Jerry Colonna and I had an interesting dialogue on the topic of utilizing offshore resources. In the end, Jerry and I advocated that education is the key to long-term success for the US. Offshoring of jobs will continue to happen, and it makes sense economically. However, in order to maintain our lead in the US, we need to make sure to educate our children and workforce to move up the value chain so we can continue to innovate, design, create, and own our core Intellectual Property. I just had an interesting discussion with another PC Forum attendee about his daughter's college application process. He mentioned that it is more competitive than ever and that leading universities had to turn down many applicants with great grades and scores. In his discussion with a leader at an IVY League university, he mentioned that the university could fill its entering class with students from mainland China alone without any adjustments to its admissions process. So China also clearly sees the value of Intellectual Property, and it will be interesting to see how this race to educate our societies develops. Of course, this raises larger questions about how our colleges and universities create the right geographic diversity amongst its student population. However this debate evolves, what is great about this country is that we do educate and train many foreign-born students who contribute immensely to our economy and help us maintain our competitive edge.
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2 Responses to “The Globalization of Education”
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Ed Sim is founder of BOLDstart Ventures and co-founder of Dawntreader Ventures. Mr. Sim has over 15 years of venture capital experience having led seed and first round investments in a number of high profile Internet and software companies.
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Your post brought up some interesting points. My view is that globalization benefits all parties involved.
Ten years ago, there wouldn’t be this many Chinese students who would be able to afford an American education. The creation of a middle-class in China attributed, partly at least, to the large number of bright young students applying for colleges in the United States, as well as in UK, Germany etc. It would be interesting to know how this trend benefits the US economically, both in the short term and long term.
On the other hand, people from all over the world (mostly Asia countries) started looking at China for higher education as well since it offers a good balance between quality of education and affordability. Being open to globalization is the only way for a contry to survive and thrive.
The US university system can rightfully claim, as Arthur Miller did, that it has made more friends for American culture than the State Department.
However, John Ashcroft does not appear to agree:
Chinese graduate apps decline 50%
http://www.nyunews.com/news/campus/7059.html
Int’l Grad Student Applications Decline
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/25/4062937892fcc
“Applications from China fell by 76 percent, and those from India fell by 58 percent. These numbers are particularly striking considering the fact–as reported by The New York Times on Jan. 18–that applications from China increased by 25 percent in Australia and 36 percent in England, and applications from India increased by 31 percent in Australia and 16 percent in England.”