Archive for the ‘Notes on Education Reform’ Category
The growing gap between formal education and job preparedness
October 10th, 2012 by Briana Cummings
As a society, we must figure out how to rapidly re-skill a vast number of people on an ongoing basis to both remain relevant globally and to avoid long periods of high unemployment. ~ Harvard Business Review There is a gap between what schools teach and what employers need their employees to know. The highest-growing job sectors –among both white-collar (biochemists, market research analysts) and blue-collar (contractors, electricians) jobs — are those in which extensive preparation and up-to-date skill development is required. Low-skill jobs (postal mail carriers, switchboard operators) are becoming more and more scarce. A study by the Harvard Business Review and Deloitts’s Shift Index found that America is in a “cycle of obsolescence”: what students learn in college is obsolete within a few years. The result is that college graduates can’t find jobs — more than half of those who have received a college degree since 2006 cannot find full-time jobs, according […]
A neo-Renaissance: Can the web transform traditional teacher-led models of education?
August 12th, 2012 by Briana Cummings
After the invention of the printing press, Europe experienced a Renaissance in art, science, and scholarship. Will the new learning structures made possible by the web allow a neo-Renaissance in our own time? Fred Wilson, VC and principal of Union Square Ventures, recently assembled a group of “leading thinkers, educators, and entrepreneurs” to talk about reinventing the “traditional school model of education.” The web, says Wilson, “transfers control from institutions to individuals and it is going to do that to education too.” How? According to Wilson’s group: (1) “The student . . . is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of . . . curriculum.” We now have not only the web, but also a rise in crowdsourced knowledge. I think this would in many ways be a positive development. The most finely wrought curriculum in the world is of little value if it is not tailored to the needs, interests, and […]