1. Collaboration, one of the skills listed at the end, is  contradicted in the first sentence were the goal is to compete. The first  sentence in the third paragraph elaborates upon that goal…”to win that  battle.”  
2. Sustainability, a nice skill/goal is built upon the  model of American consumerism.  
3. Passionate Personalizer is built upon the myth of hard  work and dedication will get you success. American individualism, not  democratic community building.  
   

The New York Times as the purveyor of the vision of the future of higher education in America?
 
Rick Uttich

 
<http://chronicle.com/>

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Rethink Higher Education for a Changing World, Best-Selling Author Tells Conference-Goers
By JEFFREY SELINGO <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Honolulu

Colleges need to refocus their missions in order to help American students compete in a global economy, Thomas L. Friedman, the best-selling author and New York Times columnist, told a standing-room-only crowd of university officials at the "Campus of the Future" meeting here this week.

Mr. Friedman, the author of The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, entertained the audience of more than 4,000 during an hour-long speech with anecdotes from the reporting of his book and personal stories about his own encounters with globalization. Speaking without notes, he told the joint meeting of three higher-education associations that China and India will challenge the role of the United States as a superpower in the 21st century, and that the United States will "not win by default."

Regarding America's ability to win that battle, Mr. Friedman said he is much more optimistic now than he was when he finished his book, in late 2004. Since then, he said, he has traveled throughout the country and realized that America's entrepreneurial spirit and political and economic system confer a big advantage. Unlike China, he said, the United States doesn't "censor Google."

Still, he warned, if the United States is to succeed in maintaining its economic dominance in the world, the country's education system needs to improve and change. "We don't just need more education, we need the right kind of education," he told the audience, representing the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the Society for College and University Planning.

He urged educators to focus less on concrete outcomes like grades and test scores and more on teaching students how to learn, instilling passion and curiosity in them, and developing their intuitive skills. He compared educating students for an uncertain future to "training for the Olympics without knowing which sport you will compete in."

Less and less, he said, universities should be training students for specific jobs -- many of which could be outsourced in the future -- and instead should focus on eight skills he identified as essential for the middle-class jobs of the future.

Commenting on those skills, he said that students will need to be synthesizers, explainers, and adaptors, as well as leveragers, who can figure out how one person can do the job of 20, and localizers, who can discover local angles to global businesses.

They must also have skills as collaborators and passionate personalizers, he said, and as developers of "green," or environmentally sustainable, enterprises.

He illustrated collaboration by describing a trip to India where he was asked by the president of a high-tech company to meet with some of its interns. Sure, he said, "I'd love to meet with your Indian interns," only to be corrected by the president, who said they were the company's American interns. The company had 9,000 international applications for internships. Engineering and business students, in particular, he said, have discovered that one way to get ahead is to have experience in places like India and China.

As an example of a passionate personalizer, he told the story of a lemonade vendor at Camden Yards, the home of the Baltimore Orioles, who not only sells lemonade, but does it with a sideshow. "At the end of the day, he has a stack of bills in tips greater than anyone else in the ballpark," Mr. Friedman said. Now the vendor has been hired out for parties.

And sustainability, he said, will be increasingly important as China and India enter the playing field "and get the cars, homes, and refrigerators that Americans have." Any business that focuses on sustaining the world, he said, is going to work.



See also the following related article:
The University As Economic Savior
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i45/45a01801.htm
 

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