Transcript High Skills the Knowledge Economy: China and India Education and Changing Cultures of Competitiveness Bristol Graduate School of Education Hugh Lauder.

High Skills the Knowledge
Economy: China and India
Education and Changing Cultures of
Competitiveness
Bristol Graduate School of Education
Hugh Lauder
Learning is the key to prosperity… Investment in
human capital will be the foundation of success
in the knowledge-based global economy of the
twenty-first century (The Learning Age, 1998: 7).
The middle classes have run the world since the
French Revolution, but they’re now the new
proletariat (Super Cannes, J.G.Ballard).
Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
Views of Globalisation
The Global Auction
The Returns to Graduates
East Asia’s Century?
3 Views of Globalisation
1. The Head – Body View (Reich and
Rosencrance)
2. The Reef Fish theory of globalisation –
(Gordon Brown, IMF etc).
Learning = Earning
…globalisation is entering a new phase. Already our Asian rivals are
competing not just in low-skilled manufacturing but in high tech
products and services. Once we worried about a global arms race.
The challenge this century is a global skills race and that is why we
need to push ahead faster with our reforms to extent education
opportunities for all.
Some argue that in this next stage, the mature economies of Europe
and America can only lose and that all the benefits will flow only
eastwards. I disagree. We are about to see a doubling of skilled jobs
in the global economy. This heralds a world-wide opportunity
revolution, bringing chances of upward mobility for millions…in a
globally competitive national economy there will be almost no limits
to the aspirations for upward mobility (The Observer,10.2.08).
3. The Global Auction:
three key elements:
– The rise of China and India
– MNCs as Conduits
- Quality = Price
Quality = Price
• The lever which is driving the present phase of
globalisation is that of quality=price:
We have to drive innovation, we have to be at
the leading edge at reasonable cost…That’s it.
And this can be transferred to the labour market.
We have…to try to get higher skills at
reasonable cost and high flexibility.’
Germany, Telecommunications MNC.
How is the Quality/Price Equation
Achieved?
The Role of MNCs and a Theory of Skills
Capture:
1. Standardisation of: Process: People and
Products.
2. The Supply of high quality graduate
labour in China, India, Russia and
Eastern Europe
3. Increasing R&D work in China and
India
The Hollowing Out of the West’s
Knowledge Base
• “The MNCs are our Teachers, China is a
large school”.
• The MNCs as a conduit for knowledge.
• Chinese strategies including violation of
IPRs
• Buying up the West; China and India
• SMT graduates in China and India
studying in the US and UK
The Returns to Graduates
• Much of the debate about mass higher
education has been about the graduate
premium. This is highly misleading!
• In the United States graduate incomes
have been in decline in real terms since
the late 70s with the exception of those at
the 90th percentile (and the Dot.com
boom)
The Evidence
(Note these data do not take account of extra hours worked)
The War for Talent
• The upturn for those in the top 10 per cent
of income earners is in part due to the
ideology of the War for Talent
• MNCs across the globe typically recruit
from the elite universities in any country or
beyond.
• This creates the pull factors in creating a
global elite
East Asia’s Century?
• The scale and scope of change
• Different strategies in China and India
• Political and economic crisies