Improving education part 4
In this globalized world, to remain competitive a country must improve its education system by promoting advancement in science and technology. In order to create more jobs, its universities must develop more graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
However, education systems are always slow to change because from the academic view there is no urgency. Although graduates with bachelor's degree in Information technology, engineering and mathematics are in high demand globally but the number of students enroll in these fields is still much lower thus create a critical shortage. An education analyst explained: “There are two opposing forces impacting this situation: Developed countries like the U.S and western European countries have good STEM training programs but NOT enough students; Developing countries like China and India have more students in STEM programs but their training have not kept up with current technology. Without improving their education systems, many countries will miss this opportunity to create more jobs and improve their economies. Current forecast indicates that STEM-related jobs are expected to grow 20% to 28% over the next decade, with the majority of those jobs requiring a college degree or higher. This is why improving college STEM trainings to keep up with current technology are essential.
But improving education system is difficult due to the resistance to change from academic people because they do not see it as necessary. By bringing in new things or change the current way of university teaching may impact their secured positions so they often resist. For over ten years Chinese government has poured money into its state university system without any significant results. India government took a different approach by allowing more private universities to open with the hope to stimulate competition between state and private schools. The results were unexpected as “for profit” private universities only issue degrees without proper training. Both improvements have resulted in high number of graduates without the skills needed to work in the industry.
However, there is another option that could change the entire education system globally: The creation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) from many top universities on the Internet for anyone who wants to learn. These courses aimed at educate a large number of students regardless where they come from and without any fees. The courses are taught by top faculty with class materials, video, readings, exercises just like any online courses. Students can participate in online forums to discuss with others on class materials. Today, MOOCs attracts a large numbers of students from all over the world; some classes even have ten to fifty thousand students registered. Students can control where, what, how, with whom they work with. Although MOOC does not issue degrees or certificates because its purpose is on providing knowledge and skills but it solves one major issue: Develop skilled workers to meet industry's needs. Last month, several top executive jointly declared: “We will NOT look at degree as condition to hire but the skills of applicants. If they have the skills that we need, we will hire them. Today many degrees are worthless as students only pursue a “piece of paper” instead of real knowledge that they can apply to their job.” This declaration has shaken the traditional education system and makes many educators noticed.
Currently many students in MOOC course are not the young people but also people who are currently working in the industry that want to improve their skills, and some university professors who want to keep their knowledge current with technology change. My friend, a Stanford professor who taught a Big Data course in MOOC told me that he had over six thousand students, about a third were university professors in developing countries who wanted to learn new technology. He said: “With MOOC we can educate the whole world and by implement it widely, we can help many workers become more productive and enable them to be competitive in this job market.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
