Some say that Russian hackers come from generations of
surviving in a country where those who know how to game the system eat well and
generate the social benefits of a social structure where insider advantages are
the only real way to become successful. When they emigrate to other countries,
knowing that Russian is not a language that tracks easily into learning
English, they speak fluent “math.” The Russians that remain behind but have
these same skills do equally well not only in their native land, but wherever
they provide their well-educated computer and code-writing skills to global
buyers.
As U.S. aggregate math test scores from our nation’s
primary and secondary schools drop, year-by-year, as access to college
education is increasingly unaffordable to our high school grads (falling from
70% to a bit over 65% over the last five years) and graduations from four-year
schools below 50% in a normal college process (a bit more graduate over a
longer term) and as the world continues to prioritize education to become
competitive, the United States faces increasingly competent international
workforce skills that threaten what dwindling competitive advantage we have.
Patents from China are beginning to soar. It’s a story that repeats itself all
too often.
International universities are luring their ethnic stars
– who have built solid reputations in the United States – back to the home
country with offers of high pay and incredibly sophisticated laboratories and
research grants. Some countries are willing to pick up the tab for their best
students to study at the best American universities… and these same
institutions of higher learning are happy to accept these full-tuition scholars
who do not need to tax their financial aid coffers. Other prestigious America
universities are actually opening branches in Asian and Middle Eastern venues
to expand their reach (and the potential of growing powerful alumni organizations).
The result is a shrinking American middle class, and as I
have blogged before, a contraction in that segment of our social structure that
has been mostly responsible for innovation and growth. It is just too easy for
those willing to invest in education to shift economic power to themselves.
We’re concerned with deficits and austerity – not truly understanding the
difference between spending and investing – as statistics tell us that our
overall educational policies are pushing our future prospects downward.
The May 8th FastCompany.com points out a few of the
fastest growing tech innovation countries that Americans should be concerned
about. There are Silicon Valley equivalents popping up in some unexpected
places:
“Zhongguancun [China] is sometimes called the ‘Silicon
Valley of the East,’ and for a good reason. When Steve Blank, lecturer at the
Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, visited this
Beijing northwestern district in 2013, he described it as what ‘Rome looked
like in the time of the empire or New York in the 1920’s ... now it’s Beijing
announcing that China has arrived.’ The country is only second to the U.S. when
it comes the venture capital spending, mostly investing in the technology,
media, and telecommunications sectors.
“With its massive 1.3 billion strong population,
entrepreneurs in China will be the ones who can identify unmet needs and use
their resources to provide services and tools to meet those needs.
Entrepreneurs outside of China can only dream of being able to fill gaps in
this massive marketplace…
“Israel’s entrepreneurship spirit comes from the fact
that the country itself is a startup. With little natural resources and
constant political turmoil, Israelis are fighting for better lives by creating
energy alternatives. As a result, we’ve seen some amazing companies come out of
Israel.
“The country boasts more startups per capita than any
other country and currently has 70 companies listed on the Nasdaq, making it
third only to the U.S. and China on the stock exchange. Not bad for a
population of 8.2 million… In 2008, per-capita venture capital investments in
the country were 2.5 times more than the U.S. and 80 times that of China,
according to authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer in their book Start-Up Nation…
“South Korea has one of the fastest broadband speeds
among all. As most of the world continues to struggle with 4G connection, South
Korea is investing in 5G, meaning its residents will be able to download HD
movies without any problems by 2020. The country’s Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology (MEST) announced it is investing $1.5 billion in this
project alone.
“The South Korean government promotes its startup economy
by pouring $2.7 billion in funding startups and offering tax breaks for big
companies that invest in startups... A recently published Bloomberg Global
Innovation Index ranked South Korea first among all by examining factors such
as research and development capability, productivity, tech density, and patent
activity…
“Estonia [is] the small country in the Baltic Republic so
innovative, it’s nicknamed ‘E-stonia.’ In 2000, its government deemed Internet
access a basic human right and free Wi-Fi became the norm throughout the land…
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonia gained it’s independence in 1991
and needed to build a new administration quickly and cost-effectively. Estonia
is said to have the world’s most digitized government… Today, Estonians are the
brains behind Skype and Kazaa, an early file-sharing program, and has one the
fastest broadband Internet speeds in the world.”
If the United States does not perform a ground-up
restructuring of its entire educational system, cannot find a way to prioritize
education at least at the same level as we protect our over-spending-driven
military, we can expect to become an innovation also-ran, with a concomitant
downward pressure on the quality of our job picture for the future. Education
needs to be free as much as we can, mortgage-sized student loans need to be
replaced with grants and the quality of our students needs to zoom back to
first place, where we were for decades.
I’m Peter Dekom,
and we are voluntarily handing over our competitive advantage to others through
a combination of arrogance and fiscal stupidity.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment