Irving Wladawsky-Berger, one of the key innovators at IBM, has a long post in his blog about a report by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) that covers Graduate Education: The Backbone of American Competitiveness and Innovation
(1.8MB). The report, presented to the US Congress, covers the changing role of graduate education. One excerpt selected in the post on the key issues for the future:
" - Develop a highly skilled workforce by fostering collaboration among leaders in higher education, business and government
- Expand participation of underrepresented groups in all fields, especially those essential to America’s competitiveness and national security
- Create a vision for all US students that portrays careers in the STEM fields as engaging, compelling, transparent and remunerative
- Attract and retain the best and brightest students from around the world, and
- Enhance the quality of graduate education through ongoing evaluation and research"
STEM= Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. With a high percentage of doctorates in these fields being from outside the US, and the increasing problems to get the necesary permissions to go there or stay there, plus the fact that the country wants to focus on those areas and get more interest from young students in the research fields, marks clearly the transition to, what everybody has been preaching for years, to a knowledge-based economy. This new big reality will take most countries by surprise if they are not ready to have a lot of young people ready to innovate and take risks.
The Times:
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