It seems that after few years of slowing down, the technology industry is beginning to enjoy better time again as businesses and governments around the world begin spending on information technology (IT). According to a report by Forrester Research, the IT industry will “explode” bigger than before as more companies are considering IT as strategic factor to keep them competitive in the global market. The research firm predicts that global IT spending will increase about 9 percent to more than $1.6 trillion in 2010 and more in the next five years.

Andrew Bartels, Forrester Research vice president declared: “The technology downturn is unofficially over, everything is ready for a more tech spending and hiring. The US, the technology market will be much stronger than any other market with technology spending growing more than twice the rate of gross domestic product.” The data indicated that in the past six months of 2010, global purchases of computer equipment has increased by 10%, communications equipment has increased by 8%, software spending has increased about 11% and IT outsourcing services already reached 8% higher than last year.

The U.S technology market is not the only place that grow but European market is also forecasted to have the strongest growing in many years where technology purchases will rise by 12%. The research also predicts that technology market in Canada will grow by 10%, in Asia Pacific by 8%, and Latin America by 7%. With the exception of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, almost every country will enjoy significant growth with their technology markets. Forrester Research predicts that hiring in the technology will increase by the end of the year and continue in the next several years with wages also increase at least by 6% each year as there is still a shortage of skilled workers in every country.

Throughout the economic downturn, most companies had to layoffs many workers but the technology industry remained stable with minimum layoffs. In the next several year, the prospects is bright for Web developers because more companies are relying on their websites to sell products and services. Many governments are also increasingly depend on their websites to provide services to their citizens so people with web development experiences would have no problem finding jobs. According to Forrester, demand for Web developers remains very strong throughout the world but this field also has become more specialized as more tools and technologies are available. The most sought after jobs are network security specialist, network architect, and software project manager. Forrester research found that more than 30% of company surveyed plan to hire more Web developers this year and as a measure of the strong demand, most Web developers said they received raises between 6% to 12% last year.

The IT growth also fuels the outsourcing industry in India. According to the new study of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the IT outsourcing will create 30 million additional jobs (10 million directly and 20 million indirectly) by 2020. In the past ten years, the IT outsourcing industry has directly employed about 3 million software people and indirectly created additional 18 million jobs. NASSCOM predicts that IT outsourcing and engineering development earning will achieve about $1.4 trillion by 2020. However, the study also warned that industry revenue growth that has increased 40 percent over the last ten years may slowdown due to the shortage of qualified skilled workers. Currently, Indian’s IT industry is experiencing a critical shortage of skilled people which lead to an “internal war” among companies for talents. About a third of the Indian software workers are changing jobs every years to get better salaries and positions. Company recruiters reported that they had to throw in “additional bonuses” to lure talent to their companies. The most popular incentives were higher salaries of 10% or more or extra bonuses such as longer vacations, more oversea assignments, and sign-on bonus of cash.

As the IT market continues to grow with high demand for workers, more countries are jumping in the market. China is considered a “key contender” that could compete directly with India. China has better infrastructures, more government incentives, lower costs but the key weaknesses are lower quality products, poorly trained managers, lack of enforcement for intellectual property, and significant problem with software piracy. According to several studies, most western companies are reluctant to outsource to China for fear of Chinese companies copy their products and sell them at much cheaper prices. Ken Brown, a China business consultant explained: “China already did it with consumer products such as TV, Home appliances, stereo systems, computers, electronics gadgets etc by copy Japanese and S. Korean products. They are doing the same with motorcycles, cars, machineries etc., there is no reason they would stop at anything. Today you can buy many “Counterfeit products” made in China as they are exported them everywhere. I do NOT think China will be able to push India aside in IT market. Their education system has not catch up with the rest of the world, they are still focus on cramming and passing exams with no practical aspects. Their IT workers can only do limited works, such as programming and testing but have little concept of design or build larger systems. Most IT companies are not well managed, most products have high defects as they are still learning how to do business globally. Contradict to several predictions, I do NOT think China can go very far because of their “mindsets” of build low quality product or copy somebody products and sell them at cheaper prices. If you look at everything that they build, the quality is very low, it may be acceptable for some cheap products such as toys, clothes, shoes but for software, it is unacceptable.
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Prof. John Vu
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Source: SEGVN

Traditionally, city is the center for business such as market, manufacturing, trade and banking but with globalization, some cities now are “specialized” in certain function to contribute more to the world economy and draw more international companies to come in and operate. Global city is really an evolution of Technology parks where it grows from a limited designated area then spread all over a city as more businesses are drawn in due to the “Specialization” of the economic development.

There are four types of “Global city”: A global location focusing on finance, banking and trading where many international financial companies move in and operate such as Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and New York. A global location focusing on information technology that provide services globally, this type of city is now the leading economic sectors. (For example, Bangalore, Dalian, San Jose) A global location focusing on manufacturing products, including both the old manufacturing such as equipments, machinery and the new technology production such as electronics. (For example Shenyang, Seoul and Tokyo) A global location focusing on research and innovations where global laboratories operate. (For example Boston, San Francisco, London). Depending on local government who has vision for their cities, certain type of “Global city” can take shape where specialized industries can structured and operate accordingly and emerge as transnational locations for foreign investment, for the production, services, financial, and for various international markets.

As highly specialized centers in the structure of the world economy, global cities are well known for their economic power. They become the locations for global companies, institutions, and organizations to move in to operate, manage, and provide certain economic aspects across the world. Basically, global cities perform a dual role at the intersection of the global economy and the host nations. What contributes to growth in these global cities also contribute to growth in the host nations. As global cities are places of production and distribution of products and services globally, it also accumulate a lot of investment capitals where distribution of jobs and financial circulation are organized and managed.

While each country may have different reasons for establishing global cities, generally the primary goal is to increase the number of “entrepreneurial, knowledge-based small and medium-sized companies” in an global economy because these companies are the backbone for the growth of the local economy. Developing countries with no local expertise in technology, may designate a city to focus on a specialty, for example “Information technology city” to attract foreign direct investment and to create more local jobs and tax revenues. There are several successful global models such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Dalian, Shenyang, and Shanghai, where these cities contribute significantly to the country’s economy.

The infrastructure needed to support a global city vary widely based on the specialization. For a city want to specialize in information technology (IT), good Internet connectivity is a key requirement. This generally extends to the availability of fiber optics networks offering at least megabit transmission speeds and redundant connectivity, either through multiple fiber providers or through a combination of different transmission media, such as fiber optic cables and satellite transmission. Additionally, a reliable and abundant power supply is also necessary to run large data centers, which typically consume 50W/square foot. With the average data center estimated at 30,000 square feet, this corresponds to 1.5 MW per data center as a minimum. Of course, global city must have more than just good infrastructure but also skilled workforce. Another key requirement is having several universities with certain specialization in the surroundings to provide the needed skilled workers.

Given the competitive nature of business today, another important factor of a global city is proximity to transportation infrastructure, particularly airports, seaports, and highways. Frequent flights and short distances to major international cities are a prerequisite to attract significant foreign investment. Public transportation and rail networks can also be important to ease traffic problem. Special-purpose facilities may also be needed depending on the specialty of the global city’s activities and the needs of the business. For intensive manufacturing operations such as semiconductor chip manufacturing, access to chemical suppliers, metals and a large supply of fresh water are important. For technology area, a location with several universities with strong training programs to provide highly skilled workers and basic services with convention centers, hotels capable of hosting international conferences are key factors to draw foreign investment.

There is another side of global cities where social polarization does happens in occupational and income structure. This view considers that people who work in global city are mostly well-educated, socially mobile, and earn high incomes than those who live in nearby cities. Because global cities are the command centers for the world economy, workers who have received higher education continue to earn more while people who do NOT have the education and skill will not have much chance and the social inequalities increase. A low-skilled and low-paid working class that support global cities do exist alongside, but usually in a separated from the professionals. In other word, Global city is a place of exceptional wealth and affluence, but they are also places of severe disadvantage and deprivation. To reduce the chance of conflict, a strong vocational education to develop supporting workers for better wages along side with the higher education for skilled workers would be highly desirable.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN

Throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, employment in labor jobs such as factory workers, construction workers, machine operators, and office workers grew faster due to the significant building of the infrastructures such as high rise buildings, highways, bridges, and manufacturing products. But around the early 1980, something changed as labor markets across developed countries began to decrease with many jobs were shifted to lower cost countries. Instead, employment in knowledge jobs began to increase at a much faster rate. The main reason is the development of information technology (IT) with computer-control robots replace labor works in many factories. Today, automobile manufacturing, machinery shops, steels industry and aerospace industry, all use automated control systems to do works.

Of course, computers cannot compete with the analytical tasks of high-skilled knowledge workers but they do directly affect the need for labor people like assembly-line workers or those doing certain manual tasks. These works can be translated to a set of instructions which a computer control machine can easily follow (Automation). There is a high possibility that many of these labor jobs will completely be replaced as it is more profitable to operate robots than to pay human workers. According to several studies, many low-skilled labor jobs will be eliminated in developed countries within the next ten years.

According to a study by David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who used data from the U.S Department of Labor on the tasks involved in different occupations. By classifying these tasks as manual/routine labor or non-manual/non-routine labor, Dr. Autor was able to identify which occupations are more or less vulnerable to automation. For example, he identified the jobs of secretaries, bank tellers and accounting clerks as among those will be replaced by automation. (We already saw many banks used Automated Teller Machine (ATM) to replace Bank teller and Secretary’s typing works were done by Word Processing software). Another study by the London School of Economics (LSE), which uses industry data from 11 countries ( 9 European plus Japan and America) also found that company that adopted IT at faster rates have the fastest growth, higher profits than non IT using company. They also have more demand for highly educated workers, willing to pay higher wages for their knowledge but have the sharpest declines in demand for people with lower levels of education or labor workers.

Today, the adoption of IT is a key competition in globalization. According to a study from Stanford University, most companies are adopting IT as the mean to increase profits, faster growth and to expand to global market but there is another reason. The author looked at rates of IT adoption within the U.S and Europe and found that with globalization, many companies are facing direct competition from developing nations such as Brazil, India and China as they entered the World Trade Organization (WTO). To have better competitive advantage, these companies have to respond quickly by innovating more in order to move up to higher position in the value chain. In the near future, competition is no longer on costs but on productivity and innovation. However, the interesting fact is growing developing countries such as India. Brazil, and China are also increasingly using computer-control systems as they are improving their productivity and profitability for global competition, despite the fact that they have very large labor population. The study concluded that the effects of information technology on employment and job market will continue to change the political situation of many countries. Technology will enable higher-end jobs to move to countries with large pools of highly educated workers and create alliances among them. This will create more competition between alliances as globalization continue to impact everything. Of course, this is not yet a major factor trends but it could change relationship between countries and the balance of world power.

Based on these studies, it is obvious that for much of the 21stcentury, people’s job prospects will rise with the education they have. The higher education, the better job prospect and country with better education system will have significant advantage over others. The future world will become more polarized, not about the “Rich” and “Poor” but about the “Educated” and the “Uneducated”.
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Prof. John Vu
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Source: SEGVN

In the past, graduates could start as programmers where they spent most of their time in coding, testing then eventually developed their skills in design, architecture to become technical leaders, senior engineers, system analysts. In parallel with their technical skills, they also learned about business skills such as budgeting, financing, and managing and advanced to project managers, senior managers and eventually Chief Information Officers (CIO).

Today, the business world does not follow this path of logic as the market demands are changing quickly with globalization. Graduates are expected to know these skills immediately because the demand is changing faster than the time required to master these skills. This gap is widen as more graduates leave university with good technical skills but no opportunity to develop the skills required for the role of the IT professionals. A bachelor degrees in software or information technology alone are no longer the guaranteed to an IT career they once were. Software companies are outsourcing most coding and testing to cheaper offshore countries and focusing on the managing aspects that require more business skills than technical skills.

Programming is no longer a long term career path for the graduates and the opportunity to gradually moving up to other jobs. Instead, graduates need to move straight into jobs that require both technical and business knowledge such as project management, problem solving, strategic thinking etc. Of course, that is asking a lot of students as they are expected to manage confidently and accurately about subjects in which they have no time to accumulate experience. This may explain the issue that many graduates could NOT find jobs even the market still have many openings. A vice president of a large software company in the U.S told newspapers: “I do not need programmers, they can be hired from oversea at much cheaper rates. What I need is people who could manage projects and deliver quality products quickly and professionally”. That statement enraged many graduates who complained that after spending years in schools then found out that what they have learned are no longer needed. After many debates, the conclusion is focusing on the changing job market and the quick adaptation of schools to accommodate these changes. The final verdict” “It is the school that fail students NOT the industry or the market”. A major U.S newspaper declared: “Students need to look at the training program carefully and select schools that are well positioned with flexible programs that can adjust quickly to market changes. A degree is no longer a guarantee but the training programs itself that can make the different between good jobs and the unemployment line”.

Even well known countries who have succeed in IT outsourcing such as India and China also took notice of these changes. Instead of focus on the demand of coding and testing, they are switching more into managing as it is much more profitable than programming. In the past few years, India has outsourced most coding and testing to other countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, and even some African countries. A Indian manager explained: “I could double or triple my profits by switching my people into managing IT projects rather than programming. There are more demand on these skills in the U.S and European markets and a software manager makes three to five times more than programmer so why stay in coding and testing? The changing trend of IT outsourcing continues to move from the U.S and Europe to India, China then from there the more profitable areas will stay and the lesser profit areas such as coding and testing will be outsourced to lower cost countries.

The lack of both technical and business skills means that employers in the U.S and Europe are taking a new approach to degree subjects such as computer science and software engineer. They look for people who have the potential to apply technology in an innovative ways that support strategic business goals and priorities rather than just pure technical. The demand is switching to such people who have taken trainings in information systems management who understand enough of the technology to make informed business decisions. Instead of looking for technical experience, companies now value knowledge gained in business functions such as service management, requirements management and customer relationship management. Students who have taken some accounting and finance courses or resource planning, project management would be better than more programming languages.

According to recent industry survey, such demands are growing fast, not just because of the need to align technology and business strategies, but because there is a shortage of good business management skills within the IT industry itself. For many years, the IT industry is managed by technical people but the change in the global market and the financial crisis have changed everything. Increasingly, IT has a seat at the corporate board and is now seen as a strategic, rather than purely operational function. To survive the 21st century global market, every company will need such talent management team who possess both technical and business skills. If universities cannot equip IT graduates with these skills, then companies must instead turn to bring in these skills from wherever they can find as they need to improve their business. The most logical solution is “outsourcing” technical works to others, and “insourcing” talents from other countries to run their business as more companies are hiring talents from oversea than ever before.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN

Few years ago, the main focus of the information technology industry is reducing costs by outsourcing works to lower labor cost countries but today the main focus shifts from costs to skills acquisition. As the software systems became larger and more complex, higher skills are needed regardless of the costs. Software is a unique and critical component in all businesses and it extends globally with the application of internet technologies. There were several studies findings that larger and complex softwares require certain knowledge and skills that a majority software developers today do not have. There are NOT ENOUGH supply of experienced project managers, Information Systems Managers, and system architects with certain domain expertise. There is a shortage of adequately educated and trained software engineers in the both U.S, Europe AND China and India. Currently, there are no established software education standards for large and complex systems so it is up to each university and training company to come up with their own training programs.
A key challenge is to identify certain aspects of software engineering that are unique to large and complex software systems. For example, courses that can address requirements engineering, system architect, software design, development methodology, software modeling and simulation, interface management, software project management, system integration, software security, system sustainment, and configuration management. Unfortunately, these areas require a lot of experiences in the industry and typical academic professors may NOT have experience to teach and most industry professionals are too busy to spend time teaching.

As the technology industry is changing rapidly, software developers who do not pay attention to these rapid changes in the next few years could see themselves left behind. With the expansion of information technologies in every business, software developers have to be diligent in assessing how these trends and technologies impact their jobs. If they don’t, they could be out of work. A software department that operates in the traditional way of managing infrastructure and information will typically ignore the trends that changing the industry until it is too late. As they are trying to catch up, they will make mistake, probably a lot of mistakes and it will be very costly.

The average Information Technology environment is now more complex than few years ago and the average skills of software developer are changing fast. Today the trends are Enterprise 2.0, Social software, Virtualization, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Mobile applications, Security and outsourcing etc. All theses changes are happening fast but few people are paying attention to it. It used to be that company buys software, developers implement it and it was all done in-house but today, company license Commercial-off-the-Shelves (COTS) then customized it, some applications are being outsourced, many infrastructures are rented from SaaS vendor AND everything must be working correctly and securely. The role of software developers is becoming more of a solution architect, a systems integrators, and an information systems managers than just programmers or testers but most schools are still teaching programming and testing like nothing has changed.

Under current conditions, companies may be forced to take a “Dramatic approach” because of limited budgets and high competitions. One approach could be completely outsource information systems to another countries where they have people with knowledge and skills. Other could be move quickly into “Virtualization” and “Cloud computing” where vendors will take over many key information technology functions. With globalization, these vendors are NOT necessary have to be in the same country as the company. These approach will create new opportunities to some countries but also create significant difficulty to others. For example, last months U.K government began to outsource significant amount of government IT works to India and put a lot of UK software people out of work. Nobody would even think that government would do something that dramatic but when a majority of government software workers are complacent and believe that their jobs are safe, they did not even want to learn something new. According to a report, some people who spent many years working in government systems only know how to program in Fortran and Pascal in Mainframe computers, they did not even know how to use a PC.
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Prof. John Vu
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Source: SEGVN

Many people believe “Globalization” as selling and buying things all over the world but it is more than just “Import and Export”. Some believe “Globalization” is about doing business in “Low-cost” countries to gain advantage but this will NOT last long because sooner or later everybody will be doing the same thing, and competitors will eventually catch up. So whatever you do, your competitors could do the same. So what does “Globalization” really means? It means that in this highly competition world, everything will happen very fast, things will change at the speed of technology, and customers can change their minds fast too. Whatever your business is, you must make sure that your products and services are creating better values to the customers than your competitors.

To create better value, you must understand and accept changes as the way to do business in this global world. To change means to differentiate yourself from others by having a global strategy to remain viable and strong. Of course, your competitors can also doing the same so your strategy must based on your ability to innovate which mean you must seek, hire, and retain the best people. To do that you must look at the education systems of every countries and identify which has the best then go there to find these talents. Today, the U.S and Europe’s education still have some advantages but the gap is narrower as more and more countries are improving their education. Before going further there are several things about innovation that I would like to discuss with you:

1) Many people believe innovation can only be found at university that has “Modern laboratory” with “Genius” who is working quietly to invent something. Since only developed countries can afford this kind of works, others never have a chance. This is wrong because innovation is a team work activities and it depends on the sharing and collaborating among team members to achieve a common goals. For example, many inventions of this century is created in garage or basement of somebody, not in the modern laboratory and by geniuses. The giant electronic company HP is created in the garage of two engineers named Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Apple Computer is created in the basement of a students named Steven Jobs. None of these people ever consider themselves “genius”.

2) Many people believe that innovation is about technology and only technical people know how to innovate. The fact is Innovation can happen in any areas and may have nothing to do with technology. The idea of building personal computer based on customer order started with Michael Dell when he was a student in University of Texas. He brought many electronic components to assembled Personal Computer in the dormitory and sell to students there. The business was so good that he enlisted more people to help then eventually invented a supply chains and formed Dell computer.

3) Many people believe innovation is create something new, never exist before. This is really pure fantasy because most innovative ideas can be traced to the profound knowledge and skills of people who already doing something then come up with improvement to make it faster, better and cheaper. Most innovations today are incremental improvements. While small increments may seem insignificant but when combined, they are critical and open more opportunities. Honda started as a small company that make pump engines then go to motorcycles then cars, then ships and eventually airplanes. Can you guess what will be next?

4) Many people believe innovation is the job of scientists and inventors so it can not be managed. The fact is every innovation should be treated as part of everybody’s job and anybody can come up with new idea to make thing better. When Sam Walton saw people doing inventory on paper and sent them from one office to others, he asked why don’t they use computer to automate it. He use information system to manage everything and created the largest retail business in the world: Wal-Mart.

So where do innovation come from? They all come from people and today knowledgeable people is the asset of the company. In the past, capital is the asset as the manufactures needed money to invest in machines and equipment but the industrial age is gone and today we are in the information age where knowledge is the rule. To take advantage of globalization, we need knowledgeable people and knowledgeable people come from education and training.

I remember in the book “The World is Flat”, Tom Friedman wrote that globalization has made Shanghai, Bangalore, and San Jose the next-door neighbors as in the “Flat world” there is no border. Today companies can hire qualified workers from all over the world and people can work from anywhere that has access to the internet. In few years, the term “Outsourcing” will be obsolete as it does not matter where people live, many will go to work by “clicking a mouse” on their home computers. I believe that people will NOT have to go where the jobs are but the jobs have to go where the skilled people LIVE. That is why I believe that investing in education to develop skilled people is the best investment a person, a company, or a country could make.
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Prof. John Vu
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Source: SEGVN

Today education must focuses on the development of skills and abilities that allow everyone to build their own knowledge, to face new situations and resolve new problems by themselves. The greatest mistake is to believe that education is simply the acquisition of knowledge and this is the solution to all problems. Knowledge is nothing if we do not know how to use it properly, appropriately, ethically and correctly. Do not confuse knowledge with competence. Knowledge is what you know and competence is how you apply it. Competence can not be achieved without the corresponding knowledge but knowledge can exist without the competence as people call it “Wishful thinking”. In this case, people talk about knowledge but do not know how to apply it or do not want to use it. The goal of learning is know how to filter and organize available information and distinguish between the data and information that make up the knowledge.

The era of knowledge-based economy has opened up new challenge for the education system. Today society demands that everybody should have access to education throughout their lives. This is not just the traditional education where children go to schools from kindergarten to colleges but throughout their life or lifelong study. Educational systems must respond to these new demands and create the conditions for this kind of education to take place. As technologies changes every year so does education system must adjust or else they will be left behind.
This is why education should not just be a process of transfer knowledge but must focus on the ability to learn how to learn. The education system should broaden the practicability aspect rather than achieve the specialization of knowledge within rigid structures of modeling, theorization with “Book knowledge” and “Rote memorization”. We must educate our young people for their entire life because preparation for life is also preparation for the principles of good living such as ethics, citizenship and preservation of the environment. All of this implies great changes in the structure of educational system which until now has only focus on a certain period in people’s lives. The new education of the 21st century should be redesigned to achieve the need for life-long learning.

All changes require new attitudes and mentalities of its citizen. Strengthen the knowledge-based economy by means of better education and training are essential because without these elements, developing countries will continue to exist simply as those with many factories with miserable conditions of work, where incomes will be determined by cheap labor and people will work only on assembling high technology products and thus suffering ever-increasing technological backwardness in relation to the creation and innovation of technology products. Of course, education always come with a price but if you think education is expensive, try ignorant. Without a good education system, no country can prosper to this highly competitive world because if you do not improve, other countries will.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN

My friend seemed not quite convinced yet and he said:” It is easy for anybody to use India as an example but don’t you think it was a special case?’ I told him that it is not a special case and the lesson in India can be applied to other agriculture society as well if it starts with education. I believe the establishment of a high-quality education system can bring significant change in economy of developing country but this increasing importance of knowledge for economic development can also produce inequality between developing and developed countries if no action is taken. Without a good education, the gap will continue to grow larger and it will be difficult to fix. Since knowledge and technology are changing very fast, the key aspect of education should also be focused on lifelong learning to keep people current with changes. The tradition way of providing education as a set of basic knowledge to qualify people for their jobs is obsolete and must be changed to focus on giving people access to an ever-growing knowledge. Primary education should be the key focus because it is the foundation for any advanced development. If student has not mastered the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, it will be hard for them to engage in continued learning as in lifelong learning. Secondary and tertiary education, which builds on the primary level, must also be improved based on a comprehensive plan where students could be given options for education and employment that enable them to contribute to economic growth and development.

Since education is a key component of economic prosperity, education systems must be viewed in the context of the skills needed in industry rather than a basic knowledge dictated by people in academia. Therefore the collaboration between industry and education institutions is essential. In a knowledge society, industry plays an increasing role in determine what is needed and what is not based on their needs. In developed countries, private schools have an important role in the education system because they are in a better position than public schools to develop training for the specific needs of the industry. People often ask why most of the top universities in the U.S are private schools? The simple answer could be they all receive significant fundings from industry because their education programs are tailored to meet the need of the industry. With fundings private schools can hire the best professors, establishes the best research laboratories, creates the best curricula and recruits the best students. In this kind of relationship, industry can require private schools to establish programs to help people become self-motivated lifelong learners in respond to the increasing need in industry for certain skills and knowledge. For better efficiency, many private schools have utilized modern computing and communication technologies to enable students to access specialized knowledge quickly, in a self-reliant manner. This includes the opportunities offered by e-learning in the transfer of knowledge between schools and industry. In this practical collaboration, students can interact with other students in other schools, work on joint projects for industry (Capstone type of projects), students can also learn at the workplace through a wide range of internships, and university-industry co-operation joint researches. However, this kind of approach will not work if students don’t feel a sense of urgency or a need to continue learning as opposed to just receive academic degrees. I think a lot of work needs to be done in raising awareness among students and society about how to become a knowledge society and the benefits of lifelong learning.

My friend seemed to agree so he asked: “In that case, what would you suggest?” I told him that we need to invest more in education and training and adjust the education systems to meet the needs of the industry and make lifelong learning a key aspect of education so people can help growing the economy and make it a knowledge economy.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN

As a history professor, my friend is very curious about what happened in India so he asked: “In your view India is very successful in building the knowledge society by skipping the industrial phase but why did they make that kind of decision? I told him: “The answer is simple. In order to go into the industrial phase you must invest in the infrastructures such as having good electricity, highways and transportation systems to get raw materials to the manufactures and products from the manufactures to the market. You must build sea-ports and airports and invest in machineries and equipments for industries. All of these require significant investments but in 1991, India economy was so bad and could not afford it so Indian government decided to invest in education which was much cheaper than infrastructures. By focusing in quality education, the government invests in the future and as a result, now India has very high skill workforce that help create the knowledge society and economic prosperity. With the money from export services such as outsourcing, India starts to improve the infrastructures and ready to industrialize the country. I believe in the next ten years, India will have many factories that operate and manage by high skilled Indian managers and eventually will become a very powerful industrial nation.

My friend nods his head: “So actually India did not skip the phase but only reversed the order”. I agreed: “Yes, but they did it wonderfully and that was the right decision at that time and even today. If you look at the industrialization of China then you will see that the result was not the same. China followed the development evolution theory by improved the infrastructures to established the industrial economy. China has great highways, good transportation systems with many seaports and airports, well established electricity, water for factories. Chinese government invested significant amount of money into large infrastructure projects and with these in place, China draw a lot of foreign investment and eventually over twenty years, become an industrial nation with the fastest growing economy that sell products all over the world. Unfortunately, China did not focus on education at the time of economic reform but focused more in infrastructures so when all things were in place, China did not have the knowledge and the skills to operate them. If you look carefully, you will see that most large factories in China are foreign owned, equipments are imported oversea and most high level managers of factories are foreigners. Not being recognized as having high skilled workers, developed countries only view China as a large low- cost labor for their factories. Today when global financial crisis happened, countries stop importing then suddenly China is in a bad situation: foreign companies begin to withdraw and close their factories putting million of workers out of jobs. What will happen next remain to be seen but you can draw your own conclusion.

My friend become quiet for a while then asked: “So you think education is the key for economic prosperity because it gives country both the knowledge needed and the skills to be self sufficiency but you also mention about the lifelong learning as an important aspect of the knowledge society, why do you think people must study all their life?” I told him that last week, a student also asked the same question – I have spent more than 18 years in school, now I have a degree and a job offering. I am ready to go to work, make money, buy a car, get married, and enjoy life but then you tell me that I need to continue to learn for my entire life. Why should I need more learning?” My answer is: The traditional view of education stated that school is a place where students go to obtain knowledge, to receive degrees and use the knowledge that they learnt in school to make a living comfortably for the rest of their life. However, that view has been obsolete for quite sometime because today with globalization, with high competition among countries, there is no such thing as permanent jobs or lifetime employment because knowledge changes every few years, if you do not keep your knowledge up-to-date, you could be eliminated from the job market.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN

They need to establish programs to improve their education systems. Of course, there are many theories and many answers from education experts but I believe that the building of the knowledge society is inseparable from lifelong learning, just as the knowledge economy cannot be developed without continuous learning. The rigid traditional education systems based on a set of academic knowledge must be reformed to provide people with lifelong learning opportunities that connect the education system with the needs of society and the economy. In order to do that we must review the goals of education, its content, its methods of knowledge transmission, as well as the mission of the school and the role of the teacher.

We are living in a world of rapidly evolving knowledge so education system has to be organized, structured and transferred to every citizen so they could apply it intelligently. I use the word “Citizen” and not “student” because the new education system should not only design for people of school age (5 to 25) but also for adult who want to learn. School should not be a place where teacher teach and students listen passively but must be a place where learning happens, where teacher facilitate the learning by coaching students with the necessary skills so they can apply in their career. To promote this kind of education, schools must establish relationship with industry by making their programs in alignment with the demand of industry and adopting flexible forms of learning. Current economic development requires the interface of education, economy and the labor market. Education should be ready to react to the changing needs of economy, just like modern economy should be open to learning and scientific innovation. To ensure lifelong learning government needs to create a new education system that would cover the formal education system, the non-formal learning and the informal learning in order to develop different knowledge and skills in a variety of school, industry, and the community. Modern life requires a new approach to education of its citizen. In a rapidly changing society, education is an ongoing process and should be continuously updated and upgraded. Working people should be given a possibility to choose different plans of learning for improving their knowledge and skills.

To enable the working people to improve their knowledge and to adapt them to the changing market, several conditions must be met. First, continuous education requires funding, therefore, government must have policies and direction to encourage continuous education and invest in adult education. Second, a closer partnership of the education system and the industry would help to fund resources necessary for improving the knowledge and skills of workers. To provide people with lifelong learning opportunities, government will need to provide more access to the vast educational knowledge with proper guidance and counseling services.
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Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
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Source: SEGVN