science

...now browsing by tag

 
21st Century Careers 21st century jobs 21st century workforce Academic Initiative career paths careers cisco College and university challenges community colleges corporate social responsibility CSR developed countries developing countries Education foreign students GE General Electric General Electric’s Ecomagination globalization global knowledge economy global knowledge economy strategies Harvard Business School Hewlett-Packard HP IBM India Infosys Intel IT professionals Jobs of the future knowledge jobs Lisa Kahn math skills Microsoft Microsoft Learning offshoring outsourcing SAP science science skills Smarter Planet STEM STEM education universities workforce of the future
 

IBM’s Plan to Transform University IT Education And Spur Student Enthusiasm in the Process—Summary

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

This week’s blog is an overview of the findings of my new report, “IBM’s Plan to Transform University IT Education: And Spur Student Enthusiasm in the Process” in which I examine how IBM’s university alliances have evolved to emphasize education in areas that transcend IT skills, and the long-term benefits that IBM is likely to derive from this approach.

IBM started its Academic Initiative in the 1950s when it helped universities create Information Science programs. It extended this program around specific IT and engineering skills and then, in 2003 added a Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) initiative.

This SSME initiative went way beyond the university efforts of IBM—as well as most other vendors—that traditionally focused on “hard” science and technology skills, such as around programming, database design, electrical engineering and physics. SSME, in contrast, emphasizes the needs for universities to encourage multi-disciplinary education and the need to develop T-shaped skills, which combine deep skills in one or more fields, plus a high-level understanding across many others. IBM worked with universities to help professors expand the focus of their own courses and departmental curricula and, most importantly, to coordinate curricula across multiple schools within a university.

It, for example, encouraged and helped schools refocus engineering education around real-world problems and train engineers to work in multi-disciplinary teams. It also challenged business schools to evolve their traditional focus on management of manufacturing companies (which now accounts for less than 20% of developed-country economies) to developing a similarly rigorous management science around services (which already account for about 60%). Some 40 universities have are going further, creating truly integrated curricula that cross traditionally sacrosanct boundaries—integrating courses across schools including management, information science, engineering and social science. A few have even begun offering new cross-school degree programs around SSME-related themes.

Smarter Planet—Using SSME to Change the World

IBM’s huge, corporate-wide Smarter Planet initiative is, in many ways, the application of SSME to critical, real-world problems. SSME, after all, is an effort to create a science around decomposing and recomposing service-based processes, optimizing service supply chains and value chains and creating interdisciplinary research centers to design and optimize complex “service systems”—combinations of people, organizational networks and technologies that are aligned around a specific objective, such as designing and managing more livable cities, more effective healthcare systems and more efficient energy networks.

This effectively transforms SSME from an academic discipline into an instrument for addressing societal needs. It provides universities with the tools required to create education tracks and, eventually, degree programs around social goals—thereby attracting and making it easier for students who want to “change the world”. Moreover, IBM’s efforts to help shape educational curricula across Smarter Planet initiatives now transcends traditional information science, engineering and business schools to reach into areas including mathematics, architecture, healthcare management, public service, urban studies, and others.

Although such programs may not attract those students who are driven to become hedge fund managers or musicians, they do have the potential of attracting and providing “employment-ready” educations for millions of other students with similarly strong drives in other fields.

Engineering a Path to an IBM Job

Virtually all corporate university education programs share a common goal—to facilitate the education of students with the skills and perspective required to address the talent needs of the sponsor corporation, its customers and its partners. It’s easy to see the direct benefit that IBM can gain from programs that teach System z mainframe skills, that Intel can gain from multi-core architecture design programs or that Wal-Mart can derive from the University of Arkansas’ supply-chain optimization program.

But what benefits will IBM gain from encouraging universities to launch broad, non-vendor specific programs like SSME, healthcare management and transportation system design? The company’s logo isn’t on or necessarily associated with these programs, nor is IBM the first place most newly-minted graduates would look for a job to solve world hunger—unless, perhaps, you know about IBM’s Smarter Food program and its projects to increase agricultural yields, improve sustainability, reduce waste through the optimization of supply chains and improve food inspection processes.

That’s where some of IBM’s multiple university outreach programs fit in. The company has 4,000 University Ambassadors, typically IBM domain experts, who volunteer to work with universities to engage with faculty members, develop classes around real-world problems, deliver guest lectures, participate in seminars and otherwise engage with professors and students. The company also provides education tools, such as its INNOV8 Business Process Modeling (BPM) simulation game and is adapting many of its other courses to new learning methods, as through support of community portals and wikis, discussion forums, blogs, and Facebook and Twitter communities.

It also has an active university research program through which it funds professors and graduate students to conduct specialized research and all types of fellowship and internship programs in which it works with professors to identify high-potential students. It also partners with universities on IBM’s annual Battle of the Brains competition, the most recent of which attracted more than 28,000 students from 2,000 universities worldwide. These competitions engage interdisciplinary teams to tackle real world problems. The theme of these competitions? Would you guess they are typically aligned around one of IBM’s 21 (and growing) Smarter Planet themes?

IBM will certainly not attract or hire all of the graduates from SSME and Smarter Planet-theme programs. Nor does it want to. Although it hopes, and is positioning itself to identify and recruit some of the most talented graduates, its ultimate objective is to seed the world—its businesses, governments, NGOs and universities—with people who think about the world’s needs (and solutions) in much the same way that IBM does, who have been touched by IBM Ambassadors and programs, who understand IBM products, and who recognize that IBM is dedicated to addressing the same types of needs as are they.

This all leaves me with two questions. When will other corporations recognize the long-term payoffs of this broader approach to partnering with universities? And, how will they reach professors and students in the myriad fields that will be increasingly reshaped and redefined by IT?

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Corporate Social Responsibility, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Education System and Institutions, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IBM, IT Company Strategies, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Role in Education, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Universities and Grad Schools, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Great U.S. Tech Education Debate

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

On March 15, TechCrunch produced a very informative debate between Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel and huge proponent of technology education, and Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke/UC-Berkeley professor who writes extensively on innovation, entrepreneurship and cross-border movement of technology talent. 

The debate was spawned by a Wadhwa comments in a Scientific American article that claimed there is no shortage of tech talent in the U.S. To summarize a debate, which must be read in its entirety to be fully understood, Wadhwa claims there is plenty of talent in the form of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) talent in this country. The problem is that much of this talent is in the form of postdocs (post-doctoral fellows) that are bottled up in a broken university technology education system, and in foreign-born PhDs who, once they receive degrees from U.S. universities, find it increasingly difficult or unattractive to remain in the U.S. If the artificial economic and political restraints were removed, and STEM PhDs were actually paid what they were worth, this talent would be unleashed and produce the type of innovation and jobs that the U.S. so desperately needs.

Barrett views things differently. Although he acknowledges that some postdoc PhD’s do not achieve their commercial market potential, he claims that this is due to their decisions to dedicate their efforts to the long, uncertain process of becoming tenured professors at research universities, rather than working at corporations. In his view, the real problem lies in our K-12 education system, which, due largely to the lack of qualified science and mathematics teachers, fails to ignite children’s’ imaginations around the opportunities in these disciplines and fails to provide a foundational knowledge for university study.

Wadhwa certainly acknowledges the limitations in the U.S. K-12 education system and the need to create “excitement about science and engineering at the national level and motivate our best and brightest to become engineers and scientists.” He, however, clams that the biggest problem is pay. The scientific community in general and the educational system in particular, simply do not pay enough to retain the best talent. These people are lured by the huge the huge rewards promised by the financial industry (such as becoming venture capitalists or investment bank “quants “), rather than become research scientists who drive U.S. innovation.

My Interpretation

While the debate is fascinating, it appears to me that Wadhwa over-generalizes the admittedly disturbing dilemma of postdocs. Just because some STEM PhDs remain in poorly paid fellowships (with hopes of earning valued professorships) rather than going to industry, it does not necessarily mean either that:

  • There are not enough jobs for STEM graduates; or that
  • STEM professions do not pay competitively.

True, not all STEM PhDs can become professors at prestigious research universities. On other hand, not all law school graduates can win U.S. Supreme Court clerkships or highly paid posts at premier white shoe law firms. That, however, does not stop students from overwhelming law school admissions offices. Nor do the short odds of becoming professional athletes, actors or musicians prevent millions of young adults from aspiring to these careers.

Even if there are not enough tenured professorships, PhDs who do need jobs can always “stoop” to work in the private sector. Nor should we confine the analysis of STEM jobs to PhDs. There are, after all, far more Bachelor and Master-level STEM graduates than there are PhDs. Most statistics show that newly minted STEM graduates have higher employment rates than other job categories (even during the recession) and that by far, the largest percentage of unfilled jobs utilize STEM-related skills. Moreover, starting salaries for these graduates remain among the highest of those for all degrees. As shown in a March 2010 Association of Colleges and Employers study, for example, engineering and IT jobs account for all ten of the top ten earning degrees. 

Although some segments of the financial services industry certainly pay more for a handful of the best graduates from the best schools, this cannot be viewed as the standard for all STEM jobs—just as Wall Street law firm salaries cannot be viewed as the standards for all JDs from all law schools. These numbers are too small, and their selection criteria too limited to apply to all graduates.

In sum, I generally agree with Craig Barrett that most people—especially young people—are driven as much by their passions as by the immediate opportunities for monetary rewards. There are, however, limits to this idealism. Pay must yield reasonably comfortable lifestyles and must at least be in the same ballpark as reasonably competitive fields. Although most STEM careers probably meet these criteria (except when compared with financial services, professional sports or entertainment), the big exception is in K-12 STEM education.

Unfortunately, it will take much more than competitive salaries to fix this country’s K-12 education system. Its problems are far too complex and ingrained to be solved by the education community alone. As I have discussed in many of my articles, solving these problems will require a huge amount of assistance from the private sector.

A number of private sector companies—especially IT companies, like Intel, Microsoft and IBM—are already doing great work in helping to improve education at all levels, from K through graduate schools. They are giving schools some of the tools and the training required to improve teaching and learning and helping them improve STEM curricula.

Some are even attempting to address the intense social and peer pressures against becoming “geeks” and “nerds” by demonstrating that STEM skills can be instrumental in achieving the goals of many young adults—to make a real difference in the world. As discussed in my report on IBM’s Academic Initiative, IBM is doing particularly interesting work in engaging student’s desire to make a difference in the world by showing how STEM skills are so critical to addressing some of society’s most pressing problems, as around smarter healthcare, energy and food supplies.

With all due respect to Intel’s wonderful commercials, it may be too much to hope to persuade kids to view scientists, engineers and mathematicians with the same admiration and awe as rock stars or professional athletes. It may, however, be possible to engage at least some part of their minds, psyches and self esteem around the idea of helping the world solve real problems. Perhaps someday, children focused on such missions may even earn the respect, if not necessarily the admiration, of their peers.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Education System and Institutions, Global Forces-General, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IT Industry Role in Education, IT Industry Trends, IT Industry's Role, Job and Career Opportunities, K-12, Political Forces, Skills Requirements, Societal Forces, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Universities and Grad Schools, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leveraging University Education into Careers for the New Economy

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

As discussed in my September 20, 2009 post, “Is the U.S. Losing the Luxury of Educational Choice?”,  the Great Recession has devastated employment opportunities for new university graduates. Even so, a small percentage of new graduates are not only landing their ideal jobs, but have the luxury of choosing among multiple offers. What do they know that unemployed or underemployed colleagues do not? More importantly, what lessons can their experiences provide for current and future college students who will be looking for jobs in the New Normal—the post-recessionary period that will be marked by slow consumer spending and business investment, slow jobs growth and very, very selective hiring?

Promising Specialties

Jobs—especially good jobs—will be hard to come by for years to come. Employers will face a buyer’s market and will look increasingly for the types of skills that are specifically applicable to their needs. Students that want to maximize their chances of finding quality jobs in their field may wish to consider supplementing their coursework with classes and independent study in areas that employees are likely to value.

First, let me be clear. I would never even suggest—much less recommend—that students forgo pursuing their passions in favor of areas of study that are specifically intended to lead to jobs. Having said this, those students with deep interests in fields that are likely to experience high demand over the next decade, are likely to have big advantages. These fields may include:

Specific academic disciplines, such as:

  • Engineering, all types, but especially electrical and civil;
  • Mathematics, everything from PhDs though college-trained math teachers);
  • Science, from PhDs and MDs though high school science teachers;
  • Business, especially finance (even after the financial industry crash), marketing and MIS;
  • High-level IT skills (versus programming) in areas including systems analysis, database, security and software engineering; and
  • Law, such as around regulatory compliance, privacy and healthcare regulation.

Specialties in key growth industries, including:

  • Health care (which could account for 20% of all new jobs over the next decade), for all skills from doctors to physical therapists and from research scientists to medical records and health information professionals;
  • Education, especially in fields including math and science, particularly in private (rather than public) schools and in higher education;
  • Energy, in most areas of energy exploration, production and distribution and, particularly, in alternative energy and energy management; and
  • Technology, especially in areas including bio-tech, environmental sciences, alternative energy and probably, in the future, nanotechnology.

This said, virtually every industry, regardless of how staid, and whether growing or shrinking, will offer job opportunities. Take manufacturing. Although the broad industry is expected to continue to decline for the foreseeable future, some segments, including aerospace and drugs and a broad range of advanced manufacturing segments are expected to grow. Virtually all manufacturers will need specialists in areas such as operations and supply chain optimization.

The College Conundrum

But what about those whose passions lie in other, less technical fields and slower growth industries and disciplines? What about those whose passions continue to reside in “passé” industries, such as automotive. One the bright side, even these industries will continue to hire university graduates who can help address new needs, such as designing and engineering more fuel efficient cars and capitalizing on the booming demand in high-growth, emerging countries.  

Then, of course, there are academic disciplines that may stimulate a student’s passion, but that have not traditionally experienced huge demand from recruiters. Some disciplines, such as psychology and sociology can, especially with appropriate focuses and supporting coursework, fit well into high-growth areas, such as human factors and user interface design or business service design and optimization. Others, such as art history, anthropology, or my old major, philosophy (good thing it is still a good preparation for law school), pose tougher employment challenges.

Even so, students who major in any discipline can dramatically improve their attractiveness to potential employers through a well-designed selection of complementary courses or research focuses. These include:

  • Mathematics, particularly in areas such as statistics, modeling and simulations;
  • IT, not necessarily in developing and managing IT environments, but in understanding which IT tools are most applicable to a chosen field and how to apply them to deliver business value; and
  • Social networking and Web 2.0 tools and techniques and how to apply them to business needs, such as market research the building of communities and the mining of Web statistics to identify patterns or preferences.

In fact, the application of such tools will be so critical in landing good jobs—not to speak of delivering innovative value within virtually any chosen field—that they should be incorporated as standard components in virtually every discipline and every course. They should be treated as core skills—along with writing, communications and, increasingly, team-based collaboration. They should be specifically taught in foundation courses and embedded in virtually every curriculum. Career counselors, meanwhile, should be able to help students identify career pathways and the combinations of majors and minors, complementary courses, independent research areas and internship opportunities that will be most effective in tuning their educations to the needs of potential employers.

Moreover, all courses should be structured and taught not as self-contained disciplines, but as components of a broad body of knowledge in which multiple perspectives and skills must be integrated to achieve breakthrough perspectives.

Herein lays the conundrum, or actually, the multiple “conundra.”  Universities are generally organized in discrete stovepipes that implicitly discourage cross-disciplinary collaboration. Professors are typically hired and rewarded on the basis of their depth of knowledge in their particular specialty, rather than as interdisciplinary thinkers. Many professors consciously shun practical applications of their work and involvement of corporations in tuning curricula in favor of maintaining academic purity. And few schools have sufficient numbers of career counselors, or sufficient interaction with the companies most likely to hire their graduates, to provide deep insight into the combinations of skills that will be required for different types of jobs.

A relative handful of universities have already begun to address many of these issues. Most, however, will find it very tough to buck tradition, entrenched (not to speak of tenured) interests and ennui. This is especially true during the current recession and in at least in the early stages of the New Normal, when budgets will continue to be squeezed. Most students, therefore, will have to fend for themselves. They will have to think more strategically as to how to tailor and how to position their specific combinations of interests into “value propositions” that will be compelling to potential employers.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Education System and Institutions, Global Forces-General, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Role in Education, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, Societal Forces, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Universities and Grad Schools, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Defining the Post-Recession Knowledge Workforce

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

The composition of the knowledge workforce was in flux before the current recession. Many of the knowledge workers were Baby Boomers—who were preparing to retire. With insufficient numbers of Gen Y’ers to fill their shoes, many of these jobs were destined to be unfilled. To compound the issue, a growing percentage of young adults—especially men—were shunning the college education needed for much knowledge work. For some Gen Y’ers, not going to college was a matter of choice. For others it was an economic mandate as the cost of higher education became more and more difficult for many middle-class families to afford. And for those who do go to college, the percentage of U.S. students who study technical fields including science, engineering, mathematics and IT (SEMIT) continues to decline.

The good news is that foreign nationals are increasingly filling this breach. For example, while foreign-born people represent for only 13% of the U.S. population, according to an April 12, 2009 article in The New York Times, they accounted for 24% of the nation’s scientists and engineers as of 2007. Foreign nationals are particularly well represented at the highest levels of their professions, accounting for 42% of all current U.S. master- level engineers and 60% of PhD-level engineers (and a similar percentage of U.S. university SEMIT masters and PhD candidates as well as 28% of U.S. physicians, and 26% of all U.S. Nobel prize winners). According to a 2007 UC Berkeley report, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs” (America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs) foreign nationals are among the founders of one out of every four U.S.-based technology startups).

The bad news is that America, in its infinite wisdom, is trying to reverse the slide in domestic SEMIT enrollment not by aggressively encouraging and preparing U.S. citizens to study these fields, but by making it increasingly difficult and less attractive for foreign nationals to come to or to remain in the United States

Although the recession will certainly not change everything, it will change a lot. Think the Baby Boomers will retire soon? It is hard to believe recent surveys that suggest that most still plan to do so. After all, the majority were ill prepared to fund retirements even before the recession decimated the values of their small nest eggs and their homes (at least the percentage of their home values that were not encumbered by second mortgages).

And then there are the Gen Y’ers who are finding few jobs. New graduates who are all but locked out of the formal job market are either:

  • Returning to school (which is good for the future of the economy;
  • Being forced to take jobs that are either below their skill levels or, often, totally outside their chosen field (which is bad for the future); or are
  • Temporarily dropping out of the workforce altogether (even worse for the future).

The composition of the post-recessionary workforce is further clouded by a number of anomalies that are either unlike previous recessions, or of a much different magnitude. Examples include:

  • White collar unemployment has dramatically grown (driven partially by the financial services industry meltdown), in addition to the traditional decline in manufacturing jobs;
  • The collapse of the financial services industry will certainly force students and recent graduates to reassess career choices and may prompt them to look to new areas of study (hopefully SEMIT) and industries (such as new-generation manufacturing sectors);
  • Many of the manufacturing jobs that are being lost in this recession will not come back to the United States. Meanwhile, many of the entry level knowledge jobs for which these displaced people can be most easily retrained, are increasingly susceptible to being offshored. The prospects for highly touted green collar jobs remain uncertain;
  • Traditional layoff patterns are changing, with companies increasingly laying off younger workers before older (more expensive) workers (a factor that is at least partially attributable to fear of age discrimination suits and the unwillingness to lose critical skills) and of laying off men faster than women (a pattern which, while occurring across all educational levels, is particularly pronounced among college graduates); and
  • A housing market-induced decline in worker mobility, which makes it particularly difficult for people in economically distressed areas to move to more promising localities.

What does all this mean for the workforce of the future? Although I will look at this in much greater depth in future blogs and reports a few implications jump out.

Consider, for example, the dramatic reduction in the percentage of men that are graduating from college (compounded by a growing percentage of men being laid off). This has the potential of effectively reversing traditional gender roles. It will certainly have profound implications within business, where more and more men will report to women managers. It may have even greater societal implications, with women playing greater roles in local and national politics and a rapidly growing percentage of men playing primary roles in raising families and caring for parents.

A significant delay in the retirement of Baby Boomers (to the extent it occurs) has the potential of helping many companies in the near term, but of creating big corporate, societal and economic changes over the long term. The good news for companies is that a significant delay in Baby Boomer retirement will bail many out of their failure to plan for huge demographic shifts and the associated loss of institutional knowledge. But the negatives are numerous. First, aging workforces will cost companies much more in salary and benefits. More importantly, higher costs, combined with an anticipated slow recovery, will dramatically limit job openings and advancement opportunities for younger workers. Some careers will just be delayed. Others will be permanently sidetracked. But companies with be deprived of a critical supply of management talent and families and communities will be deprived of the income associated with productive careers.

U.S. students’ rapidly declining interest in SEMIT is even more portentous. First, technology-based industries tend to create large numbers of high-paying jobs and generate large volumes of high-margin exports. Worse still, even the most staid industries are being forced to become technology industries. The future of autos, we are being told, is in new, fuel-efficient designs. Even utilities are being forced to go high-tech, with the need to move to clean coal and renewable energy sources, and to build and manage smart infrastructures. Hopefully, factors such as declining financial industry opportunities, growing interest in sustainability and new education incentives and programs (such as those that encourage math and science education) will increase domestic interest in SEMIT education and careers. If not, the U.S. will hopefully recognize the necessity of encouraging and better utilizing the gift of foreign-born talent that is being nurtured by our universities.

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Economic and Political Forces, Economic Forces, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, Societal Forces, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,