Blog147-improving education
According to the latest study of UNESCO, most developing countries are significantly behind in the education required to provide the knowledge to grow their economy in the globalized world. As the need of knowledge workers significantly increases around the world, education systems must change to meet the needs of students and the global economy. Academic institutions must improve their curriculum offerings to accommodate students who want to keep up with technology changes. As more new industries emerge within the global economy, training programs must be flexible and adaptable to global industry needs. Without adjusting current training, graduated students will find themselves deficient in knowledge and skills that are necessary for them to find jobs in the competitive global environment. With globalization, companies could hire workers wherever they can find them so having knowledge workers available to work is a major factor for growing the local economy. To reap this benefit, government could improve the skills of its citizen at the national level by focusing more on improving its education system.
With the escalating demands in the new knowledge society, state funded universities will not be able to be the sole providers of education but there are opportunities for private universities and training institutions because they can provide a competitive edge based on their efficiency, flexibility, and management style. Because state funded university may not be able to improve itself sufficiently to meet the new requirements and it is difficult to change traditional academic universities that have been operating for many years, there is emerging role for private universities in the education of students. Today, private universities are considered more effective for enhancing the knowledge, and education for countries in global economy. Even countries with strong traditional in education such as China, India have recognized and accepted the role of private universities in this knowledge society.
The key role for private universities is creating new education programs to meet the new demands by providing new courses, new thinking, new standards, and new curricula. As a business, private universities have significant advantages over state schools. They can train students quickly and put them to work immediately after graduation by collaborate with the industry. They can invest in advanced laboratories and hire additional faculties to meet the needs of the marketplace. They can change their courses works according to changes in the global market and collaborate with international universities to strengthen their programs offering. Due to theses heavy investment requirements, private universities will face some financial difficulty in set up their education so government should supporting this kind of training rather than suppress them and risk losing a golden opportunity in improving the economy.
I believe to promote economic growth, government should fund activities that support both the training for students in schools as well as graduated students who are currently looking for jobs. There is short term trainings from private training institutions that graduated students could benefit in improving their chance of getting jobs offers. For example, a graduated student in mathematic may have difficulty in finding job but a few months training in programming languages or software engineering could give him a better chance. I have seen the government of Mexico and Ireland funded this kind of training by providing low interest loans to graduated students to attend private training schools for trainings in jobs identified by government as strategic. If they can find jobs after complete the study and hold the jobs steady for a year, government may decide either eliminate the loan (as in Ireland) or reduce the loan amount by half (as in Mexico). In both of these countries, high tech jobs are critical and in high demand so by supporting graduated students who studied other fields but want to convert to high tech areas, government support has resulted in significant economic advantages by having more people working and pay taxes.
As an educator, I have travelled in many countries and attended many education conferences. I have seen several forums that connect scientists, technologists, and government officials, for the purpose of improving education. I have heard many exchanges of ideas and experiences in the benefit of education as key drivers for economic growth but unfortunately I have not seen much in actions beside the examples in Ireland and Mexico. I am sure there are urgent actions that every government faces and there are several higher priorities but investment in technology education is the best as seen in the case of India, Ireland and China. Whether or not government is willing to improve the education, it is clear that within both the public and private education institutions, there is a need for actions to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by globalization.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
