Preparing for the future part 2
Today the world is transitioning from a “product-based” economy, where factories produce physical products as the key factor for jobs and economic growth to a “knowledge-based” economy where companies produce intellectual products as the key factor for jobs and prosperity.
For the economy to grow, every country needs to have a knowledge-skilled workforce where workers have at least a college education, especially in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The knowledge-based economy needs workers with a wide range of skills; many are technical, and some are not but the foundation of the knowledge base economy is information technology. People who understand this or investing in technology are all doing well. If you look back at the beginning of the “product-based” economy, all the millionaires and billionaires came from the factory and banking industry. Today, at the start of the “Knowledge-based” economy, all the millionaires and billionaires come from technology and investments industry.
As the world is in this transitioning, every country needs to build their foundation and infrastructures to ready for innovations that will promote economic grows. Every country needs information technology skilled workers such as software engineers, computer scientists, and information system managers, etc., Because technology is changing fast, universities must adjust and adapt quickly to produce skilled workers to build their economy, else they will be left behind and may not be able to catch up.
The questions are: Knowing all of this information why can’t university change? Why can’t government invest more in technology education programs? Why don’t students enroll in areas that have a good future? The simple explanations are: Most universities do not like to change as they must protect their status and their positions. The government is often too busy with current issues and do not consider education is the priority issue. Most students and their family do not have enough information to make the right decision. Even at the time of the Internet and smartphone, most students still prefer to follow the tradition of enrolling in Medicine, Dental, Pharmacy, Finance, and Business instead of studying something that is still developing. A few years ago when teaching in Asia, students told me: “Technology industry in my country is still developing, there are only a few companies, but they are not strong yet. It is safer to study business and get a good job at the bank.”
To anticipate the coming waves of technology explosion and global economy competition, it is important for parents and students to understand what technology industry needs and prepare as early as possible. To pursue a technology career, students must start learning more about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in high school. They must build the basic foundation before going to college. Without a strong basic foundation in math and science, they will find these STEM areas difficult and not be able to handle their learning well. For many years, India and China had started STEM education in their universities, but the data indicated that over 73% college students had failed and changed their study from STEM to another field. It is clear that these students did not have a strong basic foundation to pursue STEM careers. If we do not strengthen our current high school education, we deny a good opportunity for our children and our future.
If you look to countries that do very well in establishing their technology-based economies such as Japan, S. Korea, and Singapore. All of them have very strong and prosperous high-tech industry. Why did they do so well? When teaching in S. Korea and Japan, I was surprised to learn that most high school students already know programming since they learn them in the 6th grade. Most of them have a very strong math and science foundation in high school. These countries have a high number of college students enrolling in science and technology areas. A professor in S. Korea told me: “We know what will happen soon and we are readied for it.”
To support a knowledge-based economy, we need to have a better education system from high school to college to prepare for the technology -driven the global economy. To eliminate unemployment and create a strong economy, nothing is better than investment in STEM education because we are investing for the future and the future is NOW.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
