newly ancient

Much of what we are talking about in the education debate carries over to business. The two worlds are inseparably tied. So, it should come as no surprise that BusinessWeek has a new article out about the future of work. It presents some alarmist views upon outsourcing; but also plays the positive notes of increased collaboration and connectivity in a global economy.

The rapid growth of broader, richer channels of communication—including virtual worlds—is transforming what it means to be “at work.”

Naturally, interpretation of those broader, richer channels of communication will require workers with a larger skill set an greater education:

On the positive side, employers are hiring workers with higher and higher levels of education, and jobs are demanding ever more sophistication. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 34% of adult workers in the U.S. now have a bachelor’s degree or better, up from 29% 10 years ago.

In contrast to this, the number of educated persons appears to be falling:

The wage stagnation, combined with the 60% rise in college tuitions since 2000, seems to be discouraging many young Americans from getting a college education. The percentage of 25- 29-year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree has actually fallen during this decade.

However, I question whether this means young Americans are less optimistic of forward-thinking. Rather, it might represent a growing dissatisfaction with traditional education and an increased turn to alternative mediums (read: internet) to build the skills needed. Still, you’d think the principles of supply and demand would hold true: with a smaller pool of educated workers to draw from, jobs with degrees should have rising wages. It appears not to be so:

Even more disturbing, two decades of rising incomes for educated workers seem to have come to a halt, at least temporarily. When adjusted for inflation, the real wages and salaries of U.S. workers with at least a bachelor’s degree are barely higher than they were in 2000, an unpleasant surprise in a world in which education is seen as the route to success.

This plateauing wage is most likely the result of international competition (read: globalization) which encourages free market consulting and international entrepreneurship:

Complicating matters is the fact that the very idea of a company is shifting away from a single outfit with full-time employees and a recognizable hierarchy. It is something much more fluid, with a classic corporation at the center of an ever-shifting network of suppliers and outsourcers, some of whom only join the team for the duration of a single project.

Naturally, where a large, fluid workforce exists with communication across the globe, communication and collaboration are receiving an increased focus: especially for multinationals who must make sure employees can work effectively with their counterparts (or that overpaid consultant) across the globe:

The hard part for multinationals is getting people to work well together, especially given that day-and-night collaboration across the globe is growing…Nokia is careful to select people who have a collaborative mindset…Accenture, which spent $700 million on education last year, says its 38,000 consultants and most of its service workers take course on collaborating with offshore colleagues.

It certainly looks like the future of work is a worldwide network of employees communicating and collaborating constantly. Will education follow? Where are the collaborative projects with students in Singapore? Where are the exercises in learning a language from your peers across the globe? Where are the teachers recognizing that great teaching is a collaborative process between the teacher, the student, the student’s peers, and the world?

This post was inspired by Will.