Loosely related to my own economic recovery plan… From the October 30, 2008 BusinessWeek, Michael Porter writes “Why America Needs an Economic Strategy”. Some excerpts:
“An inadequate rate of reinvestment in science and technology is hampering America’s feeder system for entrepreneurship. Research and development as a share of GDP has actually declined, while it has risen in many other countries.”
“America now ranks 12th in tertiary (college or higher) educational attainment for 25- to 34-year-olds. We have made no progress in this vital area over the past 30 years, unlike almost every other country. This is an ominous trend in an economy that must have the skills to justify its high wages” [philg: it would be more interesting to focus on how much people learn than how many degrees they collect]
“The job training system is ineffective and receives less and less funding each year.”
“Federal polices have hobbled America’s entrepreneurial strength by needlessly driving up the cost and complexity of doing business, especially for smaller companies. Cumbersome regulation of employment, the environment, and product liability needs to give way to better approaches involving less cost and litigation, yet special interests block reform. The U.S. has become a high-tax country not only in terms of rates but also administrative hassle.”
“Infrastructure bottlenecks, due to neglect and poorly directed spending, are driving up costs in an economy increasingly dependent on logistics.” [philg: this ties into my constant calls for congestion pricing on our roads]
“A final strategic failure is in many ways the most disconcerting. All Americans know that the public education system is a serious weakness. Fewer may realize that citizens retiring today are better educated than the young people entering the workforce. In the global economy, just being an American is no longer enough to guarantee a good job at a good wage.” [philg: though Obama has promised us that we will get paid a lot, no matter how dumb we are!]
“Unless we significantly improve the performance of our public schools, there is no scenario in which many Americans will escape continued pressure on their standard of living. And legal and illegal immigration of low-skilled workers cannot help but make the problem worse for less-skilled Americans. ”
“Democrats, meanwhile, keep talking as if they want to penalize investment and economic success. They defend unions obstructing change in areas like education, cling to cumbersome regulatory approaches, and resist ways to get litigation costs for business in line with other countries.”
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My take-aways from the article… (1) if we could improve education at all levels, from elementary school to job retraining for laid-off workers, we could survive all of the other handicaps that we’ve created for ourselves, (2) there is absolutely nothing in common between Porter’s suggestions and what our politicians are doing.
I dearly wish that for the engineering and technical arts, that we begin the transition from the three level college degree system, and go to a more ala carte skills and certification system. There is a broad arc of skills that are just beyond trade school levels, but above some freshman engineering specialties.
Case: Embedded systems design and programming: We need more agile applied engineering personnel, and many of the tasks for design kick-off and product evolution would not need a full 4 year degree. The BSET was a start, but I want a smorgasbord of engineering subjects that can taken on and off line, skills evaluated, and certifications granted.
This could work in all technical specialties, and it won’t hurt the MSEE / MSC at all. Yeah, software too. We see already that some of of the best is comming from self taught and that continuing and on-line education is working.
For the most part, true. But as to actually improving education,
particularly at the primary and secondary level, what’s the best way to go?
There are many suggestions that seem pretty reasonable, but I’d like
empirical evidence they would work. E.g. I’ve seen articles claiming
that vouchers (something very reasonable on the face of it) don’t work
nearly as well as hoped. That school success is too tightly tied to
socioeconomic status and parental involvement. In practice most
poorly-performing students in lousy schools still perform poorly
in better private schools paid by vouchers.
I don’t know how true that may be. But it’s critical to know,
since it has a lot to do with how we may want to restructure
schools and teacher unions. And parents.
Obama mentioned education as our number one economic problem in the debates. So he at least seems to recognize its importance (at that time anyway).
I’m too lazy to read his economic plan myself. Anyone know how education fits in?
How do you propose to quantify “how much people learn as opposed to how many degrees they collect”. Education, Health etc. are hard to quantify.
That’s precisely why # of degrees is used as an inadequate price substitute.
What other heuristic would you use?
Longhornece: How to quantify how much people have learned? I think that Alan Wilensky’s suggestion above for certification is a good one. There are plenty of helpless people who graduate with CS degrees but folks who pass the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer test at least know how to connect a few Windows machines. The FAA has a good system of knowledge and practical tests for pilots. Nearly all of the people who earn the FAA ATP or CFI certificates are competent at handling aircraft.
For scholastic stuff we already have a wide range of standardized aptitude and achievement tests. These are the ones that show U.S. children falling behind those of other nations. These are also the ones that people use to evaluate the success of federal programs such as No Child Left Behind (Google search brings up http://www.docuticker.com/?p=21397 as an example).
We have the GREs for people who are finishing bachelor’s degrees. Perhaps as the cost of college keeps rising the government will demand that universities administer standardized tests as a condition of continuing to receive federal aid. Imagine if Harvard students, adjusted for incoming achievement scores, turned out to have learned less than those at U. Mass!
Fields where competence matters already have standardized testing. A degree in math won’t get you an actuary; you have to pass a series of 10 exams. A degree in medicine won’t get you a job as a doctor; you have to pass the Boards. A degree in business won’t get you a job as an accountant; you have to pass the CPA exams. A degree in aviation won’t get you a job as an airline pilot; you have to pass the type rating course and checkride for the specific airplane.