This is a fascinating book recommended by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in "Antifragile." Wolf debunks the notion that educating a general population beyond the age of 16 or so contributes to economic growth on a national scale. All it really does is positions an individual better in a competitive job market since prospective employers use university degrees as sorting devices. For instance, South Korea's rate of literacy in the 1960s was poor. Egypt's was high. And that explains why Egypt now has a robust, high-tech economy that is booming, filled with innovation and South Korea is an economic backwater of no global economic significance. [Irony] She also looks at the usefulness of vocational training as an alternative to university and finds it wanting. Given the rate of technological change, vocation specific training skills tend to quickly become redundant as technology and machines change. What employers need are broadly educated employees with a good basic education who can adapt quickly to the changing demands that confront them - not specialists in outdated machinery.
Wolf also analyzes the sorry history of the attempt to marry business driven vocational education with public funding. It hasn't worked. The German apprentice system has been envied by many countries for at least 150 years but no country has been able to replicate it. Wolf argues that the apprentice system is very expensive, you have to convince kids to forego lost earnings from jobs that they have not taken in order to complete the apprentice training and only for certain industries does it make sense anyway.
If you, like me, have thought that many American college students with no real interest in anything academic would be better off doing vocational training, Wolf has some excellent arguments why that little fantasy will remain just that.
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
