In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama took another step in his effort to rebrand community colleges. He sees the nation’s two-year colleges as playing a big role in preparing those who will work in emerging high-tech manufacturing industries. Putting worries about his job-creation strategy aside for a minute (I’ll believe [...]
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August 29th, 2011 An article in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, focused on lithium-ion battery makers in Michigan, does a nice job of laying out the many factors involved in creating manufacturing jobs for Americans. In “Make or Break,” author Jon Gertner describes prevailing business models that discourage the slow-return, incremental investments needed to bring new factories into [...] August 1st, 2011 Is it safe to assume that when CNN reports on a presidential economic or educational initiative that’s been around for awhile, there’s some serious White House PR effort under way? A “CNNMoney” column today titled “Recovery at Risk: Community Colleges Step in to Fill ‘Skills Gap’” by Tami Luhby lays out the basics of [...] July 16th, 2011 Teeth pretty much gritted, I’m collecting uses of the word “innovation” in discussions of America’s current economic malaise, convinced that the promotion of high-tech invention has become the smiley face of the new millennium: A jolly and superficial exhortation (“If only we innovate, things will be better!”), that has started to function as [...] June 23rd, 2011 The idea that 4-year college degrees and liberal arts curricula waste students’ time and money, which I’ve lately been writing about in this blog, is definitely spreading among those who seem most easily to get media exposure. The recent words of Bill Gross, one of the country’s most revered bond investors, have been heard across [...] June 14th, 2011 I’ve been watching the spread of a troubling recessionary idea: That sending fewer Americans to college will solve our economic problems. In STEM fields, this is part of the whole “skills gap” story so popular in talk about education-for-jobs today…the notion that in order for the nation to thrive, we need more people who prepare [...] June 11th, 2011 “I want to have as few people touching our products as possible.” So spoke Dan Mishek, the managing director of an industrial plastic products manufacturer in Minnesota, quoted in Catherine Rampell’s NYTimes article yesterday, “Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers.” Why would an employer want to keep people away from its products? Germphobia? Elitism? No, [...] January 25th, 2011 If President Obama was an ordinary orator, I’d be placing bets on the number of times “innovation,” “education” and just plain “technology” will come up in the State of the Union tonight…with side-bets on “future” and “tomorrow.” But as an eloquent stylist, he’ll likely avoid the sort of redundancy that makes for good speech-based gambling fun. (Or, [...] December 17th, 2010 Innovating Then…and Now? (from eriecanal.org) It’s official: “Innovation” is going viral among American politicians. “Yankee ingenuity” is back, with a vengeance. Our famous inventive spirit will beat back all comers in the quickening global race for economic dominance. Brainpower is the new horsepower. I’m now completely convinced that the anxiety/enthusiasm recipe I wrote about [...] December 8th, 2010 Be Afraid: China’s “stellar” performance on recent standardized tests, described in yesterday’s New York Times (“Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators,” by Sam Dillon), is apparently another sign that America is being “out-educated.” We are at our very own “Sputnik” moment, President Obama tells us, our nation once again threatened by the academic attainments [...] |
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