Is America Falling Off the Flat Earth? (2007) / Chapter Skim
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THE COMPETITIVENESS EQUATION -- THE QUALITY OF THE WORKFORCE
THE COMPETITIVENESS EQUATION -- THE QUALITY OF THE WORKFORCE
Pages 30-40
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From page 30... ...
The most obvious place to begin when assessing workforce quality in a knowledge age is with educational qualifications. In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; the corresponding share in the United States is 13%.
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From page 31... ...
Of US students who take the ACT college-entrance examination, a self-selecting and presumably more highly achieving group, 78% are deemed unqualified for college-level work in reading, mathematics, or science. In a 2005 test of science understanding administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 32% of US fourth-grade students performed below the "basic" achievement cutoff level (the lowest of three levels defined for the test)
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From page 32... ...
For example, according to the Federal Reserve's data, during the 15 years ending in 2004, the net worth of families led by college graduates increased by 61% while that of families led by high-school dropouts rose by only 12%; the disparity generated during the above period eventually exceeded a factor of 6. In 1980, college graduates, on the average, earned 75% more than high-school graduates (and 150% more than those without a high-school diploma)
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From page 33... ...
Greenspan notes that "it's pulling our society apart." His successor as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, adds that "we're probably not doing what we should be doing in terms of ensuring that all children have opportunities to learn mathematics and science." Finding a solution to America's failing K-12 performance is complicated by the character of the nation's education delivery system that comprises some 15,000 school districts that are locally managed, generally apply local budgetary policies with local hiring and retention practices, and often use local standards of achievement. Certainly not all schools are failing, but the average of all schools is certainly failing, and failing resoundingly.
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From page 34... ...
A Gallup poll offering 20 options reported that the American public ranks lack of student motivation, lack of parental involvement, and home-life issues as the three fac tors adversely affecting the nation's public schools. In sharp contrast, participants in the Teach for America program, which seeks highly qualified new college graduates to teach in challenged public schools, rank teacher shortcomings, principal shortcomings, and inadequate expectations of students as predominant.
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From page 35... ...
Tom Friedman asks, "If Einstein were alive today and learned science the boring way it is taught in many US schools, wouldn't he have ended up at a Wall Street hedge fund rather than developing theories of relativity for a Nobel prize? " The inadequacies of the nation's public school systems spill into our colleges and universities in a domino-like effect: three-fourths of all 2- and 4-year institutions feel compelled to offer remedial courses.
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From page 36... ...
Not surprisingly, a Sports Illustrated online survey reveals that the nation's university students believe overwhelmingly that the athletic departments in their institutions have more power than the academic faculties. The public K-12 school system in the United States continues to be largely impervious to the forces of the free-enterprise system.
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From page 37... ...
In my own case, I would be deemed unqualified to teach in virtually any grade school in America, but was welcomed, on taking early retirement from a position in the aerospace industry, to teach both undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Princeton University. The US Department of Education estimates that 60% of the new jobs that will open in the 21st century will require skills possessed by only 20% of the current workforce.
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From page 38... ...
This is seldom mentioned in most competitiveness debates; general izations tend to be unfair to that not insignificant segment of the workforce that is highly motivated and possessed of a strong work ethic. But, as IBM's Nicholas Donofrio, puts it, "The attitude I see in Estonia, Mexico, Brazil, China, Latvia -- they're hungrier than we are." Employers in many of those countries take the "default" position vividly expressed by former Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi: "If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." My own experiences in visiting over 100 countries
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From page 39... ...
Some businesses in India outfit work cubicles with cots for employees who elect to work late and remain overnight. On a visit to Bangalore, I was told that the young engineers and computer scientists writing software were so committed to their tasks that if an employer simply provides them pizza (yes, in India!
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From page 40... ...
In the case of economic competitiveness, the nations posting the most remarkable gains in recent years have to a large extent been doing so simply by copying the attributes of our systems of higher education, business management (pre-Enron era) , and free enterprise and in many instances implementing them more effectively than we.
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