Customer Reviews

The Monster Under The Bed

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I'd love to see someone update the book, since it was published 18 years ago. I bought my copy in about 2001.

I really like this book. The gist is that it's really going to be up to business--whether they like it or not--to educate today's workers. If anything, I think the message is even more relevant today, given the huge cost of higher education and the increasingly iffy ROI that comes from that investment by graduates. Community Colleges are filling much of the gap, particularly the very large community college institutions like we have here in the Kansas City area. One, Johnson County Community College, is larger than many four-year, state-funded universities (enrollment is now more than 21,000).

CCs are doing, and have done, much of the kind of work that Davis and Botkin describe. With a large corporate presence on the JCCC campus (like Kansas City Southern Railroad, BNSF, and Union Pacific collaborating to offer railroad operations training and certificate programs), many businesses and business/education partnerships are training students to perform the kinds of jobs that the work world requires. These kinds of situations are going to accelerate in mainstream corporate and small-business enterprises as well. (Disclaimer: as a consultant and adult educator, I develop and teach corporate education in both classroom and web-based delivery methods).

While I'm a huge proponent of traditional liberal arts education, we're going to need increasing amounts of job-specific education. I absolutely cringe every time I hear someone blather on about how we need more "math-n-science" education because the real problems of the world aren't technical fixes that call for math and science; they're all about negotiation, communication, collaboration, cooperation...things where liberal arts education excels. Fortunately, increasing numbers of corporate and academic programs realize that not everything is a tech fix and they're teaching the kinds of interpersonal, emotional, and social intelligence skills required to get the whole job done.

This is a great book with wonderful insights, wish I'd read during my undergrad years.