Category Archives: The Economist

DQ #9 Third Industrial Revolution

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How much should a company be expected to invest in the education and training of its own employees? If our current educational system is having trouble creating people with the specific skills needed by a company, should that company be responsible for building those skills? Is it possible that we will see more education or training being done by companies rather than in traditional institutions of education?

What are the ethical or moral considerations of this national competitiveness when it comes to jobs? So many articles seem to focus on how to make America more competitive or how to get America the best jobs. Rather than focusing on how to improve one country relative to others, should people be more focused on the world as a whole? Should people be more concerned with improving education, jobs and quality of life in general than with how America competes with China? Am I being dramatic?

Discussion #9: A third industrial revolution

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How could teachers incorporate social manufacturing, like Quirky and Shapeways, when teaching STEM in the classroom in order to engage students and develop their 21st century skills? How could they use these programs to create a cross-disciplinary connection between STEM and business/entrepreneurship?

Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, says that by making “…their employees happiest they will attract the best people.” Corporations in Silicon Valley have also realized how important it is to make work a happy culture, by offering trainings like The Energy Project and 20% of their paid work time to complete any project they’d like. How can educational administrators incorporate similar techniques in keeping talented teachers happy and motivated in order to maintain high-quality teachers in the field?

DQ #9 A Third Industrial Revolution & Englishes

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A Third Industrial Revolution:

The article had some key points and an interesting perspective on the “digital revolution” stating that  “governments should stick to the basics: better schools for a skilled workforce, clear rules and a level playing field for enterprises of all kinds. Leave the rest to the revolutionaries.”

There are some aspects to consider by leaving “the rest to the revolutionaries”. What is the limit we put for ourselves as human beings and completely replace work performed by humans? How much do certain technologies such as the 3D printer help man kind, when there are still towns and villages without infrastructure and running water? Does using the 3D printer take away the value and human creation behind design? What about project buy-in and ownership?

Englishes:

Regarding the topic on Englishes, how does the implicit role of arts, sports and music effect the internationalization of education? How will these be incorporated into education at low costs and low resources? Using what methods?

DQ#7: The Great Mismatch

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In Tyler Cowen’s book, he argues that in Americans enjoyed the benefits of free land, immigrant labour and powerful new technologies; however, he states that the web has provided essentially less profits and few new jobs. If the web has produced less jobs, then how is it that a vast majority of our industries and job markets require web work? Or knowledge/skills based in new technologies such as social media, data entry, programming etc?

An interesting aspect of the unemployment crisis is the relationship between the increasing unemployment rate and the increasing salaries of the top few percent. How will this be resolved? How will we be able to put education first if we do not have the funding? I think the question lies in the fundamental differences in culture and societies modes of thinking or operating – collectivism versus individualism.

DQ#7 The Great Mismatch

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1) A lot of attention was placed on President Obama in the article. In the most recent presidential debate he stressed investing in education as a leverage to the 9% unemployment rate. While most agree that this approach will certainly have long term success, how long will it take, and can one term provide enough support of education to turn the employment rate?

2) Will the globalization of white collar jobs increase the quality of customer service and products we receive, and can the US compete with internationally skilled workers at that level or will it further gauge our employment rate?

DQ#7 The Great Mismatch

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Some career fields, like journalism and graphic design, lend themselves to freelance work. Websites like oDesk help to market the individual in a single, globalized market for labor. Which career fields will most likely help individuals be on the “winning side” of a globalized market? Which types of jobs are unlikely to be found in a global market? Will this create degree trends for students studying at the university level?

Spain’s unemployment rate has soared to 25.1% (Eurostat). As a result of the economical crisis, Spain’s policymakers have ” … set innovation as one of [the] main lines of action for economic growth, and in this sense [have] developed an ambitious agenda called the State Innovation Strategy (E21) with a primary emphasis on technological innovation, business innovation financing and internationalization of innovation.” (http://www.socialinnovationeurope.eu/node/1925)

Is there a positive side to an economical crisis? How do policymakers contribute to the innovation? How is policy innovative?

Interesting idea inspired by economical crisis: euro-free economy: “In Barcelona… time banks… allow people to trade their services in hours without the involvement of money…these experiments aim to take communities back to a time when goods and services were bartered.”

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-spain-financial-crisis-feeds-expansion-of-a-parallel-euro-free-economy/2012/08/27/53ed3552-e00f-11e1-a19c-fcfa365396c8_story.html)

DQ#7: The Great Mismatch

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  1. The article mentions that lowering unemployment rates require structural reforms, such as “changing education to endure that people enter work equipped with the sort of skills firms are willing to fight over.” Most of us would agree that “the sort of skills firms are willing to fight over” would be skills like inter-cultural communication skills, which can be fostered through international education. But with the internet and expatriate workers connecting people in an “inter-cultural” sense, how can international education policy “sell” the fact that through international education one can foster more skills for the job market than to self-learn these skills through experience and self-conducted research?
  2. In the “Great Mismatch” special report, several articles mentions the fight between companies to hire the best talents, while these “transformational” workers are getting paid disproportionally more than merely competent workers. Since there is no standardization for such talents, how can we ensure that students benefiting for an international education would be able to compete in this market? Are changes in education policy enough to assists this younger generation out of unemployment?

DQ #7 The Great Mismatch

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The article indicates that in several weaker economies, jobs have been sacrificed in the name of the public good, to avoid government default on debts. What is your opinion regarding this decision? Is it really for the “public good”? What do you do with all those workers that got laid off? How do you think they feel? Are they satisfied knowing that they got let go of so that the economy would heal? Is this even ethical?

The article mentions “Globalization and technological innovation are bringing about long-term changes in the world economy that are altering the structure of the labor market”, there for what should education be focusing on? How do we manage to keep talented employees without paying an arm and a leg for them? Would you consider a cap on salary?

If you have time, watch this video:

 

DQ#7 The Great Mismatch

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Do you agree with the idea of an unpaid internship?  Should all internships be paid, or should all interns receive some sort of compensation (housing, flight, food)?  When do you think it is okay that an internship not be paid?  Have you ever accepted an unpaid internship with the hope that it would lead to a job offer?

ODesk is described as a “game changer” in the article, by offer “labour as a service” to individuals who might need work, without having to work for a large company, or even leaving home.  What are some disadvantages of the “labour as a service” concept?

DQ #7 The Great Mismatch

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Do you agree more with the “lump of labour fallacy” (the belief that there is only a fixed amount of work to go round) or with the the theory of comparative advantage (which suggests that free markets make the world better off because everyone can concentrate on doing what they are best at)?

Do you know of other companies like oDesk that connect employers in the developed world with potential employees in the developing world through the internet?