded the field after ssin how IT workers were treated liek crap and thrown away or outsourced. We have nobody to blame for this except short-sighted peopel running businesses, and the pet congressmen who set the H1B laws to allow indentured servitude which depressed wages (and therefore drove down those willing to settle for those wages for that kind of work). Cut the H1B, subsidize engineering schools and students, make tech workers easier to get Green Cards provided they want to become citizens, and agree to stay for 7 years at a minimum, and tax the hell out of people who offshore, and that will fix the problem. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-09-28 21:06 |
| #11 My niece got a BSEE in 1989 & a MSEE in 1994. She is still working in her field. However, nearly all her classmates have left the field, disappointed in the quality of domestic employment opportunities. Pay peanuts, treat them like chimps, don't be surprised if all you get are monkeys. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-09-28 20:45 |
| #10 I suspect we're in violent agreement, Darth. ;-) No doubt there are good people who can produce new products without grad education. What I had in mind but didn't articulate well is the difference between creating new products based on existing technologies/materials/tools and the kind of innovation that makes NEW technologies etc. Those are the longer-term engines that have given the US a strong economic growth for decades. And those generally -- not always, but in most cases -- do require more advanced education to achieve. Both kinds of innovation are valuable and needed. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 20:44 |
| #9 OJT skills are useful for junior roles and for administering or replicating existing technology. They are not adequate for the kinds of technical innovation that drive economic growth however. I would argue for engineering fields and others of that nature a degree is necessary to quickly learn the basics of physics and the like. However, your analogy of the IT world is flawed. All it takes to learn what is needed not only to replicate and create new and innovative programs, is the ability to learn a language. Our best programmers started this as pre-teens and haven't gone to a lick of school. I'm not saying school isn't necessary and desirable. I am working on my degree with a emphasis in management so I can get higher in the management side. All I'm saying is it isn't fully needed to get good people that can not only administer, but create new products. Also, that being said, I think our schools are falling behind horribly because of liberal PC bullshit and the basic Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History, Science and Critical Thinking skills are very much in decline and our whole system needs to be put back into the education business, rather than the indoctrination business. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-09-28 20:40 |
| #8 I checked with Mr. Wife, who agrees. He thinks the elites are more highly educated than ever, but too many of the rest are choosing to be less educated than ever, thus making their status permanent. Instead of the old bell curve, a permanent bimodal distribution. And, for instance, the statistic is thrown around that there are now more young black males in prison than there are in college [a more rejectionist, nihilistic choice I cannot imagine}. The only thing growing as fast as health care cost is university education cost... Between the cost and the difficulty for foreign students to get visas, there are significantly fewer who aspire to come here for an education, then stay, and persuade others to follow. He sees significantly fewer than, say, 20 years ago. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-28 18:43 |
| #7 Panel moderator James Whaley, president of the Siemens Foundation, added, "We can no longer assume the talent pipeline will be here." If technology jobs are seen as unstable, if Americans believe those jobs could be off-shored at a moment's notice, then, yes, the pipeline will shut down. No one will be entering it, because the risk is too high. If their goal really is to maintain American competitiveness, then they'd be looking at alternatives. Look at "in-shoring" -- hiring people in areas of the country that have lower costs of living. The cultural barriers are much, much lower, the time difference is smaller, and you can tout it as helping develop America. The PR advantages and the lower cost of management will make up the difference in labor costs. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2007-09-28 18:40 |
| #6 The US does offer one critical element that China and many other competitors do not - freedom. Our own youth may drift aimlessly through life, but our freedoms continue to attract the best of most of the rest of the world. Immigrants - legal or illegal - will come to do the jobs Americans won't, or can't. China's economic advancement the past 20 years is not because of successful centralized management but because they allowed the seeds of Hong Kong to spread a little. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-09-28 18:07 |
| #5 OJT skills are useful for junior roles and for administering or replicating existing technology. They are not adequate for the kinds of technical innovation that drive economic growth however. I will concede that plenty of counter examples exist and that I agree with dramatically improving our educational system and allowing as many technically competent immigrants into the country as possible, but the names of Gates, Wozniak, Jobs, Ellison and Dell demonstrate that a college degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for the kinds of technical innovation that drive economic growth. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-28 17:58 |
| #4 What is the major impediment to Microsoft chartering their own school? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-09-28 17:20 |
| #3 And, we have a problem with the core skills of high school grads who aim at other jobs too. The inability to reason logically, to apply algebra skills to daily problems or to read an article and evaluate the arguments being made -- these are weak in so many of our public school grads from the last decade or so. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 16:53 |
| #2 No, it goes deeper than that, Darth. OJT skills are useful for junior roles and for administering or replicating existing technology. They are not adequate for the kinds of technical innovation that drive economic growth however. I used to hire a lot of programmers and engineers. Now I teach undergraduates. Employees who lack a solid education in their fields simply could not rise beyond a certain level of contribution. And for innovation, that means a graduate degree from a good program. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-28 16:47 |
| #1 That is the problem with hiring from liberal colleges where "diversity training We prefer to hire people that have experience and no degree. They are usually highly motivated and learn on their own quickly and adapt to different technologies better than their |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-09-28 16:34 |