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Future of Colleges
Good article that is a summary of a Washington Post excerpt from a new book.
The comments add a lot to the discussion.
My take:
- A US Supreme Court ruling basically destroyed using testing to figure out if somebody is suitable for a job. The work around for this is using a college degree to show base knowledge. My opinion is the ruling actually made things worse on finding good people. Note that the US military, that uses lots of testing, especially during World War 2, is exempt from this ruling
Griggs vs. Duke Power Co.
- I question the assumption that colleges will go to a liberal arts typology. I don't see the economics that would drive this. The current structure of colleges in the US overall, is doing a poor job of education, with a high drop out rate, at a high cost.
- Credentialing is the biggest issue I see for the growth of MOOCS.
- If everyone is using the same material, from online classes for example if a video existed of the Feynman Lectures, what will differentiate a school then?
- Many businesses are frustrated with the output of colleges for the skills they are looking for.
School’s Out Forever - The American InterestLabels: college admissions, future, MOOCS
ebooks - Will there be a 2nd hand market?
Will there be a 2nd hand market for books?
What happens with inheritance with iTunes and Kindle Books? Are they then gone?
Can books be loaned? On the Kindle, its up to the author.
With physical books, the answers are easy. With eBooks, not so easy. With e-Books, the product does not degrade with use, as a physical book does.
And what happens when a device ends, with all the eBooks that only worked with that device? Will the Nook be around in a couple of years? What of the books on the Kobo, that Borders was pushing?
DRM, Digital Rights Management, a fancy word for copy protection is used on many e-books, and makes managing moving books around a headache. I have heard, there is third party software to remove DRM, but what a headache.
Secondhand Downloads: Will Used E-Books and Digital Games Be for Sale? - Bloomberg Business Labels: amazon, e-books, future, kindle
Beyond College, Some of the Challenges and Opportunities
My Daughter Graduated!
I just attended my daughter's graduation from college, and she has a job she starts in a few weeks. So my wife and my job is done, and she is leaving the nest. Thinking back on it, what have we done right, and wrong in our 20 years of bringing her up? It's been a long journey, and I am generally happy with the results. She is an amazing young lady that has a super bright journey. And will she be able to adapt to our changing society?
Challenges & Opportunities:
- Outsourcing
- People skills - She has great people skills, fortunately
- Automation
- Continual Education
- Perceived Value
- Identifying Opportunities
- Working toward a goal
- Chinese Language & Culture
Outsourcing:
Outsourcing is a huge challenge for many industries. There are now lawyers and accountants working overseas, for US firms. IT and Call Centers have been traditional outsources areas, but any type of work that is not geographical, in person based, can be outsourced.
A scary story, where a company had IT workers being fired, had to train their replacements:
One of the company I worked for outsourced my job. It got taken over by 3 people in the Philippines, and the company still saved money. What was nice was later on the company did offer me another job.
And unfortunately, under current US law, H1B holders are treated as indentured servants. Basically a worker who comes here on an H1B visa, needs to stay with the same employer or they have to restart their immigration process. This usually takes 4-5 years till they can get a green card. My strong opinion, is H1B workers should not lose their place in the immigration que if they change employers. Indentured servitude is just wrong. While I was getting my Masters, I had an outside immigration lawyer come speak to at my school about the immigration process.
People Skills:
People skills are such an important area for success! You need to learn to get along with your co-workers, or you will fail. Office politics, unfortunately, is a fact and just part of human nature. Understanding what your boss wants from you, and meeting that is a requirement. My under-graduate is in Engineering, and after falling on my face a few times early in my career, I focused on improving my people skills and it has helped a huge amount.
Automation
The robots are coming - The Terminator is here! No, that's not totally true. Robots are coming, and it's a huge change. What is happening is a lot of automation, both in the factory as well as with knowledge systems. A good article - No Sector Is Safe from Robots. You can now buy a basic robot, to move boxes for $25,000. A knowledge systems are helping in decision making, such as in white collar jobs. Law offices have gone through a huge amount of automation, a simple example is where discovery used to take an auditorium full of lawyers going through documents. Now it's done by scanning them in, OCR them, and do a Google search along with any other electronic documents. The is a lot of automation going on, in both in the factory and in the office, and this will be changing the way many people work. The exception, for now, is the service industry that requires physical interaction. The important skill to have, is being able to think and do the right work. To be a knowledge worker, that is at least one step above what can be automated. To add value. With my daughter's education, I believe she can adapt successfully to a world that will be changing more and more.
Continual Education
A key part of having a successful career is keeping up to date. New college graduates have the latest knowledge, and after a few years out working, will they still be up to date? The good news is with e-Learning it's become easier and easier to keep up to date. MOOC's are amazing. I see huge changes in the higher education model that will lower cost, and is great for the student / customer. An example of the insane cost of higher education is this post. $62K a year, for 4 years? That's $260K. In most places that is a house. And what is the ROI on a $248K investment? Verses going to a state school for a lot less. My daughter went to a state school, and it was a lot less than $248K, and she has no student loans! And got done in under 3 years.
Perceived Value
This is a harder one, but basically you need a linkedin profile and make it as great a possible since a lot of people will use it to check you out. It establishes your credibility. My linkedin is not a great example of what to do, since it's been more of a hobby that I worked on for fun and understand linkedin better. My daughter's linkedin will grow, as her career advances.
Identifying Opportunities
This is a hard one to teach as a parent, but it's so important. There are so many opportunities out there, but such limited time. Having a Goal helps. My wife and my goal for my daughter was to be a good person, to have her do well in K-12 by going to a great school, keep her Chinese Language and Cultural skills (she is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Taiwanese), have good friends, and go and finish college. And then get a good job. And all of those have been accomplished.
Chinese Language & Culture
Teaching my daughter Chinese has been a challenge, and a lot of work. The result has been worth it, where my daughter has a great relationship with my wife's parents, that don't speak English. That is so valuable! And with her fluent Chinese and understanding of Chinese Culture, she has future opportunities in working with Chinese businesses, or US subsidiaries in China. This is a great addition to who she is.
Labels: college, daughter, family, future
LAUSD Ipads - Bought with Construction Bonds?
China sends its first female astronaut into space
Siri and Learning Chinese
If Siri releases an API for Siri this could revolutionize language instruction. Siri is the voice command ability for the iPhone 4S. How Siri is different is it gives a natural language understanding.
What I see is instead of the traditional textbook, all of a sudden you could have a voice interactive teaching of a foreign language. I see this as a game change for foreign language instruction.
Siri on the iPhone 4s will be in Chinese in 2012 - Shanghai List Labels: Education Improvements, future, teaching chinese
Movie studios give up the DVD ghost, look to the Internet
I am amazed by how fast DVD Sales are down. Blockbuster is but one example of this. I look at the prices of DVD's in WalMart and Costco, and as a consumer I appreciate the low prices, but I am amazed. Some DVD's are only a couple of dollars to buy.
Looking at the current plans of the movie studios, my feeling is they are going to repeat the mistakes of the music industry driving people into getting movies through file sharing. If its not convenient and a cost that is acceptable, people will find other sources.
Movie studios give up the DVD ghost, look to the Internet - LA TimesLabels: Bilingual DVDs, future, media
Guess which dinner this was?
Great article - America's Real Dream Team - Thomas Friedman Guess what formal dinner had these guests... Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand. No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up? O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.
Finish the article America's Real Dream Team - Thomas Friedman Labels: Education, Education Improvements, future
Disabled in China
Beautiful lady that her picture takes my breath away, but sad article. Liu Yan was paralyzed in practice before the performance of a life time at the Chinese Olympics opening ceremony. And recently married, and it seems now no longer married. Still Dancing in Her Dreams - NY Times. The life of the disabled is improving in China, as shown by China hosting a para olympics games and passing some laws to improve on paper the life of the disabled. It helps that the former leader of China's son is disabled (during the cultural revolution), Deng Pufang has been a huge help. To show the power of the younger Deng, he was Executive President for the Chinese Olympics. The former term in China for disabled was can fei (deficient or useless). When my Father due to his health was temporary forced to use a wheel chair, I appreciated how far the US has come in the area of access for the disabled. It is so nice the amount of ramps that are great for wheel chair access, as well as baby strollers. Going to foreign countries with a baby stroller can be a real adventure. Labels: future
China's Rural Household Ownership of Goods
Great article in the WSJ, unfortunately it's subscriber only. In the print edition it was called " China Sees a New Market in its own Backyard" Ownership Changes per 100 Households of Durable Goods
Goods |
In 1990 |
In 2007 |
Bicycles |
118.3 |
97.3 |
Color TV's |
4.7 |
94.4 |
Mobile Phones |
0 |
77.8 |
Washing Machines |
9.1 |
45.9 |
Refrigerators |
1.2 |
26.1 |
Computers |
0 |
3.7 |
Labels: future
Worrisome China/US Finances
Chinese Leader Raps U.S. for Global Slump - Wall Street Journal.Very worrisome. Basically the US finances have lost face and trust with the Chinese Government. The Chinese government is feeling betrayed on their investments. Key Points from the article: - Beijing is re-examining its U.S. investments, say people familiar with the government's thinking.
- Chinese government investments got burned with Morgan Stanley, the collapsed Reserve Primary Fund and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Chinese central bank last year stopped lending its Treasury holdings for fear the borrowers will go bankrupt.
- China the largest foreign investor in bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- has been sharply trimming its holdings of that debt.
- Shares fell 60% in the $5.6 billion stake in Morgan Stanley purchased by China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp. (CIC, 13 months ago.
- CIC has sustained large paper losses on the $3 billion it invested in Blackstone Group LP in June 2007, as well as the Morgan Stanley stake.
- CIC's nearly $5.4 billion investment in the Reserve Primary Fund, the money-market fund that "broke the buck" in September as a result of the Lehman collapse, has asked the US to redeem it. That has not been done yet, causing worry about US credibilty.
- The Chinese government has received briefings from the former secretary of treasury on the financial crisis. This shows the depth of communication - At one briefing for Chinese officials to explain the change, said people present, they questioned and debated the meaning of nearly every line of the new Treasury plan.
Labels: future, US Chinese Image
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