The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 4 – USA

In the fourth and last part of this series I am going to look at a special case in the US. It is related to Internet courses and the degree to which they replace traditional human taught courses.

At the moment there is two course types:

1. Those using the Internet as a supplement to classes where students have to be physically present.
2. Those that are undertaken completely by Internet.

The degree that the Internet can take over from traditional teaching methods depends on state legislation. At the moment, there is a huge debate going on about how these courses will influence school age children in their behaviour and future employment prospects. Courses that involve the Internet as a supplement -even in large doses- generally draw little criticism, as it is widely understood that the skills involved are absolutely essential not only for the workplace, but to students as individuals.

The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 3 – UK

In part 2 of the series I looked at India and how it tries to implement a large scale operation to upgrade its educational and competitive capability. Today’s example is the United Kingdom, a developed country with steady population and the longest tradition in industry and technology in modern history.

It is the homeland of some of the greatest minds and technical feats in history. Despite the disintegration of the British empire in the 20th century, during the first post-war decades it has managed to stay in the forefront of industry and innovation. Since then however, many things have changed. The UK is no longer able to match the US and the shear manufacturing size of large rising economies like China and India.

Furthermore, ever tighter integration of the British economy with the EU and the huge size of the EU market mean that the UK does not enjoy the freedom of the past, despite political will and a decision to not adopt the euro. In the 80s, Margaret Thatcher decided to increase competition, open the country to external investment -all Japanese brands set up facilities thanks to attractive tax packages and a skilled workforce- and give extra bias to services.

Although British industry was not decimated as pessimists predicted, the UK has lost some of its momentum compared to Italy, France and Germany, despite very satisfactory overall financial performance. An area where the UK still excels is its universities and their science and engineering departments. One would say that the UK’s educational system is the closest to the North American one from all EU states.

The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 2 – India

The introductory part of this series stressed the close relationship between technological education/training, employment opportunities and competitiveness. Part 2 is devoted to India, as an example of a rising technological star with large population and high promises.

Unlike China and its manufacturing prowess, India has so far mainly specialised on the service part of the economy. For years now, call centers of many -mainly American- companies are operated in India. A good grasp of the English language, good IT skills and a number of open-thinking service companies led to an explosion that soon spread to the medical field, databases, programming and many other activities that could be undertaken at large distances from clients.

The skills that helped make this progress -do not forget that language, IT and medical skills are all a direct result of education and training- are now in short supply. Companies that set up operations in India are having the awkward problem of employee supply, with the extra twist of personnel that is not well enough educated to meet the new challenges and expectations. University degrees are not a guarantee for employers and foreign-educated scientists are not enough to fill the void.

The link between technological education, employment and competitiveness – Part 1

I have decided to start a small series on employment & competitiveness, and their close relationship to technical know-how. Having lived and worked in different countries and regions in Europe, I have noticed that there is a pattern. In dynamic or traditionally industrial areas there is places and companies that have more steady employment, whereas in others there is considerable fluctuations.

By steady employment, I do not naturally mean the life-long employment model of Japan, but the ability to stay employed on a permanent basis, independently of the fact that one has to move companies or activities on a few occasions in a lifetime.

On a global scale, the cost of employment is of course a deciding factor, and everybody has their sight on China that keeps increasing its manufacturing capacity. However, in both the US and Europe, the more financially progressive states are not necessarily the cheapest. Take for example California, Washington, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. Do you get cheap labour in any of those? Far from it…

Relevance of the term “digital”

Unless somebody has been hibernating or decided to live deep in the amazon basin for the last three decades they must have noticed the gradual encroachment of technology in all aspects of our life. Things were interesting enough in the late 70s and the early 80s with the first personal computers. The introduction of CDs for data and music led to the triumph of optical storage, and if predictions for holographic discs live up to technical and cost expectations we will be the owners of 12 cm (or smaller) discs for many years to come. With the arrival of miniDV, video recording has become higher quality and more reliable, so if any of you have old VHS tapes you better hurry to transfer them to your hard disc and DVD discs, before they are completely useless… Photography has followed a more conservative path but the last 5 years have seen cataclysmic changes. Chemical film development is now a process of the past and only a bunch of traditionalists would refuse to admit that CCD and CMOS sensors can do for them as much (or more) as film. The final factor that arrived to stitch everything together in an allpresent net is of course the internet that we all love. Communication? Interaction? Games? Business? It’s all there for everybody to read, hear, see and more importantly contribute!